When Computers Were Human (Hardcover)

by David Alan Grier (Author) "IT BEGAN with a passing remark, a little comment, a few words not understood, a confession of a secret life..." (more)
Key Phrases: almanac staff, computing floor, astronomical computing bureau, Mathematical Tables Project, New York, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"... begins with the story of his own grandmother, who had been a human computer". -- Joe Accardi, Library Journal

"...equally fascinating stories of the original contributions made by human computers". -- Sir Tony Hoare, The Times Higher Education Supplement

"For two centuries they were the blue collar workers of science, mental laborers who could grind out logarithms". -- Gregory M. Lamb, The Christian Science Monitor

"The calculated the trajectories of mortar shells, patterns in the weather, and even the explosion of the atomic bomb". -- Ann Finkbeiner, Discover

Review
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 )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (February 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691091579
• ISBN-13: 978-0691091570
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,052,439 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a shame that these people are being forgotten, July 5, 2005

By	Neurasthenic "neurasthenic" (New York City, New York) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Book, August 24, 2005

By	Fred Strohm (Pacifica, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When a browser was a person, March 4, 2006

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.