Final Exam Review History of Science 150 1. Format of the Exam 90 minutes, on canvas 12:25pm December 18. You are welcome to bring notes to the exam, so you could start by filling out this sheet with notes from lectures and the readings! Like the mid-term, the final exam will have two kinds of questions. 1) Multiple choice questions examining your knowledge of key concepts, terms, historical developments, and contexts 2) Short answer questions in which ask you to draw on things you’ve learned in the course (from lecture, readings, videos) to craft a short argument in a brief essay expressing your informed issue on a historical question 2. Sample Questions Multiple Choice: Mina Rees was involved in (and wrote about) which of the following computing projects? A) Silicon Valley start-ups in the dot-com period B) Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine C) Works Projects Administration Tables Project D) Federal funding for computing research after WWII Short Answer: (Your answers should be between 100-200 words, and keep to specifics (events, machines, developments, people) that demonstrate your knowledge of materials covered from the course) A) What are two historical factors important to the development of Silicon Valley’s technology industry after World War II? B) In what ways did the field of programming change (in terms of its status and workers) between World War II and the late 1960s? 3. Topics to Review: Below, is a list of ideas to review for the final exam, which covers material through the entire course. You should review in particular, lecture notes, O’Mara’s The Code and other course readings provided on Canvas. In addition to these topics, please make note of the timelines that were provided for Units 1-3 and are available on Canvas Review sheet 1 Final Exam Review History of Science 150 Week-by-week Topics to Review Week 2 (“Computing what”) o Some reasons generally, why good quality numbers were needed in the 18th and 19th centuries o Gaspard de Prony’s computation work and how it was organized o The persistence of Human computing and who, in general, did this kind of work o The relevancy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations o Charles Babbage’s Two Engines and what’s different between them o And Ada Lovelace’s developments o Alan Turing’s 1936 paper and the idea of a machine that could compute anything o What ways did social scientists use statistics in the 19th and early 20th century? (and what is “eugenics”? o Hollerith Tabulator and the 1890 Census o Police Statistics and Khalil Muhammad’s ideas about where “big data” came from o How progressive reformers and sociologists like W.E.B Dubois used statistics to represent social problems in the late 19th and early 20th century Synthetic and Conceptual questions to think on as you review: o How did the routinization and mechanization of calculation change its cultural meaning? o How does the “deskilling” of a task relate to the “mechanization” of that task? o What is the relationship between data, government, and social science? What are some ways that social science used statistics, and what were some problematic uses? o What does turn-of-the century (c 1900) police database tech have to do with facial recognition? Review sheet 2 Final Exam Review History of Science 150 Week 3 (“Military Influences”) o The effect of World War II on science and technology, primarily in the United States o Some machines built during World War II (what they are, and what they’re used for) in particular: § the ENIAC; the Enigma Bombe; Mark 1 Analog Naval Gun Direction / Fire control computer o The first programmers on the ENIAC: how did they get recruited to this work, and what was the character of this work o The relevancy of Cold War for early computing technologies § What were new funding agencies? § How was scientific advancement § The SAGE system • What was it, how was it used • How did it reflect the cultural anxieties of the cold war • How did it support new computer research and new ideas about computer users and interactive machines Synthetic and Conceptual questions to think on as you review: o How did the support for computing technologies in World War II and the Cold War relate to the earlier tradition of state-supported computing? Was it wholly new, or did it build from it? o How did the threat of soviet attack shape Cold War computing, for instance, the idea of early distributed communications networks? Review sheet 3 Final Exam Review History of Science 150 Week 4 (“Emergence of Computing Businesses”) o Some of the reasons why Silicon Valley and the electronics industry emerged: § Venture Capital (what is it, generally) § The Electronics industry • Vacuum tubes; The invention of the transistor; The Integrated circuit § Consumers • Who is buying early vacuum tubes? • Who is patronizing early transistor and integrated circuit (monolithic chip) businesses? • the military and radio hobbyists as both demanding consumers requiring high-quality products and as financial benefactors § Universities: • how are universities connected with new high-tech industries? o Sputnik – when and what was it § What effect does it have on federal policy in science and education § What institutions follow it (NASA and ARPA) § Why does ARPA come about, and what sorts of things it funds § Shift from applied technologies to support for basic research o The Military-Industrial Complex—what is it and how did President Eisenhower explain it in 1961 as a concern? o Project MAC § What kind of research did it support (User interface, timesharing, networking) § What kinds of problems inspired it? o Time-sharing, what, generally, is it? What motivated it? o User interface research: § What’s Sketchpad (Ivan Sutherland) and What was the Mother of All Demos? § What are two different ways of thinking of user-interfaces (e.g. as mirroring existing systems, or as requiring new things from people (like the Chord or mouse)) Synthetic and Conceptual questions to think on as you review: o How is the role of the government in computing research and support for computer industries changing in the 1950s and 1960s? Review sheet 4 Final Exam Review History of Science 150 Week 5 (Finishing ARPA and “Programming Labor”) o Computer science departments: what were some of the tensions and challenges in their development; where did they come from (what kinds of disciplines) and when generally are they starting up o ARPA as building from President Johnson’s policy of “Creative Centers of Excellence”) to connect university computer research centers o ARPAnet: § When is it emerging (late 1960s, early 1970s start is sufficient) § Early purposes and uses • “Resource Sharing” as an early, but largely unsuccessful idea for what the ARPAnet would be used for (for instance, as noted in the documentary I showed) § Packet switching (what is it) (check the documentary I showed in lecture) § Key features of ARPA: • Packet-switched networks • The Interface Message processor (dedicate machine for handling data transfers) o Early Innovators in Programming § Women’s role in programming • ENIAC programmers and their trajectories into programming and software design (Jean Bartik and Betty Holerton) § Grace Hopper • Hopper’s work on COBOL, and “compilers” § Margaret Hamilton’s work on “Software Engineering” and the MIT instrumentation lab o COBOL Programming Language § Purpose § Style compared to the other languages of the time, FORTRAN (More human like-language § The Organization that designed it—consortium of businesses and the Department of defense o The effects of the space race on computing: § Use of computers on board and in tracking space craft o Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson (Hidden Figures at NASA) and their trajectories, generally (Human computers to computer and engineering work) § The Context of Jim Crow as it shaped opportunities for education and high-tech work for the NASA workers at the West computing center o Main ideas of “When Computers were women” Synthetic and Conceptual questions to think on as you review: • How does ARPAnet reflect the Military-industrial-academic complex? Review sheet 5 Final Exam Review History of Science 150 • How does the introduction of more “English-like” programming languages affect the dynamics of the programming profession? Who does it make computers more accessible to, and whose jobs might it jeopardize? Week 6 “Computerization” o What kind of companies made computers in the 1950s and 1960s (what industries are they coming from) o Who was buying computers in the 1950s and 1960s and how is government’s position as consumer changing? o What kind of industries are using computers, and for what purposes? I emphasize two o IBM’s marketing at the 1964 worlds fair and the in the 1967 advertisement “The Paperwork Explosion” How does this present computing as a different kind of tool for business? § What problems are computers being presented as solving? § What symbols and ideas are they working with? o Project Cybersyn § What its used for, and why § Where, and what is its context? o Labor’s response to automation: § What are their critiques and their strategies? o Greenberger: What does he think computers will do for the US economy? o What is the “information utility” idea? Synthetic and Conceptual questions to think on as you review: • How does computing change in its status in business in the 1950s and 1960s? What effect do you think this has on the workers who are involved with computers? • In what ways was the depiction of computing in the economy presented by Greenberger different