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When Computers Were Human

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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.

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.

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.

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

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.

This book was written by the Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of the History of Computing. It is no mystery why the history of computing is so distorted and wrong. This man actually thinks that Atanasoff had a big effect on the computer world. Apparently, he read the rantings and ravings of the Burks duo in their books which carry on a vendetta against John Mauchly and raise Atanasoff to dizzy heights of glory. He never even built one computer and its remains at Ames, Iowa were consigned to the scrap heap. True, Judge Larson anointed him the title of electronic computer inventor at the trial that Honeywell got moved to Minnesota where they were the largest employer and could be sure of an oh so friendly judge. Of course, Honeywell didn't want to pay royalties on the ENIAC Patent. For the 20 years after the ENIAC was introduced, Atanasoff had never indicated he invented the electronic computer until Honywell told him he did and offered him a handsome bonus if the patent got overturned. He never even applied for a patent on his "first computer." Oh yes, the Judge also knew more than the patent office after its intense study that preceded the awarding of the patent. He decided it had been a year after public use before the patent was applied for. Really, a quite unknowledgeable judge in Minnesota knew more than the patent office. It is well known that Burks made a night-time visit to John Mauchly in Washington telling him bad things would happen to him if Burks was not included on the patent. Burks was truly a man of his word and has spent years proving it.

Grier calls the ENIAC an electronic differential analyzer. At one time, Atanasoff and Mauchly discussed such a thing, but it was just a discussion. Mauchly did not get into computing with his WPA students. He did use these students when he was at Ursinus but he had been involved in computing from the time he was a young man. Mauchly saw the ENIAC as a general purpose computer made up of 20 calculators with a master control. Its size was determined because Aberdeen bought it to do the firing table trajectories. It did over 100 millennium type problems in ita 10-year life at Aberdeen. It is interesting that Grier barely mentions Pres Eckert who has been designated the greatest electrical engineer of the 20th century. He spent plenty of time on Aiken and Stibitz, who were indeed pioneers, but their accomplishments are hardly as far reaching as those of Eckert and Mauchly. They went on to propose the EDVAC with a stored program, which was described by von Neumann in his famous EDVAC Report, drawn mainly from his sitting in on meetings with the Moore School engineers. Mauchly and Eckert went on to develop the Binac, the first stored program computer, the Univac, the first commercial computer, and Larc, the first computer with terminals. At one time, people used UNIVAC as a generic name for computer. Atanasoff couldn't even build an EDVAC type computer when given $400,000 to do at the Navy Ordnance Laboratory.

Eckert and Mauchly organized the Moore School Lectures, which spurred the development of computers around the world. Aiken, Stibitz and von Neumann gave none of the lectures. Von Neumann was scheduled to give one but became too busy to give it. The Moore School Lectures were given by Pres Eckert, John Mauchly, Brad Sheppard, Kite Sharpless, Bob Shaw, and Arthur Burks. Of course, they weren't given to the "human computers." They were given to those who would go back to their home bases and build computers, and indeed they did..

The group of "human computers" at Penn numbered more than a hundred. Lila Todd was one of those who set up the group. She is still alive as are many others, but Grier never managed to talk to any of them. He apparently believes recruiting is the important thing and not the work they did. When I came to the Frat House on Walnut Street in March of 1945 as a "computer," it was not a "girls only" group. There were a few men there.

I found the book almost impossible to read. Grier jumps around for little purpose. The one thing I did find interesting was the history of Oswald Veblen who was a long time ordnance man. I had always heard that he was the one who said "Give them the money" when Eckert and Mauchly gave their pitch on the ENIAC to the Science Committee at Aberdeen. With Veblen's long and distinguished background, it is no wonder that the committee did give them the money.