When Computers Were Human

By David Alan Grier

Book Overview

Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691091579
• ISBN13: 9780691091570
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 1.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Remember the team sport of complex calculations?

Usually, the word "computer" generates images of a powerful, programmable machine that can perform almost any task. However, a "computer" was originally a person who performed complex math. Some "human computers" were scientists who did advanced calculations, but most were workers who labored over the same types of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing hour after hour, day after day. Scientist David Alan Grier weaves a wonderful story of the history of computing, framed by the discovery of Halley's Comet and its three subsequent appearances. The comet gives the story a nice structure that helps readers see the advances in computing over the past three centuries. Grier introduces colorful personalities and covers pivotal historical events in the rise of mechanical computing. getAbstract finds that this history book informs your understanding of how computerization advanced while also being a terrific read.

A tour through the history of human computers and the development of computing machines

Today, we all think of computers as machines we use to do many things. But the term actually refers to a human worker who performed mathematical computations as part of a larger team effort to accomplish a larger goal. This very interesting history takes us through the beginning of that profession through its demise with the rise of powerful computing machines after World War II. David Alan Grier uses the repeated appearances of Halley's Comet to organize the story and to demonstrate the changes in the profession of computing and the rise of technology since Halley first demonstrated the repeated appearances of the comet in the late 17th Century. While Halley was to make some predictions about the next appearance of the comet in 1758, the Newtonian equations available to him still made the work of predicting the perihelion (the time the comet was closest to the Sun) far too daunting. We learn about the French team who worked for months and were able to predict the perihelion almost within a month window. And with each new appearance the error rate is cut and cut again until it gets down to hours and minutes. We follow how the need to compute navigation tables led to the creation of computing teams and how they were organized with each computer doing a certain type of computations all day long and putting their work on standardized forms. These forms were then checked for errors and then passed to the next stage of the work. Eventually the tables were organized and printed for use around the world. World War I led to the use of computing teams to check artillery and proof it for shipment to war. Weapons were so advanced in World War II that tabulation machines were also pushed to their limits and the first computers were used to refine weapons and support intelligence efforts. We also see how machines were used from the dreams of Charles Babbage to mechanical adding machines and how the 1910 census was conducted using punch cards and machines that could read them using electric current. Where a human computer could only perform hundreds of computations per day the tabulating machine operator could do tens of thousands per shift. With the rise of advanced electronic calculators the die was cast that humans would be machine operators and the machines would do the work. Grier ends looking towards the next appearance of Halley's Comet in 2061 and wonders what technology scientists will be using then and how primitive our most advanced technologies will seem to them. Entertaining as well as very informative. I recommend it to you. Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

When a browser was a person

Once, before 1992, a browser was a person who browsed a set of books. But now it more commonly refers to a computer program used to browse the Web. No doubt, since you are reading this in the software program, to you the latter meaning is more common. Well, Grier takes us back to days when a computer was a person who did many math calculations. Often by hand. He starts with Isaac Newton and the laws of gravitation. This led to Edmund Halley and others trying to predict the orbit of "his" comet. The problem is that this involve many tedious hand calculations. People did this! One's writing hand must ache, just thinking about all the manual effort. Then later in the 19th century, the book describes more such mindnumbing ventures. Yet there was precious little alternative. Until late in that century, when mechanical calculators started becoming useful, due to people like Herman Hollerith, who founded IBM. The narrative reaches its peak in the Second World War. Due to the vast computational needs. Richard Feynman makes a cameo appearance. At Los Alamos in the Manhattan Project, he was in charge of a group of female computers. Basically, he grouped them into a set of cellular automata, with each doing simple calculations. Grier's book will be very revealing to some. You get an appreciation of what it was like to get numerical results, before machines appeared.

A Wonderful Book

A wonderful book, filled with fascinating facts about important people and activities that most of us have never heard about. I hope it makes more people aware that the original point of electronic computers was to do computing, to speed up the essential work that had been done by human computers for centuries. We often say that electronic computers can do in seconds what used to take months. This book describes what it was like for human computers to actually spend months doing it. Like all good history, this book teaches us that the legacy of human achievement that we enjoy did not grow on trees.

It is a shame that these people are being forgotten

Once upon a time, equations that could not be solved analytically were solved numerically by teams of people who were, in many cases, capable of only rudimentary mathematics. More gifted mathematicians broke complex problems into algorithmic steps small enough to be worked by hand, and they would then be tackled by teams of "computers". This was normal for over 250 years, until they were replaced by digital computers in the mid-20th century. Grier does excellent research, meeting with surviving computers and finding letters and other material. In one amusing source, he extracts details of the lives of the women who computed for Harvard Observatory in the late 19th century from a satire of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera written by a junior astronomer there. As many of these computers through the history of the industry were women, this book may be of particular interest to those who follow the history of women in science. Grier is particularly taken by the story of Gertrude Blanch at the Mathematical Tables Project run by the National Bureau of Standards in the U.S., and devoted many pages to her life and work. If the book has any weakness, it is only that these teams of computers were typically employed by governments, and descriptions of their work sometimes amounts to descriptions of bureaucratic politics, not a very interesting topic. This is offset, however, by amusing observations and excellent photographs illuminating the lives of these mostly forgotten precursors to modern computers.