Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

223694

Inventing an analog past and a digital future in computing

Ronald R. Kline

pp. 19-39

Abstract

The chapter discusses why the venerable words analog and digital were appropriated by inventors of the numerical computer for different types of computers in the United States in the 1940s, what alternatives were proposed, how they became paired keywords, why closure occurred so quickly in the United States (by 1950), and the different ways in which digital and analog engineering cultures interpreted the terms in the 1950s and 1960s, and speculates why the concerns raised at the 1950 Macy conference on cybernetics, and also by a couple of other computer engineers, that the terms were vague and that analog was not the logical opposite of digital were ignored. I comment on the relatively weak progress narrative of analog vs. digital computers in science journalism to the early 1970s, even though scientists and engineers had appropriated the terms to distinguish between an analog past (Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer) and a digital future (the ENIAC).

Publication details

Published in:

Haigh Thomas (2019) Exploring the early digital. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 19-39

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-02152-8_2

Full citation:

Kline Ronald R. (2019) „Inventing an analog past and a digital future in computing“, In: T. Haigh (ed.), Exploring the early digital, Dordrecht, Springer, 19–39.