Category Archives: High Tech History

Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision – Part 3

Posted on March 22, 2011 | 1 Comment

Relations with Industrial Firms

In the next several years after their move to Cambridge, MIT had established itself as a premier research institution. And with President Richard C. Mclaurin’s advocacy of the so-called Technology or “Tech” Plan (1919), the Institute pursued an ever-increasing number of collaborations with industrial corporations. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century and following the departure of MIT President Henry Pritchett, Acting President Arthur Noyes (1907-1909) pursued closer ties with industry to enhance the Institute’s reputation for superior science-based research.

The Research Laboratory of Physical Sciences, which Noyes, a chemist, established in 1903, was the hub of this “reformist” movement. Competing with Noyes was a group headed by chemist William Walker, who wanted even more extensive contacts with scientific corporations. Still another faction headed by the chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Dugald Jackson, founded the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry (RLAC) to even more directly involve industrial patrons. Ultimately this laboratory failed in its mission.

Enter President Mclaurin, who was able to bring in patronage from such corporations as Dupont, Eastman Kodak and General Electric, to name a few. Walker and Jackson supplemented this effort by creating the School of Chemical Engineering Practice. Here, MIT professors would instruct students in areas of study of particular interest to corporations. Controversially, however, the corporations claimed the results of the research. Professors could not publish results of their research, which was needed for the advancement of both their careers and their field. To administer relations between the Institute and Industry, walker set up the Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research (DICR). Noyes voiced opposition this plan and left MIT in 1919.

Vannevar Bush, who served as MIT Vice President and Dean of Engineering from 1932-1938

There was a prevailing feeling at this time that the Institute was moving from a research center to a technical school. Two reformists, Gerard Swope, president of General Electric and Frank Jewett, head of Bell Telephone Labs (both officers and advisers of MIT), brought in a new president, Karl Taylor Compton, who like them, believed in a strong science curriculum to prepare engineers to enter the world of industry. Compton and his vice president, computer engineer Vannevar Bush, ala Noyes’ position, supported close ties with industry, but they were determined to strike a balance between the needs of industry and the needs of academic research. By the 1930s, MIT had gone from a technical institute that trained scientists to a full-fledged research institution. It not only prepared scientists to enter scientific fields, but was increasingly involved in industrial research.

MIT at War

In September of 1940, Karl Compton and a number of American and British colleagues from the scientific community attended a “party” – in actuality a clandestine meeting where British officials unveiled a device called a ten-centimeter cavity magnetron. This instrument, which the British were willing to “give” the Americans – in exchange for developing the technology which the British government was not in a position to do at the time – was to be critical in the development of Radar technology. It was widely considered to have been of crucial importance in the British victory at the Battle of Britain earlier that year, and out of this meeting, the MIT Radiation Laboratory or “Rad Lab” was born. Coincidentally, there had already been a committee formed by the U.S. government, the National Defense Research Committee, or NDRC, which included Compton, who headed its “Division D” dealing with microwave technology; Wall Street financier and lifetime MIT Corporation member Alfred Loomis, Vannevar Bush (who had since become head of the Carnegie Institution and chair of the NDRC), and Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California. Lawrence was asked if he might head the new radiation lab at MIT, but declined to continue to work on his own continuing projects at California. He did, however, become an instrumental adviser in the lab’s creation. The job instead went to Lee DuBridge, head of the University of Rochester’s Department of Physics.

The Birth of the Military – Industrial – University Complex

Charles Stark Draper, aeronautical engineer who headed MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory and later the lab that bore his own name

Charles Stark “Doc” Draper was an aeronautics expert who, at the MIT Confidential Instruments Development Lab (Building 33), presided over a group of scientists who contemplated how to control the firing of ammunition. With a partnership he entered into with Sperry Gyroscope, they were able to develop a revolutionary new gun sight that helped the war effort. This was an oft-copied template at MIT going forward: labs blended instruction with real-world problem solving.

Feedback control pioneer Prof. Gordon Brown, who started the MIT Servomechanism Laboratory, was the “glue” in the June, 1940 partnership of Sperry and Draper. And after he arrived at MIT, Brown’s student (and magnetic core memory designer) Jay Forrester proved so invaluable that he

Jay W. Forrester, pioneering engineer/manager of MIT's "Project Whirlwind"

was made assistant director of the “Servo” lab – where he would develop a new type of flight simulator that became “Project Whirlwind,” which in turn laid the groundwork for Forrester’s development of the first real-time digital computer. The war effort had shown that MIT could work with the military to create products that were invaluable for the comfort and wellbeing (not to mention efficiency) of our soldiers: gas masks, flamethrowers, freeze-dried foods, and aerial nighttime photography, to name just a few. MIT had become a true innovator in military technology.

War at MIT

By the arrival of the 1960s, MIT had numerous “special labs” (such as Lincoln Lab, the Instrumentation Lab, and MIT Research, or “MITRE”) which were devoted largely to national defense research efforts. And the war

Howard W. Johnson, MIT president from 1966 to 1971 during its volatile Vietnam War period. Courtesy, MIT Museum

in Vietnam brought the whole issue of how the military and science co-existed to a boiling point. Previously, the military had helped win World War II; but now, in the wake of the “Cold War” and political concerns over the rise of communism in Southeast Asia, MIT and other technical schools were being forced to face some hard political realities of their role in the military. Professors such as linguist Noam Chomsky and “Cybernetics” expert Norbert Wiener registered strong opinions about what MIT was doing for the military and in the case of the former, advised MIT faculty and administration that they had a moral and social as much as a patriotic obligation in all their research. The so-called “special” laboratories that carried out much of that research were particular targets of the dissenters’ ire.

MIT Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky (ca.1970), who led MIT faculty in questioning MIT's military research efforts during the Vietnam War

On November 5, 1969, protesters’ verbal protests became more animated. On that day, some 350 student protesters (some waving Viet Cong flags) approached Draper’s Instrumentation lab. Draper pre-empted their demonstration somewhat by inviting them into the lab, and though there was some shouting, Draper’s actions calmed things down to where the protesters eventually left. The eventual decision to close the Instrumentation Lab and along with Draper’s departure for Cambridge’s Technology Square – where he opened his own lab – struck many as appeasement to the protesters, who were largely seeking MIT’s divestment from military research activities. Several of these special labs sought to wean themselves from federal defense projects with limited success. More recently, debates have centered such controversial projects as the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI), an anti-missile shield project advocated by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and presently with the “War on Terror.” But the protests that were held during the 1960s – resulting in, among other developments, the formation of the Union of Concerned Scientists – began a cultural sea change in how institutions like MIT balanced the need to perform national defense research with larger political and societal questions.

In the fourth and final installment of Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision, an examination of gender issues regarding MIT faculty and a summary.

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Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision – Part 2. The Founding of a Technical Institute.

Posted on March 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

William Barton Rogers (1804-1882), the son of a College of William and Mary professor who himself later matriculated (and taught) there, concentrated in the study of geology. Later, as a geologist at the University of Virginia, Rogers was engaged to prepare a geologic survey of the commonwealth, but after an unpleasant experience where competing political interests attempted to taint his study, he moved to Boston in 1853. However, this was not the only reason for his leaving. He had already met and fell in love with a Boston woman, Emma Savage, and his brother Henry had moved there in 1844.

William and Henry had corresponded about the idea of creating a “Polytechnic School of the Useful Arts,” and William further discussed the matter with a confidante, John Amory Lowell, son of the famous textile manufacturer. In 1859, Rogers joined a group interested in petitioning the state legislature for land for an institute of technology in Boston’s Back Bay. Due to Rogers’ tireless lobbying, the proposal passed the legislature and was signed by Gov. John A. Andrew on April 10, 1861.

William Barton Rogers (1804-1882), founder of MIT

Two days later, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, so the timing was both ominous and propitious.

Though MIT was founded as and remains a private institution, state support was critical to its early development. The Civil War was going poorly in its early years, so raising private capital was extraordinarily difficult. A lifeline came when President Lincoln signed the “Morrill Land Grant Act” in July of 1862. 30,000 acres of land for each congressman in a state was permitted to be sold – conditional on either a mechanical or agricultural college being created. In lobbying Gov. Andrew, Rogers was able to secure 1/3 of the land grant income for MIT – making them one of the first “land grant” colleges in the nation. This netted them approximately $200,000 between 1865 and 1900.

Francis H. Storer established the first laboratory at the Institute in 1867, concentrating in chemistry. In 1869, Assistant Professor Edward C. Pickering established the first physics lab, which proved an outstanding success. And under the supervision of Boston architect William R. Ware, a Department of Architecture was soon created.

Although “plagued by chronic financial problems,” the Institute grew from fifteen students in 1865 to three hundred by 1881. The three presidents who had steered MIT during this critical period: Rogers, John D. Runkle and Francis Amasa Walker, each possessed critical skills for cultivating both public and private support.

Harvard and questions of both cooperation and independence

MIT professor Bruce Sinclair writes in Becoming MIT that MIT and Harvard had histories that were “tangled in strange and interesting ways.” In fact, during 1914 and 1917, they graduated engineering students with joint degrees. Charles W. Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869-1909, proposed merging the two institutions no fewer than three times. Eliot himself had taught chemistry at MIT. Looking at technical schools such as the Sheffield Scientific School allied with Yale, or Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School, it was evident that even association of a technical school with an established universities was not in itself the answer to a “well-rounded” education. However, Eliot believed that MIT provided the ideal form of technical education. His “fusion schemes” always seem to have the latent idea that engineering might become a professional course of study – like law or medicine.

If Eliot were a champion of merging, then the Lawrence School’s dean, Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was anything but. In an August, 1893 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, he employed age-old prejudices about “trade” schools, invoked “academic culture” and asserted that in its ability to incorporate applied science training and a liberal arts education under one roof, Harvard had shown the way to eliminate “prejudices of caste.” Though MIT was not mentioned by name in the article, it was clear that they were the target of Shaler’s attack.

In reply, MIT’s president Walker was emphatic in his assertion that if technical schools under the umbrella of universities were so superior, how was it that the Lawrence School had such an unfortunate history? Walker then went on to contrast the aimlessness and frivolity of the college lifestyle with the industry of technical students. Walker’s systematic dismantling of Shaler’s shallow argument did much to hearten the faithful at MIT; but still there was to be no partnership with Harvard. Shaler, it was widely believed, had written his Atlantic article to persuade a large donor, Gordon McKay – himself a self-made inventor and manufacturer – to add financial ballast to Harvard’s technical program, and thereby discourage Eliot’s efforts to partner with MIT.

In 1905, Henry Pritchett, MIT’s fifth president, made yet another overture. It seems to have been fueled by McKay’s gift to Harvard. Pritchett was concerned about having a serious challenge to their Institute springing up practically next door – better financed, better housed, better equipped, better staffed, and therefore able to draw the best technical students away from MIT. Not only that, there were technical schools springing up in the American Midwest and West that could also draw on MIT’s talent pool.

The 1905 merger proposal was accelerated by financial realities. As of 1903, MIT’s balance sheet showed a deficit of $34,000, and their Back Bay property was appreciating in value. John Ripley Freeman, an 1876 graduate of MIT and self-made hydraulic engineer who was working toward a union of the schools, spearheaded the damming of the Charles, which was hoped would lend the bucolic appearance of Oxford and Cambridge. Though there was a very vocal minority who opposed the union, Presidents Eliot and Pritchett aggressively pursued a complex negotiation for their partnership. However, in the end, it was a legal roadblock that scuttled this. A donor to MIT had given Back Bay property for MIT’s facility; but this was a restricted gift, which could not be sold. This resulted in MIT’s Pritchard resigning and taking a position with the Carnegie Foundation.

George Eastman (1854-1932)

Enter President Robert C. Mclaurin, a New Zealander and Columbia-trained physicist who, in addition to his superior fundraising skills was artful in diplomacy, forged a new alliance with Harvard’s Eliot and also secured funding in the tens of millions of dollars from, among others, George Eastman, which facilitated MIT’s moving from Boston to Cambridge in 1916. Mclaurin, in discussing MIT’s collaborations with Harvard, emphasized the Institute’s desire to be a great national school based on natural science. Mclaurin was so successful in his aims, in fact, that when courts ruled in 1917 that yet another attempt to bring Harvard and MIT together would violate the terms of McKay’s will, it barely caused a stir. Future collaborations between the schools would be of the organic kind Eliot and Rogers had imagined: cooperation arising out of circumstances that would reinforce the basic character of each institution.

The seal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with their motto, "Mens et Manus" (Mind and Hand)

(Next in Part 3: MIT goes to war, “war” on the MIT campus, MIT and the military-industrial complex, gender issues, and the making of a great knowledge center.)

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Lady Gaga and Polaroid team up to create their “Grey Label”

Posted on March 2, 2011 | 1 Comment

Several months back, High Tech History profiled Lady Gaga’s appointment as Polaroid’s new Creative Director. In Las Vegas in January, she introduced the company’s new “Grey Label”: a series of sleek new products designed to both embrace Polaroid’s character and history, and showcase its renewed commitment to innovation and creativity. Watch the video here (warning: R-rated for language):

The line consists of three products: 1) GL10 Instant Mobile Printer; 2) GL30 Instant Digital Camera, and 3) GL20 Camera Glasses.  Combining sleek design and advanced digital technology, these products are fully interactive

The sunglasses were an outgrowth of Lady Gaga’s design of sunglasses from old iPhone screens that could show movies. This product would allow one to take photos or make video and, through a USB device, process the media later on a home computer or send instantly to their Grey Label printer device via bluetooth.

The pocket printer appeared compact and portable and as Lady Gaga injected at one point: “Many of you may be nerdy enough to carry a portable printer … I know I will.” It will allow one to print 3″ x 4″ quality photos  – with either the traditional Polaroid bordered variety or full-bleed. It will work with the other two components of the Grey Label, or with one’s cell phone. The one catch: iPhone technology is not compatible.

Lady Gaga and her co-presenter, Polaroid Chairman Bobby Sager, made what I thought was an excellent presentation – as the daughter of a high-tech entrepreneur, and herself an enthusiast of high tech and design, Gaga’s delivery was highly persuasive. She confessed at one point how pleased she was to be associated with Polaroid, who brought her into the huddle on both design and technical issues and didn’t just treat her like a figurehead.

Please be aware these products will not be available until later in 2011 - Polaroid will announce both availability and prices at that time.

Lady Gaga modeling her Grey Label GL20 Camera Glasses

Polaroid Grey Label GL30 Instant Camera

Polaroid Grey Label GL10 Mobile Printer

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Siva Vaidhyanathan speaking at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center on Internet and Society, February 25, 2011

Posted on March 1, 2011 | 2 Comments

In the annals of high tech, Google hasn’t been around for very long (1998); but as the successor to such World Wide Web search engines as Yahoo! and AltaVista, Google has in these few short years established itself as the pre-eminent organizer and purveyor of the web’s information.

According to Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry) and cultural historian and media scholar at the University of Virginia, there are numerous benefits of and many potential negatives with Google’s domination of the web’s infrastructure. As Siva notes, there is a certain “audacity of Google” insofar as it provides ease and pleasure of use; is free (we don’t have to write checks to it, unlike, say, Comcast), and it appeared to “solve the problem of the web”: it made the web infinitely more manageable and removed its “chaos” factor.

An over-arching symbol of Google’s might in The Googlization of Everything is Julius Caesar. Google is compared repeatedly to this Roman emperor who in many ways brought order to chaos in ancient Rome. In Siva’s words, “Chaos on the web demanded governance; it was said to be ungovernable, but we know better. Google (Caesar) came into a vacuum of chaos and declared ‘I will rule benevolently.’”

Siva suggested that he used the word “worry” in his book’s title and not “panic” because when one worries, he or she is capable of thinking; whereas with panic, irrationality is typical. He noted first that in undertaking the book, he found it difficult because of the company’s constantly evolving technology; that is, almost weekly, Google was adding a new attraction (or distraction) to its growing menu of services. Speaking to this point, Siva quoted Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Networks:

Google could become so powerful on the desktop, in the email utility, and on the Web that it will effectively become a super node that will indeed raise the prospect of a re-emergence of a mass-media model.

Google, for its part, says that its mission is “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.” This causes Siva to worry because it appears so all-encompassing and grandiose. I myself would term this phenomenon a kind of “secular divinity.” The feeling that Google manipulates the world’s information as opposed to the web’s is a “game changer.” Having at one’s fingertips a pipeline to the world’s information makes Google seem omniscient, omnipotent and all-benevolent all at once. Sort of like the “man behind the curtain” in the movie The Wizard of Oz. This, as Siva observes, has resulted in an unhealthy “blind faith” in Google’s ability to solve almost any problem. The public has lovingly embraced them with a deep trust in and a suspension of disbelief of their ability – in a technological sense, we’re being cradled in the arms of Morpheus.

A question of regulation

Eric Schmidt, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, when asked if Google should be regulated, offered a predictable denial by saying that the wrong question was being asked, and that Google was “regulated” in a number of ways – including multiple levels of responsibility. He asserted that Google is

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. Courtesy, SocialMediaSEO.net

run on a set of values and principles upon which the company was founded. Siva noted that this was not a case of “Ayn Rand versus Joseph Stalin”; Google presents a more complex conundrum than just one political extreme or another’s approach toward regulation and responsibility.

According to Siva, Google acts within three different models of content processing: 1) Rank and link; 2) Host and delivery (i.e. YouTube), and 3) Data capture/publishing/content creation (i.e. Google Earth, Google Books and Street View). The integration of these three types of content processing gives Google a roadmap to the whims, desires, interests, and yes, consumer habits of its users, which it uses to sell advertising. As Siva asserts, we are Google’s “customers.” They take our information and provide advertisements that are very specifically targeted to our individual tastes. Google’s algorithm – their method of ranking search results – has made this a reality.

SEO Arms Race

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has been a battleground on Google’s site where largely commercial websites have employed questionable tactics to achieve greater ranking in searches. Sites like JC Penney and Overstock.com have been specifically cited for inserting content in their sites (such as .edu hyperlinks) that deems them, in Google parlance, a “high-quality” site. Siva also cites the Huffington Post as a site that has mastered SEO techniques. They engage in “repurposing” original material from other websites in such a way that it will give them priority in any search.

Google is constantly innovating and evolving. It concentrates on speed (they say 1/10th of a second matters to consumers), and has begun to take on Bing.com as the conduit to shopping. Siva declared that Bing has consistently been the search engine for shoppers; but that Google has made significant inroads. And as a result, information and learning have both been subjugated. In this manner, according to Siva, consumer satisfaction has been used to short-circuit political involvement and awareness. Google has combined this with an overt appeal to “corporate social responsibility” – an essential component of both libertarianism and neo-liberalism, which hold that market forces and consumer choice are instrumental to the exercise of social responsibility. Siva quotes the late economist Milton Friedman, who said “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

Siva Vaidhyanathan, courtesy Univ. of California Press

In the lightning-quick evolution of the World Wide Web, stemming from its origins with MIT’s Tim Berners-Lee, it’s important to recognize and understand that Google’s influence as a start-up company was vastly different than it is today – a global institution. And the functions that comprise it today will likely considerably evolve in the next ten years. With the rate at which Google has penetrated both the consciousness and information consumption habits of the world’s computer users, there is always room for healthy concern. Siva, though predominantly an optimist who acknowledges Google has positively revolutionized the way we access information, also believes we should temper that by looking at the company more closely and realistically than our rose-colored glasses might ordinarily allow us to.

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In 2011, IBM Celebrates Their 100th Year

Posted on February 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

This year, IBM is celebrating their 100th anniversary.  It’s pretty amazing to watch an information technology company with a history dating back to the 19th century continue to innovate and remain successful today.

IBM was actually founded in 1896 as the Tabulating Machine Company by Herman Hollerith. It was incorporated as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) on June 16, 1911 after a merger of  the Computer Scale Company of America and the International Time Recording Company with the Tabulating Machine Company. CTR became International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924 when Thomas J. Watson took control of it.

As you saw in the video, IBM was known for technology that used punch cards, typewriters, and other business machines.  Today, IBM is known for manufacturing and selling computer hardware, software and services for products ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.  IBM has over 388,000 employees and is one of the largest and most profitable information technology employers in the world. They hold more patents than any other U.S. based technology company.  Over the last 100 years, IBM employees have earned five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

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Ken Olsen, Co-Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, Dies

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 31 Comments

Kenneth Harry Olsen was the co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).  He was born on February 20, 1926 and he died on February 06, 2011.  One former employee of DEC wrote: “It is with great regret that I inform you that our beloved CEO Ken Olsen passed away, yesterday in Indiana, with his immediate family all around him. Ken had been in ill health for the last few months and was in Hospice care. Sad time for their family now, but Ken and Aulikki had a wonderful life. It’s sad to know that they both have now passed.”

Ken Olsen is sitting at the head of the table of DEC’s early board of directors

Ken Olsen was born in Bridgeport, CT.  After enlisting in the Navy during World War II, he attended MIT for his undergraduate and graduate degrees. While at MIT, he worked on a team that developed air defense technology and core memory, the precursor to today’s RAM. He married Aulikki Valve in Finland on December 12, 1950.

In 1957, he co-founded DEC with MIT colleague, Harlan Anderson in a refurbished mill in Maynard just outside of Boston.  After going to the Small Business Association for a loan, they approached American Research and Development Corporation, an early venture capital firm, which had been founded by Georges Doriot.  In exchange for 70% equity, they got the funding they needed to start DEC.

Digital Equipment Corporation was a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals  from the 1960s to the 1990s. DEC’s PDP and VAX products were arguably the most popular minicomputers for the scientific and engineering communities during the 1970s and 1980s.

A press release from Gordon College, where Ken Olsen served as a long-time trustee, included this quote from Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, in a letter to Gordon College:

“An inventor, scientist, and entrepreneur, Ken Olsen is one of the true pioneers of the computing industry. He was also a major influence in my life and his influence is still important at Microsoft through all the engineers who trained at Digital and have come here to make great software products.”

In 1986 Fortune Magazine named him the “most successful entrepreneur in the history of American business.” He was also inducted into multiple halls of fame including the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame (1990) and the Computer History Museum (1996). He served on the boards of several prestigious organizations including the Computer Science and Engineering Board of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.; and as a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1993.

NOTE:  The authors of this blog were very involved with the autobiography of DEC’s “missing”  co-founder Harlan Anderson.   We’d love to read your comments about Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Here are the links to some of the obituaries for Ken Olsen:

Boston Globe: “Computer Pioneer Ken Olsen Dies“
New York Times: “Ken Olsen, Who Built DEC Into a Power, Dies at 84“
Boston Herald: “Digital co-founder Ken Olsen dies at 84“
Computerworld Blog: “DEC co-founder, Ken Olsen dies at 84“
Mass High Tech News Blog: “Remembering Ken Olsen and some thin ice“
TechCrunch: “What Ken Olsen Meant to Me“
Xconomy San Francisco Blog Post by Gordon Bell: “Remembering Ken Olsen (1926-2011): A Sense of Pride and a Sense of Humor“
Innovation Economy: “DEC co-founder Ken Olsen: Obituaries, reminiscences, and video“

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On the Approaching Centenary Celebration of the birth of Alan Turing, Mathematician, Logician, Code Breaker and Computer Pioneer

Posted on January 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

As we near the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing (1912-1954), widely

Alan Turing

regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in history – esteemed and revered beside such icons of the discipline as Pythagoras of Samos and Isaac Newton – it’s important both to examine his accomplishments and wonder what might have been, had his life not ended all too soon.

Born in India and reared in Britain, Turing studied at King’s College, Cambridge and worked during World War II for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code breaking nerve center. He already had assumed a reputation as a pioneer of computer science, including formulation of algorithms, and development of the first general-purpose computer. He encountered and devoured Albert Einstein’s studies of Newton’s mathematical theories and showed a brilliance that apparently confounded his professors, who were immersed largely in the classics.

The Turing-Welchman Bombe at Bletchley Park, which was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code during World War II

He innovated numerous methods for breaking German ciphers, which included (in collaboration with fellow Cambridge mathematician W.G. Welchman) the Turing-Welchman  bombe, a computing device which could seek out and locate codes in the German Enigma machine. After the war Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the Automatic Computing Engine. The Hut 8 section at Bletchley Park, where Turing worked, was instrumental in the Allied victory over Germany in WWII. In solving the German Enigma code, Turing developed the Banburismus, a form of statistics measurement often referred to as sequential analysis.

In M.I.T. scholar Sherry Turkle’s book about the relationship between technology and psychology, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, the “Turing test” he devised was explained in a discussion of relative intelligence in humans and computers:

In the original Turing test, published in 1950, mathematician Alan Turing, inventor of the first general-purpose computer, asked under what conditions people could consider a computer intelligent. In the end, he settled on a test in which the computer would be declared intelligent if it could convince people it was not a machine.”

In 1952, Turing, in a groundbreaking study of the theory known as morphogenesis, wrote a paper proposing a reaction-diffusion model as the basis of the development of natural textures or patterns such as the spots and stripes seen in animal skin or in the leaves of plants.

Andrew Hodges, author of the biography Alan Turing, the Enigma, talks about Turing’s revived interest at about this same time in quantum physics:

Besides this he refreshed his youthful interest in quantum physics, studying the problem of wave-function reduction in quantum mechanics, with a hint that he was considering a non-linear mechanism for it. He took a new interest in the representation of elementary particles by spinors, and in relativity theory.”

But with all these accomplishments, the British government in 1952 prosecuted him for his homosexuality, which he freely and openly admitted as he understandably perceived nothing wrong with it. But since 1948, the conditions of the Cold War, and the alliance with the United States, meant that known homosexuals had become ineligible for security clearance which he resented bitterly. Turing, as a substitute for prison, had accepted a penalty of estrogen injections which were believed at the time to negate one’s sexual urges.

In early June of 1954, Turing was found dead in his home of cyanide poisoning – a half-eaten apple at his bedside. Though believed by his family

German Enigma machine employed during World War II

to have been accidental, it is more widely believed he committed suicide, which was the coroner’s ultimate determination. In 1987, the British actor Derek Jacobi played Turing in the London and New York stage productions of Breaking the Code. And, in 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown officially apologized for his prosecution.

Turing, it can be confidently said, was a brilliant researcher and scientist who, though he was a major factor in the Allied effort during the Second World War, was severely underappreciated and poorly treated. But with a forthcoming film in celebration of the centennial of his birth, The Genius of Alan Turing, there is evidence of a renewed interest in this scientific and cultural “enigma.”

The project’s website and a “teaser” video can be seen here.

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“The Myths of Innovation” by Scott Berkun

Posted on January 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Scott Berkun's "The Myths of Innovation" now available in paperback by O'Reilly Media

Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation is at once an appreciation of those who take risks and create “significant positive change,” but also a cautionary tale about the dilution and degradation of the word innovation through marketing and advertising gimmickry. In fact, Berkun, a management consultant from Seattle, in advising his readers against overuse of the term, refers to it in much of his book as the “i-word.”

The balance of the book’s chapters explore the ten “most pervasive and misleading myths” about innovation, including “Innovation is always good,” “The Best Ideas Win,” and “People Love New Ideas.” One chapter in particular should hold considerable interest for historians of technology and entrepreneurship: “We Understand the History of Innovation.” Here Berkun uses the examples of Johannes Gutenberg and the Rosetta Stone to keenly demonstrate that in becoming legendary, true innovators and their inventions were rarely seen as legends. Gutenberg, for his part, struggled to

Scott Berkun, courtesy, SpeakerWiki.com

make a living much of his life, but has achieved a stature that in one book has him “ranked above Einstein, Aristotle, and Moses in one list of the most influential people of all time.” He goes on to argue that the history of innovation is infected by the same brand of revisionism residing in other scholarly disciplines – herein referred to as historiography. He concludes by observing that the history of innovation is and never has been a neat, linear progression. In fact, he asserts that certain innovations succeed because “… we’ve adopted them gradually and intuitively as part of the experiment that is life.”

The Myths of Innovation, though copiously footnoted, is not an overly-technical treatise, but rather a thought-provoking, occasionally humorous, and eminently readable study.

The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun. Available in print and ebook formats by O’Reilly Media.

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Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch” at the Berkman Center, Harvard Law School, January 11, 2011

Posted on January 13, 2011 | 1 Comment

Tim Wu's "The Master Switch." Courtesy, Knopf.

After reading Columbia University professor Tim Wu’s groundbreaking book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, and after hearing him speak this Jan. 11 of the motivations of technology entrepreneurs, one word best applies: perfection. The drive of inventors and innovators to design the perfect system – one that would satisfy the needs of consumers most perfectly while at the same time eradicating competition – has historical precedent. Wu is a confident and engaging speaker, and he held the packed lecture hall at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society in rapt attention throughout his address.

The Master Switch is an intriguing study of  both historical and contemporary examples of monopolistic tendencies in media and information companies. The title derives from a quote by the longtime CBS News producer Fred Friendly, who said that what is at stake is not the First Amendment or freedom of speech, but control of the “master switch;” that is, the predominant means of creating and delivering media content.

Wu looks at examples of early media empires such as AT&T, NBC and Hollywood movie studios, and concludes with more contemporary companies such as Apple Inc., Microsoft and Google. In the case of the latter, he poses questions about the future of the Internet – particularly with regard to “Net Neutrality,” or the availability of Internet content in the face of media conglomerates and access providers.

AT&T President Theodore Vail (with telephone) joined the opening ceremony for the first transcontinental telephone line from his home in Jekyll Island, Ga. With Vail (L to R): Architects Welles Bosworth and Samuel Trowbridge, banker J. P. Morgan Jr., and businessman William Rockefeller. Courtesy, AT&T.

Wu commences with a biography of Theodore Vail, the longtime president of AT&T, which was the single most important provider of telegraphy in America, which eventually became the Bell telephone system. Vail was imperious, but also imbued with a civic sense that saw his corporation, intertwined with the daily lives of American citizens, as having both a “responsibility” and “acccountability” to the public. But AT&T’s monopolistic destiny was sealed in 1907 with the arrival of John Pierpont Morgan, Jr., the primary investor of AT&T. Morgan and his fellow board members installed Vail as president, and as Morgan was arguably the single most important capital source in America, this thwarted any serious challengers to AT&T, basically ensuring its predominance.

Wu considers entities like AT&T, traditional movie studios and Radio and TV broadcasters “closed” monopolies; that is, they might originally have been open sources of entrepreneurial innovation and cross-polenation with competitors; but later, once established, close their systems to outside competitors. In a more contemporary sense, Wu sees Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs as having the closest resemblance to the traditional media mogul. Everything about the modern Apple devices, though beautifully designed and as close to “perfection” for what they do as anything currently produced, are completely closed; that is, one cannot obtain software or peripherals without dealing with Apple directly. Jobs is contrasted with Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, who as a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, out of which Apple originated, favored devices such as the Apple II, that was open to outside software and peripherals designers and which he hoped would serve as a tool for the betterment of mankind and  ”social justice.” Today’s Apple, as Wu wryly notes, “… guards technical and managerial information the way Willy Wonka guarded candy recipes.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

Wu, in the course of his arguments, returns repeatedly to the economic theories of  Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883 – 1950), An Austrian-American economist and political scientist. Schumpeter was particularly focused on the symbiotic relationship between capitalism and innovation. Where companies often feared innovation under the belief that it would destroy their existing core business, Schumpeter felt that innovation was the key to survival. Companies needed to grow or die. AT&T’s acquisition of telephone technology (thereby guaranteeing the marginalizing of its telegraph system), was the fulfillment of Schumpeter’s theory.

Schumpeter’s theories can be closely applied to today’s evolving computer and Internet industries and their entrepreneurs. Google, Wu asserts, is a “switch of choice”, as opposed to AT&T’s “switch of necessity.” The capitalistic forces of nnovation and risk taking are often the keys to success. For example, sometime in 1996, Google, in seeking to prepare a search index, photographed the entire World Wide Web. No one at the time knew whether or not it was legal, which caused Wu to wonder if Balzac’s oft-quoted criticism, “Behind every great fortune is a great crime” was being borne out; but there were no legal challenges – then, or now. But Wu has other, quite positive things to say about Google in that its Android phone, together with its open source application platform, allows software entrepreneurs an open field for their innovations. Wu believes that Google’s open standards are the antidote to monopolistic abuse, and that the Android system is emblematic of those standards.

However, as a rule, Wu believes that the open system, if it produces superior products or services or fulfills some other need better that its competitors, will ultimately become monopolistic. Regarding the Internet, Wu isn’t really convinced if this model applies, but at his talk posed several reasons for and against this theory:

Against:

1. The core technologies of the Internet are so innovative that they cannot be controlled by one entity. Innovation is constant.

2. We’ve opened markets to the point where monopolies are obsolete, and so government is less committed to anti-trust and monopoly because there’s widespread feeling that any monopoly will ultimately crumble – as in the case of Microsoft.

3. Our capital markets are much more diverse than they once were. Numerous venture capital firms are always looking for the next “Google” or “Apple” and are constantly funding new ventures. In the days of AT&T, J.P. Morgan (as previously discussed) controlled the funding of companies, and so capital was centrallized and discouraged competition.

4. Sheer size of a company is not revered or trusted as in the past. Frederick Winslow Taylor, a foremost scholar of “scientific management” took issue with “economies of scale”; that is, the cost advantages that a business obtains due to expansion. In other words, we prefer the “upstart startup”, to coin a phrase.

For:

1. Neither human nature nor economics have changed. Those who control the infrastructure control the process and the profits. Power still lies in the local loop, or access to the telephone exchange infrastructure, which requires huge capital investments and discourages competitors.

2. Monopolistic tendencies haven’t gone anywhere. Companies like Google or Facebook are as influential as they are because everyone uses them. They have all the classic qualities of what makes something a monopoly – great production values, reasonable price, convenient and easy to use. As Wu says, “Americans want Hollywood content – not ‘Amateur Hour’”.

Tim Wu. Photo courtesy Knopf

When considering the “For” arguments, Wu, as the man who coined the phrase “Net Neutrality,” is encouraged by the recent FCC ruling to establish guidelines about which and how content is made available to end users on the Internet. Because one company controls the infrastructure for delivering content doesn’t mean that it should favor (or speed up) certain content providers over others. Abuse is the natural by-product of influential companies who feel they can restrict access to the system. This is the inherent danger that Wu expertly exposes in The Master Switch. It is a powerful document showing us how history can potentially repeat itself – even with information entities that are constantly evolving and innovating.

Tim Wu recently appeared on the Charlie Rose program to discuss The Master Switch and “Net Neutrality.” You can see that segment here.

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Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Zelda, Donkey Kong, the Wii and countless other video gaming concepts

Posted on January 5, 2011 | 1 Comment

I just read this fascinating article by Nick Paumgarten  in the December 20/27 double issue of The New Yorker magazine about Shigeru Miyamoto, widely considered to be the world’s foremost gaming system developer and producer. He has been with Nintendo since 1977 and has worked for no-one else. In addition to creating Zelda (named for novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife) and its various offshoots, he also designed Donkey Kong and the Super Mario Brothers series, and was a team leader in the creation of the Wii gaming system.

Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto is an unassuming 58 year-old man who has a feel for what gamers of all ages seem to want. In fact, a recent poll taken by game developers seeking the most highly-regarded amongst them had Miyamoto winning in a landslide. Will Wright, the creator of the Sims and Spore, and the developer who came in third in that same poll, praised Miyamoto effusively:

He approaches the games playfully, which seems kind of obvious, but most people don’t. And he approaches things from the players’ point of view, which is part of his magic.

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