I'll certainly be pushed to follow my biases, to prove that I was not wrong in my predictions. And of course I'm a French observer). At least have I tried to avoid subjectivism,
- first by cutting periods on decades, without semantic foundations?
- then using as many sources as possible.
I'll not write once more the story of computing machines and of the computer birth, but will insist on informtion systems, on managemne applications, and stressing some comparatively less described, with short parts only on the last 20th century decades in order to keep enough space to forecasting.
Press is a important resource. It's biased. They sharpen front lines, echoes only to annouces, more scarcely the difficulties (and sometimes scandals), and still less the boring parts. Book drill deeper, but they have their own biases, since they are generally written by engineers or consultants, who have to sell shemselves.
Let's dream. We are in the late 19th century. Sun is settig behind the Luxembourg's palace in Paris, and my grand-father finishes the day doing a watercolor. A red sky. Tomorrow will be fine. So much the next century?
If my grandfather had read the American press, he could have found in The Forum an fantasy novel "The Day of an American Journalist in 2889" (See full text with illustrations) signed by a French writer, Jules Verne. Is it the last multimedia gadget? In fact, it starts with an equivalent of Skype session, using a large circular screen and a large metal flower for sound.
Fantasy? This text is stronlgy visionay! This "journalist" est actually the owner an dmanager of an interplanery press corporation, using optical beams for communication. And his firm makes a double use of advanced computing. Let's hear Verne:
"Bent over their computers, thirty savants were absorbed in equations of the ninety-fifth degree. Some indeed were revelling in the formulae of algebraical infinity..."
But Verne does even better in the management iinformation system :
"Wishing to draw up his daily accounts, Francis Bennett went into his private office. An enormous operation, when it concerns an enterprise whose expenditure rises to eight hundred thousand dollars every day! Fortunately, the development of modern mechanisation has greatly facilitated this work. Helped by the piano-electric-computer, Francis Bennett soon completed his task.".
In this period, according to the Illustrated Grand Larousse, computing machines are classified into arithmetic machines (we would say digital) and algebraic machines (we would say analog), these last ones including Marine "regulators" for guns pointing, one of the most advanced applications.
These tools inspire many visionaries, even though nobogy, including themselves, take them too seriously. Let's quote the humor drawer Robida and the military novelist Danrit. The latter offers astonishing views on the future 1914 war. He describes a surprise attack of Japan on Midway (near Pearl Harbour), and the practice of electronic war in middle Pacific Ocean. Another visionary, quite unknown today, Pierre Legendre, with an advanced vision of home automation, 3D printing and... bugs.
Beyont these fantasies, in 1910, a specialized journalist, Charles Ravisse, groups all the energies to set up a show. In order to talk about mechanical machines? Of course, but mainly to show their applications in corporrations. First of all, what will be called Custromer Relationship Managemnet (CRM) in the 1990's. Or nearly, since the show is dedicated to "Organisation commercial" (Organiation for trade). Some voices would take to think that the care for customers is a recent discoverny. I can attest that my great-grand-mother, wholesale haberdasher in Valenciennes, was fully aware of it. She quoted witt a smile her cashier saying "With all thse customers coming in the shop, how could I find time to work".
Let's add that, right from this period, the French follow actively the work of American organizers, Taylor mainly. Gurus as Fayol or Rimailho extend their ideas and add them a more methodical look. They begin to draw organization schems that would have had their place in the 1970's.
Note also, in the corporations strucures, the role gien to information about the exteranal environment. Technology watch is not a late 20ty century discovery!
We are now in the after-war and its quite mad years, marked by the retreat of America over itself, the difficulties of reconstruction, and the women working to compensate for the mens deficit.
The development is rapid, as well as the evolution of scientific and artistic ideas (among many examples, atomic theory and vaccination). As for information systems, let's be short, notablu because we could not find many documents, with the exception of a lectures volume published by Charles raville, after an expositon on commercial organization in July 1921. It includes notably:
- general organisation of corporations,
- organization for the CEO,
- filing and systems,
- advertisement organization,
- sales organization,
- accounting.
Punched cards machines begin to emerge, although their origins are more ancient, as explains Antoine Mas, a Belgian, in his book "L'introduction du machinisme dans le travail administratif" (Dunod 1949). These machines are applied to counting and analysis by files systematization". Each phenonenon is recorded on a individual documnet, these documents are sorted into groups, then the informations are summed up. The counint instruments seem to have been invented in Stuttgart by the adman Joyann Jakob Moser (1701-1785) and used for the first time by the French priest and botanist J.F. Rozier (1734-1793).
Ravisses publishes algo, in 1929, "L'opération unique dans le travail de bureau" (The unicity operation in office work"), that I could not consult, but which is perhaps a first theorization of information systems integration.
These developments are quite in disorder... including in punched cards use, if we believe Antoine Mas, who writes "These beginnings (of puched cards) ... which coincided with the post 1914_1918 war restarting, were marked by a nearly total misunderstanding ot their methods and means. With the aid of clever advetsising, the possibiligties of machines are overestimated, and we see many firms mechanize only to be in, or simply to follow the example of a competitor.
"At this stage, punched cards bring a lot of disappointments... there were total failures, which remained ignored by the public, but ended in the discarding of machines and a return to former methods". (our translation).
Punched cards remain an exception. They appear only among a large variety of devices, among which the calculating machine is combined with typewriters, O holy integration! Here also, a lot of these models, not deeply modified, will still be in use after WW2.
This time again, we note the importance of sales functions, wtih an insistance on addressing machines (as they were still sold at the end of the 60's) and typewriters, with enhanced presentations and allow multiple copy with carbon paper. They implied the education of typists.
Files keep growing in volume. Often agains some skepticism. In a small pubhshing firm like Bouasse, my father, coming back from the United Sates, appears as a dangerous revolutionar when he proposes stock card files!
An other important point for information systems: the networks become worldwide. And we could consider them as digital, since telegraph is more used than telephone.
Great times. Dramas and fears... but an incredible creativity. In science, technology, art... as well as in social maters. In France, the weekly 40 hours. How could corporations survive to that, wih the addition of paid holidays! My parents were saying "We were feeling the crisis mounting, but it was superb, everything seem to become possible"
It is a great period for management. Not so much in France, where managers are lacking after the war slaughters, and old certainties get deeper. In the USA, the Hoover's failure and the 1929 crisis push this free enterprise nation into an immense movemet of State interventionism with the Roosevelt's new deal. It requires monumental statiscal workd, and the growth of machines is exponention, for IBM, NCR and some other corporations.
Technically, large punched card files are exploding. With war religions ... the 80 square holes card of IBM and the 90 round holes of Bull and others. The processes start on large punching workshops and converge towards the "printing totalizer" aka the tabulator.
These machines appear in large French corporations : Crédit Lyonnais, SNCF.. (more exactly, in this period, PLM)... ministry of Defence; ).
Calles "statistic machines" (which proves their application to decision as well and more than production), the punched card machines begin to be known by a larger audiences, since they are presented for example in L'Illustration (the luxuy magazine of the period) and Clementel's Larousse Commercial.
Around the large card systems, accounting and invoicing machines are growing in number.
I deal only now of carbon paper, though accounting by transfer had been invented in 1904 (by W.H. Bach, a system called Hinz), but still little used until then. These systems were still largely in use by small corporations in the 1970's.
Automatisms are also enhanced, up to be a sort of mechanical computers, for instance a machine using steel balls used in a marshalling yard that I visited when a teenager.
As for telecommunications, telegraph (telex) is more and more present. Air pushed packets are used in some large cities to transport documents and small parcels. Telephone becomes commoner, but without connection with computers. It's development is not so easy : Georges Mandel, French Post ministry, creates SVP, an information service, to foster the uses.
Radio, at last (TSF, téléphonie sans fil) becoms omnipresent, and French TV is inaugurated in 1939 (see the opening speech by Marcel Prévost).
These evolutions are then dealt with in large syntheses, practical and forecasting at the same time. Paul Valéry, for instance, in 1937, foresees quite well the magnitude of the ongoing moves. But he avoids carefully to drill into details. In the United Kingdom, the Earl of Birkenhead, an adviser of Churchill, pubishes The World in 2030 A.D., which he would not have to be ashamed today. His vision of war, notablu, evokes quite well our automated weapon systems and their screens.
../