The industrial relations implications of automation

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Structuring information work: Ferranti and Martins Bank, 1952-1968

The adoption of large-scale computers by the British retail banks in the 1960s required a first-time dislocation of customer accounting from its confines in the branches, where it had been dealt with by paper-based and mechanized information systems, to a new collective space: the bank computer center. While historians have rightly stressed the continuities between centralized office work, punched-card tabulation and computerization, the shift from decentralized to centralized information work by means of a computer has received little attention. In this article, I examine the case of Ferranti and Martins Bank and employ elements of Anthony Giddens’s structuration theory to highlight the difficulties of transposing old information practices directly onto new computerized information work

Control in the technical societies: a brief history

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This article, a revised version of a paper presented at the IEEE 2009 Conference on the History of Technical Societies, describes how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies in a number of countries

Economic impact of large public programs: The NASA experience

The economic impact of NASA programs on weather forecasting and the computer and semiconductor industries is discussed. Contributions to the advancement of the science of astronomy are also considered

Automation and Management Accounting in British Manufacturing and Retail Financial Services, 1945-1968

This article looks at the effects of office mechanisation in greater detail by describing data processing innovations in major building societies during the dawn of the computer era. Reference to similar developments in clearing banks, industrial and computer organisations provides evidence as to the common experience in the computerisation of firms in the post-war years. As a result, research in this article offers a comparison between widespread technological change and changes unique to service sector organisations. Moreover, research in this article ascertains the extent to which the adoption of computer-related innovations in financial services sought to satisfy financial, rather than management accounting, purposes.banks, building societies, manufacturing, computers

The education of Walter Kohn and the creation of density functional theory

The theoretical solid-state physicist Walter Kohn was awarded one-half of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his mid-1960's creation of an approach to the many-particle problem in quantum mechanics called density functional theory (DFT). In its exact form, DFT establishes that the total charge density of any system of electrons and nuclei provides all the information needed for a complete description of that system. This was a breakthrough for the study of atoms, molecules, gases, liquids, and solids. Before DFT, it was thought that only the vastly more complicated many-electron wave function was needed for a complete description of such systems. Today, fifty years after its introduction, DFT (in one of its approximate forms) is the method of choice used by most scientists to calculate the physical properties of materials of all kinds. In this paper, I present a biographical essay of Kohn's educational experiences and professional career up to and including the creation of DFT

Control engineering and the professional societies

By the time control engineering emerged as a coherent body of knowledge and practice (during and just after WW2) professional engineering societies had existed for many decades. Since control engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of the profession, new sections devoted to control were quickly established within the various existing technical societies. In addition, some new bodies devoted specifically or primarily to control were established. This brief paper will present in outline the history of how control engineering as a distinct branch of engineering became represented in technical societies – or their equivalent – in the USA, UK, USSR, Germany and France

Britain's first computer centre for banking: What did this building do?

At the beginning of the 1960s Barclays became the first British bank to open a computer centre. In this paper I trace the life of this building starting with its official opening on 4 July 1961 and ending with its protracted closure a decade later. From initial status as the most advanced bank bookkeeping system in the world serving as a highly visible symbol of the bank's technological power, to a final repurposing of its grandiose reception as a distribution point for pre- and post-decimalisation output, the building's various meanings are revealed. Making use of written, oral, and visual sources I explore the centre's spatial characteristics, its relation to the distributed structure of the branch, and its place as a first dedicated working home for a newly emerging computing subculture. A blend of multiple perspectives internally from the top down and bottom up, and externally from customer and competitor, offer an analysis that uncovers the part played by the first computer centre place in the banking automation race

Selected bibliography of remote sensing

Bibliography of remote sensing techniques for analysis and assimilation of geographic dat