When Computers Were Human

David Alan Grier is Associate Professor in the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University. His articles on the history of science have appeared in the "American Mathematical Monthly", "Chance", the "Christian Science Monitor", and the "Washington Post". He is Editor in Chief of the "IEEE Annals of the History of Computing". Long before he learned that his grandmother had been trained as a human computer, he absorbed the methods of programming the electronic computer from his father, who was a scientific computing specialist for the Burroughs Corporation.

• Introduction: A Grandmother's Secret Life 1 Part I: Astronomy and the Division of Labor 1682-1880 9 Chapter One: The First Anticipated Return: Halley's Comet 1758 11 Chapter Two: The Children of Adam Smith 26 Chapter Three: The Celestial Factory: Halley's Comet 1835 46 Chapter Four: The American Prime Meridian 55 Chapter Five: A Carpet for the Computing Room 72 Part II: Mass Production and New Fields of Science 1880-1930 89 Chapter Six: Looking Forward, Looking Backward: Machinery 1893 91 Chapter Seven: Darwin's Cousins 102 Chapter Eight: Breaking from the Ellipse: Halley's Comet 1910 119 Chapter Nine: Captains of Academe 126 Chapter Ten: War Production 145 Chapter Eleven: Fruits of the Conflict: Machinery 1922 159 Part III: Professional Computers and an Independent Discipline 1930-1964 175 Chapter Twelve: The Best of Bad Times 177 Chapter Thirteen: Scientific Relief 198 Chapter Fourteen: Tools of the Trade: Machinery 1937 220 Chapter Fifteen: Professional Ambition 233 Chapter Sixteen: The Midtown New York Glide Bomb Club 256 Chapter Seventeen: The Victor's Share 276 Chapter Eighteen: I Alone Am Left to Tell Thee 298 Epilogue: Final Passage: Halley's Comet 1986 318 Acknowledgments 323 Appendix: Recurring Characters, Institutions, and Concepts 325 Notes 333 Research Notes and Bibliography 373 Index 401 Illustration Credits 412

Winner of the 2006 Book Award in Computers/Internet, Independent Publisher Book Awards "David Alan Grier's recovery of the wonderfully rich story of human computers ... ask[s] why human computers were made to disappear in the first place... It is notoriously difficult to recover details of the lives of ordinary people... But Grier triumphantly achieves his aim when discussing the twentieth-century human computer, as many are alive to tell their tales."--Jon Agar, Nature "Prior to the advent of programmable data-processing electronic devices in the mid-20th century, the word computer was commonly used to describe a person hired to crank out stupefyingly tedious calculations... Human computers have ... been largely forgotten, and David Alan Grier ... is intent on restoring them to their rightful place in history."--Ann Finkbeiner, Discover "When Computers Were Human is a detailed and fascinating look at a world I had not even known existed."--James Fallows, National Correspondent, Atlantic Monthly "The strength of this book is its breadth of research and its human touch... [A] well written, informative and enjoyable work."--Amy Shell-Gellasch, MAA Reviews "Overall, this book provides a wonderful survey of human computing from 1682 onward... I recommend this book to all historians of computing, both professional and amateur."--Jonathan P. Bowen, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing