Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548 – 1929

Paper Machines History and Foundations of Information Science Edited by Michael Buckland, Jonathan Furner, and Markus Krajewski Human Information Retrieval by Julian Warner Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia by Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548 – 1929 by Markus Krajewski Paper Machines About Cards & Catalogs, 1548 – 1929 Markus Krajewski translated by Peter Krapp The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology © f ü r die deutsche Ausgabe 2002, Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please e-mail special_sales@ mitpress.mit.edu This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krajewski, Markus, 1972 – [Zettelwirtschaft. English] Paper machines : about cards & catalogs, 1548 – 1929 / Markus Krajewski ; translated by Peter Krapp. p. cm. — (History and foundations of information science) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01589-9 (alk. paper) 1. Catalog cards — History. 2. Card catalogs — History. 3. Information organization — History. I. Title. Z693.3.C37K7313 2011 025.3 ′ 109 — dc22 2010053622 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 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 Overfl ow 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 69 Early Fruits and Dissemination 78 vi Contents 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 Offi ce: 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 Afterword to the English Edition 143 Notes 145 References 181 Index 207 1 From Library Guides to the Bureaucratic Era: An Introduction We wanted to play bureaucratic music. — Einst ü rzende Neubauten, Faust::Mein Brustkorb::Mein Helm, after Werner Schwab “ Card catalogs can do anything ” — this is the slogan Fortschritt GmbH introduces to promote its progressive services in the 1929 volume of the Zeitschrift f ü r Organisation ( fi gure 1.1 ), quite in accordance with its name: Fortschritt , progress. The promise offered in the very fi rst phrase of the company ’ s full-page advertisement is a lofty one, and there is more to come: Card catalogs can maintain order among tens of thousands of small and large items in the warehouse management of large industrial plants, they can structure any number of addresses in personnel departments, they can control the movement of hundreds of thousands of people in urban registration offi ces, they can make them- selves useful in the bookkeeping departments of commercial offi ces, i.e. as open account catalogs, etc. etc. Card catalogs can do anything! Read more about Fortschritt ’ s innovations in index card equipment in the newly published card catalog Mobile Notes . 1 This book explores the conceptual development of the card catalog from its primal scene to the above “ progress. ” Why would this auspicious apparatus be able to do offi ce work such as sorting, addressing, controlling, storing, accounting, and computing? And since the terminology demands situating the card index in a media archeology that examines the universality of paper machines, the questions guiding this study follow the development of (preelectronic) data processing. What makes this promising and supposed jack-of-all-trades a universal machine? As Alan Turing proved only years later, these machines merely need (1) a (theoretically infi nite) partitioned paper tape, (2) a writing and reading head, and (3) an exact 2 Chapter 1 Figure 1.1 Fortschritt GmbH: Karteien k ö nnen alles! ( “ Card indexes can do anything! ” , Zeitschrift f ü r Organisation und moderne Betriebsfü hrung 3 (23):6 (1929)) From Library Guides to the Bureaucratic Era 3 procedure for the writing and reading head to move over the paper seg- ments. 2 This book seeks to map the three basic logical components of every computer onto the card catalog as a “ paper machine, ” analyzing its data processing and interfaces that may justify the claim, “ Card catalogs can do anything! ” This statement marks the preliminary closing point of a development that culminates in the bureaucratic apparatus called “ card catalog ” (from around 1920 into the 1960s). 3 Numerous new magazines for offi ce supplies and offi ce organization document its wide circle of infl uence. This book seeks to trace how the card catalog manages to establish itself on every desk around 1930, and how it manages to move to the center of organi- zational attention. Although the card catalog may appear rather insignifi - cant next to the delicately imposing typewriter, it stubbornly claims its place by its promise of universality. What achievements is this claim based on? Against what background does the paper machine stand out? What roots does this system of recording stem from? The assertion of a universal paper machine (and a fi rst search for its origin and development) raises the suspicion that this apparatus has its model and predecessor in boxes of paper slips as used by libraries. The basic assumption is that the genealogy of the card catalog as a storage technology includes several technology transfers between discourses: that of the library and that of effi cient management. The ubiquitous presence of the card catalog on desks between World War I and World War II owes to a shift of this concept from library to offi ce. When dealing with such a transfer, it would be insuffi cient to mark only beginning and end, sender and receiver. Rather, what is crucial is the way this transfer occurs, including any disturbances, changes, stoppages, irrita- tions, and detours. The method can be described as one that satisfi es the basic operations of a universal discrete machine : storing, processing, and transferring data.4 What differs here from other data storage (as in the medium of the codex book) is a simple and obvious principle: information is available on separate, uniform, and mobile carriers and can be further arranged and processed according to strict systems of order. This technology transfer harks back to a primal scene, even though at fi rst it is limited to libraries and closely linked learned discourse. Polymath Konrad Gessner stands at the beginning of this history of the card catalog. He is probably not the inventor of the technique of cutting up pieces of 4 Chapter 1 information on paper so as to (re)arrange them more readily. However, his explicit description of this process in 1548 may constitute the earliest account of conveniently generating extensive lists in alphabetical order. Therefore, chapter 2 will be devoted to a detailed description of Gessner ’ s paper machine, pursuing the tradition of this exemplary, highly recom- mended device in early modern times and the Baroque era, especially in the art of excerption.5 Starting off part I, “ Around 1800, ” chapter 3 traces a discontinuity, a break in the application of Gessner’ s procedure. When the technique goes from provisional to permanent, an unintended and yet consequential turn takes place, giving rise to the fi rst card catalog in library history in Vienna around 1780. For the card catalog to become the librarian’ s answer to the threat of information overload, precise written instructions that can inte- grate untrained staff into the division of labor are decisive. Here, I also briefl y digress and examine two coinciding addressing logics: In the same decade and in the same town, the origin of the card index cooccurs with the invention of the house number. This establishes the possibility of abstract representation of (and controlled access to) both texts and inhabitants. Chapter 4 stays with the turn of the century around 1800, drawing a necessary distinction between the many-to-many technology of the library and the idiosyncratic order of learned excerpt collections. In other words, this differentiation emphasizes a server concept on the one hand and a workstation philosophy on the other. The fi rst card catalog is not only the product of a collective process, but also suited for (and conceived by) many. In contrast to this multiuser system, the idiosyncratic machine taking shape in a scholar ’ s box of excerpts withdraws from outside inspection. No mediating role is needed; its internal system is allowed to be incompre- hensible to outside rs . This is a form of data protection we can trace from the peculiar scholarly excerption techniques of Johann Jacob Moser to those of Jean Paul. Chapter 5 is devoted to the transfer of old European library technology to the New World.

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