Doctoral Dissertation Research: International History of Computing

科学与社会论文改进基金以技术转移研究的文献为基础，研究有关计算机和计算的技术知识的国际交流。它还评估了这些交流对计算机技术发展的影响，即当地需求对美国公司IBM和Remington Rand销售的硬件和软件的发展的影响程度，这些公司在1945年至1970年期间主导了国际市场。NSF将支持IBM、国家档案馆和一些德国档案馆的档案研究，其中包括慕尼黑的德意志博物馆、慕尼黑工业大学的档案馆、科布伦茨的联邦档案馆和科隆大学的Wirtschaftsarchiv。对这些档案的研究将集中于了解国际交流的社会、经济和政治条件，特别是欧洲复兴方案所规定的条件；美国电脑制造商想要开拓国际市场的原因；这些公司是如何组织国际研究、开发和营销的，他们开发的硬件和软件是如何适应当地条件的。作为主要的知识价值，这个项目分析了作为技术知识传播媒介的企业。在20世纪，跨国公司已经成为技术知识的拥有者，并且通过它们的各种活动，它们经常促进和控制技术知识的交流。他们是如何做到这一点的，这是计算机历史学家和商业历史学家几乎没有考虑过的问题，更不用说理解了。此外，通过使用一种国际化的方法来研究计算史，这个项目将减轻目前在文献中占主导地位的以美国为中心的计算史版本。它的做法实际上是跨国的，而不是国际性的；它关注的是公司，而不是国家，如何调解技术和技术知识的转让。从而揭示并解决了关于20世纪下半叶国际技术转让性质的一些新问题。这项研究和将基于它的论文将对公众关注的一个问题产生更广泛的影响：跨国公司和当地消费者的利益如何塑造技术。这篇论文将发表，研究者打算在学术生涯中，这个问题，以及与之相关的其他问题，将成为她的教学和研究的重点。她的论文发表后，将提供一个难得的机会，让人们得以一窥这家世界上最强大的公司之一在技术发展和国际关系中所扮演的角色，并通过这些角色，了解世界许多角落的日常生活。

Building on the literature of technology transfer studies, this Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant investigates international exchanges of technical knowledge about computers and computing. It also assesses the impact of these exchanges on technological developments in computing, namely the extent to which local needs affected the development of both hardware and software sold by the American firms, IBM and Remington Rand, that dominated the international market in the years between 1945 and 1970. NSF will support archival research at IBM, at the National Archives and at a number of German archives, among which are the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the archive of the Technical University in Munich, the Bundesarchiv at Koblenz and the Wirtschaftsarchiv at the University of Cologne. Research in these archives will be focused on understanding the social, economic and political conditions of international exchanges, particularly as set by the European Recovery Program; the reasons why American computer manufacturers wanted to expand into international markets; how these corporations organized international research, development and marketing, and how the hardware and software they developed was adapted to local conditions. As its major intellectual merit, this project analyzes corporations as media for the transmission of technical knowledge. In the 20th century, multinational corporations have become owners of technical knowledge, and through their varied activities, they often foster and control its communication. How they do this is a subject that historiansof computing and historians of business have barely considered, let alone understood. In addition, by using an international approach to the history of computing, this project will mitigate against the overly American-centric version of the history of computing which currently dominates the literature. Its approach will actually be more transnational than international; it is concerned with how corporations, rather than nationstates, mediate the transfer of technologies and of technological knowledge. Thereby it opens up and resolves some new questions about the nature of international technology transfer in the second half of the 20th century. This research and the dissertation that will be based on it will have a broader impact on a question of considerable public concern: how technologies are shaped by the interests of both multinational corporations and local consumers. This dissertation will be published and the investigator intends to pursue an academic career in which this question, and others associated with it, will be the focus of her teaching as well as her research. The investigator has been offered access to the IBM corporate archives, and her dissertation, when published, will offer a rare glimpse into the role one of the world's most powerful corporations played in technological development and in international relations and, through these, on everyday life in many corners of the world.