Open AccessFrom the Display of a Digital-Masculine Machine to the Concealed Analog-Feminine Labour: The Passage from the History of Technology to Labour and Gender History
Author(s) -
Aristotle Tympas
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
historein
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.102
H-Index - 4
eISSN - 2241-2816
pISSN - 1108-3441
DOI - 10.12681/historein.19134
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , key (lock) , section (typography) , history of technology , history of computing , analog computer , moment (physics) , computer science , sociology , engineering , history , computer security , electrical engineering , algorithm , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , archaeology , classical mechanics , operating system
The article introduces the essentialist 1940s demarcation between a digital-superior and an analog-inferior computer as a key moment in severing the computing machine from the human worker labouring with it, and, accordingly, to keeping the history of computing technology and the history of computing labour apart. It starts with a section that further argues that the introduction of this key demarcation is strongly linked to the transition from the prewar use of the concept “computer”, which referred to a human worker, to its postwar use, which refers to a computing machine. The argument comes full circle by connecting the concealed analog to hidden female computing labour, a connection suggested by a revisiting of the paradigmatic display of the ENIAC as a digital machine. There follow two sections, one on the history of the female labour concealed by presenting the digital computer as superior and the other on the history of the male labour neglected by ignoring the analog computer as inferior.