Paper machines : about cards & catalogs, 1548-1929 / Markus Krajewski ; translated by Peter Krapp.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Krajewski, Markus, 1972- author.

Contributor:

Krapp, Peter, translator.

Series:

History and foundations of information science

Standardized Title:

Zettelwirtschaft. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catalog cards--History.

Catalog cards.

Card catalogs--History.

Card catalogs.

Information organization--History.

Information organization.

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 215 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2011]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

"Today on almost every desk in every office sits a computer. Eighty years ago, desktops were equipped with a nonelectronic data processing machine: a card file. In Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski traces the evolution of this proto-computer of rearrangeable parts (file cards) that became ubiquitous in offices between the world wars. The story begins with Konrad Gessner, a sixteenth-century Swiss polymath who described a new method of processing data: to cut up a sheet of handwritten notes into slips of paper, with one fact or topic per slip, and arrange as desired. In the late eighteenth century, the card catalog became the librarian's answer to the threat of information overload. Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, business adopted the technology of the card catalog as a bookkeeping tool. Krajewski explores this conceptual development and casts the card file as a "universal paper machine" that accomplishes the basic operations of Turing's universal discrete machine: storing, processing, and transferring data. In telling his story, Krajewski takes the reader on a number of illuminating detours, telling us, for example, that the card catalog and the numbered street address emerged at the same time in the same city (Vienna), and that Harvard University's home-grown cataloging system grew out of a librarian's laziness; and that Melvil Dewey (originator of the Dewey Decimal System) helped bring about the technology transfer of card files to business."--Publisher's website.

Contents:

1 From Library Guides to the Bureaucratic Era: An Introduction 1

2 Temporary Indexing 9

I Around 1800 25

3 The First Card Index? 27

Addressing Ideas 27

Data Streams 32

Copy Error: The Josephinian Card Index 34

Floods 35

Canals 37

The Algorithm 38

Error: Buffer Overflow 42

Paper Flow: Taming, Duration 43

Revolution on Playing Cards 45

4 Thinking in Boxes 49

The Scholar's Machine 50

Genealogy: Johann Jacob Moser and Jean Paul 53

Elsewhere 56

Banknotes 58

Balance Sheet 62

In Praise of the Cross-Reference 63

On the Gradual Manufacturing of Thoughts in Storage 65

5 American Arrival 69

Do Not Disturb / William Croswell Croswell, William 69

Early Fruits and Dissemination 78

II Around 1900 85

6 Institutional Technology Transfer 87

Reformation: Dewey's Three Blessings for America 87

Transfer; Library Bureau 90

Library Supplies 90

Standardization 91

Corporate Genealogy 92

The Transfer 95

Product / System / Manufacturing 100

Digression: Foreign Laurels 102

Industry Strategy 104

7 Transatlantic Technology Transfer 107

Supplying Library Supplies 108

The Library Ge-stell 108

Punch Card 110

The Bridge Enters the Office: World Brain 113

8 Paper Slip Economy 123

System/Organization 125

Universal / Card / Machine 127

Invalidation 131

The War of the Cards: Copyrighting the "Card Index"™ 133

Depiction / Decision 135

Summary: Order / Cleanup 139.

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9780262298216

026229821X

1283343657

9781283343657

OCLC:

768111302

Publisher Number:

9786613343659

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.