WORKING WITH COMPUTERS, CONSTRUCTING A DEVELOPING COUNTRY: INTRODUCING, USING, BUILDING, AND TINKERING WITH COMPUTERS IN COLD WAR TAIWAN, 1959-1984 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Hong-Hong Tinn January 2012 © 2012 Hong-Hong Tinn WORKING WITH COMPUTERS, CONSTRUCTING A DEVELOPING COUNTRY: INTRODUCING, USING, BUILDING, AND TINKERING WITH COMPUTERS IN COLD WAR TAIWAN, 1959-1984 Hong-Hong Tinn, Ph. D. Cornell University 2012 This dissertation uses a developing country’s appropriation of mainframe computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers as a lens for understanding the historical relationships between the digital electronic computing technology, the development discourse underlying the Cold War, and the international exchanges of scientific and technological expertise in the context of the Cold War. It asks why and how, during the Cold War, Taiwanese scientists, engineers, technocrats, and ordinary users—all in a so-called developing country—introduced digital electronic computing to Taiwan and later built computers there. To answer the why question, I argue that these social groups’ perceptions of Taiwan’s developmental status shaped their perceptions of the importance of possessing, using, and manufacturing computers. As for the how question, I propose that Taiwanese computer users modeled their practices after the existing successful practices of using mainframe computers and later started to build and tinker with minicomputers and microcomputers. The beginning chapter of this dissertation discusses that a group of Taiwanese engineers, technocrats, and scientists advocated the introduction of ‘electronics science’ and digital electronic computing from the United States to Taiwan for expanding the industrial sector of Taiwan’s economy in the late 1950s. Their efforts resulted in a UN technical-aid program, in which National Chiao-Tung University’s (NCTU) professors, students, and technicians worked with two US visiting professors to set up a computing center, equipped with an IBM 650 and an IBM 1620 computer, at the NCTU campus from 1962 to 1964 (chapter 3). Chapter 4 analyzes how, in 1964, a Cornell econometrician relied on NCTU’s 1620 computer to form an economic- planning project for a Taiwanese government agency. Chapter 5 discusses a project in which a NCTU graduate program planned to build a minicomputer from scratch from 1968 to 1971, despite being able to buy a minicomputer from various US suppliers. Chapter 6 explores two intriguing phenomena that surfaced between 1980 and 1984: why many of Taiwan’s computer users preferred to build their own microcomputers and how this preference initiated a series of debates about whether legal institutions allowed Taiwanese companies to make Apple compatibles. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Honghong Tinn was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1978. She received a B.A. in sociology and a M.A. in journalism from National Taiwan University, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. While studying and working at National Taiwan University, her research focused on resource mobilization in Taiwanese social movements, Taiwanese online news websites at the moment of the Dot-com bust, the social image of Internet cafes in Taiwan, and Taiwanese teenagers’ clan culture in online role-playing games. In 2005, she enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where she studied under Ron Kline. While at Cornell, she turned her college hobby—putting together computer parts to build and fix personal computers—into a dissertation about the history of Cold War digital electronic computing in Taiwan. During the academic year 2008-2009, she was a visiting student at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She is a member of two Special Interest Groups in the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT): Computers, Information, and Society and the SHOT Asia Network. In 2012, she will take a postdoctoral fellowship at National University of Singapore. iii For My Parents iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without help from many individuals and institutions. I am first and foremost grateful to the members of my committee. Their continued interest in my research has been one of the most important supports in my effort to complete this dissertation. Ron Kline has offered insightful comments, practical advice, and unyielding encouragement throughout this project’s early stages and the research and writing stages that followed. Over numerous semesters, when both Ron and I were in town, we met for perhaps one hour weekly or bi-weekly if possible; the kernel of many ideas and arguments in the following pages first emerged in the notes I took when meeting with him. I am grateful for his consideration of and feedback on not only this dissertation’s multiple drafts but also my unpolished, random thoughts that never made their way onto the final printed pages here. Trevor Pinch and Suman Seth have brought their distinctive expertise and perspective to this project. They served as the inspiration for different sections of this dissertation. Trevor’s wisdom was an invaluable source in my discovery of this project’s focuses, and his sharp analyses guided me to polish my disorganized ideas. Suman’s engagement with my research was critical in keeping me on solid ground as I developed, structured, and completed this dissertation; I know that I benefited enormously from discussions with him, and invariably looked forward to his provocative comments during meetings. Although Sara Pritchard joined my committee as the field-appointed reader only several months before my dissertation’s completion, she had been offering me her critically insightful comments and encouragement for many years. I was extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to work with my v committee members. During the various stages of this project, members of the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell gave me helpful comments and warm support. I extend special thanks to Stephen Hilgartner, Rachel Prentice, Michael Lynch, Christine Leuenberger, Margaret Rossiter, and Rachel Maines. I must acknowledge that Debbie Van Galder and Stacey Stone provided impeccable administrative support throughout the past years. I thank Aminda Smith and Marge Kline for their encouragement throughout the different stages of my graduate career. In addition to Cornell’s S&TS department, I thank the following scholars for their reading of excerpts of this dissertation or their related comments on different occasions: Suzanne Moon, Jeffrey R. Yost, Thomas J. Misa, William Aspray, Atsushi Akera, James W. Cortada, Chigusa Kita, Jessica Ratcliff, Corinna Schlombs, Joseph A. November, Mara Mills, Cristina Turdean, Patricia Galloway, Tae-Ho Kim, John Krige, Jacob Darwin Hamblin, John P. DiMoia, Kenji Ito, Stuart W. Leslie, Nelly Oudshoorn, Sungook Hong, Tsukahara Togo, Takashi Nishiyama, Fa-ti Fan, Hiromi Mizuno, Zuyoue Wang, Jessica Wang, Wen-Hua Kuo, Chia-Ling Wu, Tsui-Hua Yang, Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, and Pin-Yen Lin. I gratefully acknowledge my informants for their trust and patience. They kindly shared with me their invaluable memories, personal letters, and photographs, and gave me suggestions about how I might proceed with this dissertation. Truth be told, each of their stories deserves its own entire chapter, so I do not exaggerate when I state that vi their input in my research was a necessary condition for my completion of this dissertation. Many librarians and archivists offered their professional assistance during my research trips. Much appreciated are Stephanie H. Crowe at the Charles Babbage Institute (the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis), Meiyi Hong at the National Chiao-Tung University Library, Chang-Wai Yang at National Taiwan University’s Documentation Division, and archivists at the Institute of Modern History (Academia Sinica, Taiwan), the National Archives at College Park, (Maryland), and the United Nations Archives and Records Management Section, United Nations (New York City). I wish to acknowledge the following grants and fellowships that supported the research and writing of this dissertation: the Adelle and Erwin Tomash Graduate Fellowship (Charles Babbage Institute), a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (award no. 0847981, National Science Foundation), a research grant from Stephen Hilgartner’s research project entitled “Studying Emerging Technologies: Empirical Research in a Speculative Space” (award no. NSF-SES- 0352000, National Science Foundation), and the Michael S. Mahoney and the MIT Press Graduate Student Travel Award (the Special Interest Group on Computers, Information, and Society, the Society for the History of Technology). The Society for the History of Technology’s conference-travel grants have been of great help in affording me opportunities to meet and talk with scholars about this dissertation. Grants and fellowships from the following institutions at Cornell University facilitated the completion of this dissertation: the Ta Chung & Ya Chao Liu Memorial Award, vii C.V. Starr Fellowships (East Asia Program), the Hu Shih Memorial Awards (East Asia Program), a Humanities Interdisciplinary Dissertation Writing Group grant (Society for the Humanities), a Graduate Reading Group grant (Institute for Comparative Modernities), and a Graduate School Research Travel Grant. I gratefully acknowledge the Department of Science & Technology Studies for awarding me Sage