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"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.… (more)
User reviews
But the burning question is why call catalogs paper machines? The author explains that card indexes possess all the basic elements of a discrete machine – elements can be rearranged which is mechanical work with the force being the user. A book catalog does not have this property. (See p. 7)
The book has extensive endnotes and a massive bibliography. However, since Krajewski originally published the work in German in 2002, many of the citations are in German and other languages. The 2011 English edition has many updated references. However, be aware that the translation is not the best. Words are occasionally used inappropriately and there were several that were either made up or came from sources unknown to an English speaker. Also the translator uses the present tense most of the time which is not standard practice in a scholarly book. I found myself actually reading the past tense when it was appropriate, no matter what was printed in the book. For example - “From autumn 1819 far into the next year, Croswell’s productivity reaches a new low.” - “The marketing strategy of Library Bureau relies on standardized paper strips …” The book would have benefited by an English speaking editor.
There are several good articles on the history of card catalogs and catalog cards but this is the first in-depth study in English and deserves to be read by librarians and those interested in the history of business practices.