JF Ptak Science Books Post 2089
At a time when computers were big, heavy, electrically-scented, hot and expensive
(ranging into the hundreds of thousands of 1953 dollars, many millions in 2013
bucks), and coming at a time when very few individual companies (exterior to
the military/industrial sphere or insurance) actually owned one of these
machines, Lawrence Wainwright wrote a useful guide to potential computer-buyers, “Digital
Computer Questionnaire”. Appearing in the world’s first publicly-published
computation/computer journal, Computers
and Automation, Wainwright sets out in six single-spaced pages a
very tight and logical set of questions for the would-be buyer of one of these
early god-sent beasties. I’ve illustrated the non-illustrated questionnaire with a series of images from another article found a little deeper in the same journal, “A Pictorial Introduction to Computers”, which appeared in June, 1957.
As I read through the list (excepted below) it becomes
obvious that the really good questions are deftly asked, and that the possible
buyer would be well on their way to having a good dialog with the seller.
The questions do have a real flavor of antiquity to them,
much like monied Parisians with their
detailed list of questions for their 15th century water-carrier: where are you getting your water? What sort
of bucket? How distant the source? How
cold? Is it sweet? Soft? Etc. Good
questions that made sense for their time, important, integral–until the water carrier (like the brick/mortar bookstore, or the computer questionnaire from 1953) was replaced by something more efficient, like a water delivery system.
This questionnaire is like a communication from the future to me, a
reminder about our own current organization of knowledge and how it will seem to an observer
in 25 years (or 50, or 100) and how soon pressing issues and sustained/necessary info will be delegated to the ever-creepingly speeding “antiquity”.
The
questions are excellent—they are just old, and no longer applicable, much like
our own will soon be.
Digital
computer Questionnaire
[Lawrence Wainwright, Del Mar California]