Use of Punched Card Tabulating Machines for Crystallographic Fourier Syntheses

Cox, Ε. G.; Gross, Leona

doi:10.1038/159433a0

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In the USA, Linus Pauling had called on the substantial support of the Rockefeller Foundation to fund the application of punched-card techniques to structural chemistry. He bought in professional mechanical computing services, employed specially trained operators, and secured exclusive use of expensive equipment (Cox et al, 1947). 30 Repetitive synthesis computations, of the same type deployed in Britain, were black-boxed in the form of sets of punched cards.…”

Section: X-ray Crystallography Of Organic Molecules: Hodgkin At Oxfordmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Difference Did Computers Make?

Agar

2006

Soc Stud Sci

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This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, a comparative perspective across disciplines is revealing. So this paper casts the net wider, not only revisiting microphysics and X-ray crystallography, but also examining natural history and the implicit social science of government administration. It focuses on the period when computers were first introduced, since the novelty of the techniques caused scientists to reflect on the changes. This has the advantage, too, of bringing to light the important relationship between routinization of scientific work prior to computerization and computerization itself.A handful of scientists first used stored-program electronic computers extensively in the 1950s. Now small computers can be found on the desks of all laboratories, laptops are carried into field research, and much research depends on access to larger, more powerful machines in dedicated facilities. Computers have attracted the attention of science studies researchers, and we can quickly list the things we now know: how 'computers' were first humans, then calculating machines used in science, and then objects with many applications; the determination of policy allocating computing resources to universities; the history of computers as part of a technological tradition; the computer as an object shaped by military demands; the computer industry as part of business history; computers as a tool of management control in the workplace; information revolutions as hype or fact; discrimination against women working within computer science; the creative interplay of gender and computing; the lessons that science studies can teach artificial intelligence and vice versa; as well as immense quantities of writing on network technologies and identity, and case studies of particular machines. 1 However, surprisingly little has been written about what scientists have used computers for (Agar, 1998).This paper asks the question: what difference did access to computers make to the first generation of scientists to use them? While we do know something about the use of computers in particular scientific specialities, from the work of Galison on high-energy physics and de Chadarevian on Social Studies of Science 36/6(December 2006) 869-907

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Section: X-ray Crystallography Of Organic Molecules: Hodgkin At Oxfordmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Difference Did Computers Make?

Agar

2006

Soc Stud Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Investigations of structural transformations and disorder in low melting organic compounds include studies of thiophene (2), cvclopentane (19), tert-butyl chloride and bromide (21), cyclohexane (16), and 1,2-dichloroethane (15).…”

Section: Structural Transformations and Disordermentioning

confidence: 99%