COMPUTER REVOLUTION.

EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
BIBLIOGRAPHY

In the early twenty-first century, the computer revolution is

exemplified by a personal computer linked to the Internet and
the World Wide Web. Modern computing, however, is the result
of the convergence of three much older technologies—office
machinery, mathematical instruments, and telecommunications
—all of which were well established in Europe in the twentieth
century.
EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
Office machinery was first developed in the United States in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century. Office machines mitigated
clerical drudgery and facilitated the systematic organization of
large-scale offices. The most important machines were
typewriters, calculators, punched-card accounting machines,
and filing systems. American companies such as Remington
Typewriter, Burroughs Adding Machine, and International
Business Machines (IBM) were the most prominent firms, and
all established European subsidiaries. Several major European
manufacturers such as Imperial Typewriter (Britain), Olivetti
(Italy), Mercedes (Germany), and Bull (France) became
established in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
The modern electronic computer was invented in the United
States in 1946. As originally conceived, the computer was a
mathematical instrument designed for the solution of numerical
problems. As such, the electronic computer was the culmination
of a line of development that began with Charles
Babbage (1792–1871), who was followed by such pioneers as
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852–1936) in Spain, Louis
Couffignal (1902–1966) in France, Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) in
Germany, and Alan Turing (1912–1954) in England. In the
1950s the scope of the computer broadened to include data
processing, as well as mathematical problem solving. The
office-machine giant IBM quickly dominated the computer
industry worldwide. As well as hosting several IBM subsidiaries,
Europe sustained an indigenous computer industry with firms
such as Britain's ICL, Machines Bull, Siemens, and Olivetti.
Electric telegraph systems were simultaneously developed in
many countries around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Telegraphs were initially used for signaling on the newly built
railways, but soon found a lucrative market for the transmission
of news, market, and financial information. The International
Telegraph Union, established in Bern, Switzerland, in 1865,
created standards for the international transmission of
messages. The early years of the twentieth century saw the
development of national telephone systems. There were several
European telecommunications manufacturers that became
successful multinational operators, including Siemens and
Telefunken in Germany, Ericsson in Sweden, and General
Electric in Britain. The telephone was widely used in business
throughout Europe by about 1910, but domestic diffusion varied
greatly; in some countries of Europe it was not until the 1970s
that telephones were routinely available in homes. In the 1960s
and 1970s telephone systems were fully automated, dispensing
with connections made by human operators, and the
international range was extended so that it became possible to
dial direct to most advanced countries.
THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
From the mid-1960s on, computers and telecommunications
became increasingly integrated, enabling many businesses to
conduct transactions in "real time." The most visible
manifestations of this new way of conducting business included
airline reservation systems, automated teller machines, and
barcode scanning in supermarket checkouts. Less visibly, the
electronic data interchange (EDI) movement enabled firms to
interact electronically, eliminating the economic friction of
paper-based systems. For example, when a supermarket
checkout registered the sale of an item, this information would
be transmitted to the supplier of the item so that stocks could be
replenished automatically. In the 1980s "just-in-time" operations
revolutionized manufacturing: manufacturers and their suppliers
became electronically entwined so that inventories could be
eliminated and orders for components and subassemblies
delivered on demand.
In the 1970s the development of microelectronics and the
invention of the microprocessor transformed not only business
computing but also consumer electronics. The most popular
consumer items of the early 1970s were video games, hand-
held calculators, and digital watches. Video-game hardware
manufacture was initially an American phenomenon, and was
later dominated by Japanese producers. Europe, however, was
well placed to develop video-game software both to appeal to
indigenous tastes and for international markets. The
development of the pocket calculator saw the rise of new
producers such as Sinclair in the United Kingdom, and the
demise of the old-line calculating machine manufacturers.
Digital watches were initially expensive gadgets that appealed
largely to technologically fixated males. As the technology
matured, however, digital watches became cheaper, more
reliable, and more accurate than their mechanical
predecessors. In the second half of the 1970s the mechanical
watch industry, especially in Switzerland, was devastated, and
manufacturers had to reposition their products as fashion
accessories and luxury items for discerning buyers.
The personal computer emerged as a consumer item in the late
1970s. The first machines, such as those made by Apple,
Commodore, and Tandy, were imported from the United States,
but European manufacturers soon entered the market
producing their own designs. Few if any of these personal
computer firms came from the traditional computer industry. In
1981 IBM, the leading business computer manufacturer,
entered the personal computer market with two important
consequences. First, the imprimatur of IBM legitimated personal
computing for businesses, which had not until then generally
viewed desktop computers as being capable of serious
information processing. Second, the entry of IBM established a
standardized "PC," which caused a massive shakeout and
consolidation of the industry. By the end of the decade most
PCs were being supplied by a small number of multinational
firms, predominantly American and Japanese, although Europe
supported a number of second-tier players such as Siemens
and Olivetti.
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
Although Europe was relatively unsuccessful as a computer
manufacturer, it was very successful in adopting and adapting
information technology to improve its industrial competitiveness
and information infrastructure. By far the most important
European development—though ultimately only partly
successful—was videotex, which promised an Internet-like
experience a full decade before the Internet came to
prominence.
During the period from 1979 to 1984, national videotex systems
were developed in some fifteen countries including Britain,
France, and Germany in Europe and also Canada, Australia,
and Japan (but not the United States). Videotex was intended to
provide an information service for businesses and consumers.
The videotex technology was developed in the United Kingdom
and was based on the teletext system devised there for
broadcast television in the early 1970s. National videotex
systems were developed in complex public–private
partnerships, with the network infrastructure funded and
controlled by the national PTTs (postal, telegraph, and
telephone authorities), augmented by private-sector information
and equipment suppliers. With the single exception of France,
in every country where videotex systems were developed, after
an initial burst of enthusiasm, they failed to take off as
consumer services and gradually faded away or became purely
business systems. France, however, launched its national
videotex system Télétel as a grand project in 1982. Télétel was
seen as a means of modernizing and complementing France's
aging telephone infrastructure—and the "killer application"
would be an online telephone directory. The French government
provided inexpensive terminals for telephone users, and by
1988 there were 4.2 million terminals and 9,500 information
providers. The French initiative showed, long before the Internet
euphoria of the 1990s, that a government could kick-start an
information revolution. The failure of videotex elsewhere had
multiple causes: the technology was expensive and somewhat
immature, and the nonparticipation of the United States
undermined its credibility. By the early twenty-first century,
France was in the uncomfortable position of migrating to the
global Internet.
Although the Internet is generally perceived as an American
invention, in fact it is built on a constellation of technologies and
standards that were negotiated and developed worldwide over a
thirty-year period, starting in the second half of the 1960s. One
of the underlying technologies of the Internet, for example, is
packet-switched communications, which was initially developed
in the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom in the
1960s. Many of the computer networking concepts on which the
Internet is based were first elaborated in the Geneva-
based International Organization for Standardization. Europe's
most important contribution to the Internet was the invention of
the World Wide Web by the British-born computer scientist Tim
Berners-Lee, while working at the CERN European Particle
Physics Laboratory in 1991. Up to that time the Internet had
been primarily used by the technical and scientific communities,
but the World Wide Web opened it up to ordinary citizens by
means of point-and-click software that was very easy to use.
Europe has been an enthusiastic adopter of the Internet. By
2005 nearly 50 percent of European Union citizens had access
to the Internet, and the rest of Europe was catching up fast (with
about 17 percent having access). In the future the Internet will
have massive but unpredictable consequences for Europe, as
for the rest of the world. For example, the Internet is already
enabling firms to reach global markets for which their small size
and remoteness were formally insuperable barriers. The
Internet has enabled the "outsourcing" of labor—from which
some countries benefit, while others lose out. And the adoption
of American English as the lingua franca of the Internet poses a
significant challenge to Europe's diverse cultural heritage.
COMPUTER REVOLUTION.

EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the early twenty-first century, the computer revolution is
exemplified by a personal computer linked to the Internet and
the World Wide Web. Modern computing, however, is the result
of the convergence of three much older technologies—office
machinery, mathematical instruments, and telecommunications
—all of which were well established in Europe in the twentieth
century.
EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
Office machinery was first developed in the United States in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century. Office machines mitigated
clerical drudgery and facilitated the systematic organization of
large-scale offices. The most important machines were
typewriters, calculators, punched-card accounting machines,
and filing systems. American companies such as Remington
Typewriter, Burroughs Adding Machine, and International
Business Machines (IBM) were the most prominent firms, and
all established European subsidiaries. Several major European
manufacturers such as Imperial Typewriter (Britain), Olivetti
(Italy), Mercedes (Germany), and Bull (France) became
established in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
The modern electronic computer was invented in the United
States in 1946. As originally conceived, the computer was a
mathematical instrument designed for the solution of numerical
problems. As such, the electronic computer was the culmination
of a line of development that began with Charles
Babbage (1792–1871), who was followed by such pioneers as
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852–1936) in Spain, Louis
Couffignal (1902–1966) in France, Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) in
Germany, and Alan Turing (1912–1954) in England. In the
1950s the scope of the computer broadened to include data
processing, as well as mathematical problem solving. The
office-machine giant IBM quickly dominated the computer
industry worldwide. As well as hosting several IBM subsidiaries,
Europe sustained an indigenous computer industry with firms
such as Britain's ICL, Machines Bull, Siemens, and Olivetti.
Electric telegraph systems were simultaneously developed in
many countries around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Telegraphs were initially used for signaling on the newly built
railways, but soon found a lucrative market for the transmission
of news, market, and financial information. The International
Telegraph Union, established in Bern, Switzerland, in 1865,
created standards for the international transmission of
messages. The early years of the twentieth century saw the
development of national telephone systems. There were several
European telecommunications manufacturers that became
successful multinational operators, including Siemens and
Telefunken in Germany, Ericsson in Sweden, and General
Electric in Britain. The telephone was widely used in business
throughout Europe by about 1910, but domestic diffusion varied
greatly; in some countries of Europe it was not until the 1970s
that telephones were routinely available in homes. In the 1960s
and 1970s telephone systems were fully automated, dispensing
with connections made by human operators, and the
international range was extended so that it became possible to
dial direct to most advanced countries.
THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
From the mid-1960s on, computers and telecommunications
became increasingly integrated, enabling many businesses to
conduct transactions in "real time." The most visible
manifestations of this new way of conducting business included
airline reservation systems, automated teller machines, and
barcode scanning in supermarket checkouts. Less visibly, the
electronic data interchange (EDI) movement enabled firms to
interact electronically, eliminating the economic friction of
paper-based systems. For example, when a supermarket
checkout registered the sale of an item, this information would
be transmitted to the supplier of the item so that stocks could be
replenished automatically. In the 1980s "just-in-time" operations
revolutionized manufacturing: manufacturers and their suppliers
became electronically entwined so that inventories could be
eliminated and orders for components and subassemblies
delivered on demand.
In the 1970s the development of microelectronics and the
invention of the microprocessor transformed not only business
computing but also consumer electronics. The most popular
consumer items of the early 1970s were video games, hand-
held calculators, and digital watches. Video-game hardware
manufacture was initially an American phenomenon, and was
later dominated by Japanese producers. Europe, however, was
well placed to develop video-game software both to appeal to
indigenous tastes and for international markets. The
development of the pocket calculator saw the rise of new
producers such as Sinclair in the United Kingdom, and the
demise of the old-line calculating machine manufacturers.
Digital watches were initially expensive gadgets that appealed
largely to technologically fixated males. As the technology
matured, however, digital watches became cheaper, more
reliable, and more accurate than their mechanical
predecessors. In the second half of the 1970s the mechanical
watch industry, especially in Switzerland, was devastated, and
manufacturers had to reposition their products as fashion
accessories and luxury items for discerning buyers.
The personal computer emerged as a consumer item in the late
1970s. The first machines, such as those made by Apple,
Commodore, and Tandy, were imported from the United States,
but European manufacturers soon entered the market
producing their own designs. Few if any of these personal
computer firms came from the traditional computer industry. In
1981 IBM, the leading business computer manufacturer,
entered the personal computer market with two important
consequences. First, the imprimatur of IBM legitimated personal
computing for businesses, which had not until then generally
viewed desktop computers as being capable of serious
information processing. Second, the entry of IBM established a
standardized "PC," which caused a massive shakeout and
consolidation of the industry. By the end of the decade most
PCs were being supplied by a small number of multinational
firms, predominantly American and Japanese, although Europe
supported a number of second-tier players such as Siemens
and Olivetti.
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
Although Europe was relatively unsuccessful as a computer
manufacturer, it was very successful in adopting and adapting
information technology to improve its industrial competitiveness
and information infrastructure. By far the most important
European development—though ultimately only partly
successful—was videotex, which promised an Internet-like
experience a full decade before the Internet came to
prominence.
During the period from 1979 to 1984, national videotex systems
were developed in some fifteen countries including Britain,
France, and Germany in Europe and also Canada, Australia,
and Japan (but not the United States). Videotex was intended to
provide an information service for businesses and consumers.
The videotex technology was developed in the United Kingdom
and was based on the teletext system devised there for
broadcast television in the early 1970s. National videotex
systems were developed in complex public–private
partnerships, with the network infrastructure funded and
controlled by the national PTTs (postal, telegraph, and
telephone authorities), augmented by private-sector information
and equipment suppliers. With the single exception of France,
in every country where videotex systems were developed, after
an initial burst of enthusiasm, they failed to take off as
consumer services and gradually faded away or became purely
business systems. France, however, launched its national
videotex system Télétel as a grand project in 1982. Télétel was
seen as a means of modernizing and complementing France's
aging telephone infrastructure—and the "killer application"
would be an online telephone directory. The French government
provided inexpensive terminals for telephone users, and by
1988 there were 4.2 million terminals and 9,500 information
providers. The French initiative showed, long before the Internet
euphoria of the 1990s, that a government could kick-start an
information revolution. The failure of videotex elsewhere had
multiple causes: the technology was expensive and somewhat
immature, and the nonparticipation of the United States
undermined its credibility. By the early twenty-first century,
France was in the uncomfortable position of migrating to the
global Internet.
Although the Internet is generally perceived as an American
invention, in fact it is built on a constellation of technologies and
standards that were negotiated and developed worldwide over a
thirty-year period, starting in the second half of the 1960s. One
of the underlying technologies of the Internet, for example, is
packet-switched communications, which was initially developed
in the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom in the
1960s. Many of the computer networking concepts on which the
Internet is based were first elaborated in the Geneva-
based International Organization for Standardization. Europe's
most important contribution to the Internet was the invention of
the World Wide Web by the British-born computer scientist Tim
Berners-Lee, while working at the CERN European Particle
Physics Laboratory in 1991. Up to that time the Internet had
been primarily used by the technical and scientific communities,
but the World Wide Web opened it up to ordinary citizens by
means of point-and-click software that was very easy to use.
Europe has been an enthusiastic adopter of the Internet. By
2005 nearly 50 percent of European Union citizens had access
to the Internet, and the rest of Europe was catching up fast (with
about 17 percent having access). In the future the Internet will
have massive but unpredictable consequences for Europe, as
for the rest of the world. For example, the Internet is already
enabling firms to reach global markets for which their small size
and remoteness were formally insuperable barriers. The
Internet has enabled the "outsourcing" of labor—from which
some countries benefit, while others lose out. And the adoption
of American English as the lingua franca of the Internet poses a
significant challenge to Europe's diverse cultural heritage.
COMPUTER REVOLUTION.

EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
BIBLIOGRAPHY

In the early twenty-first century, the computer revolution is

exemplified by a personal computer linked to the Internet and
the World Wide Web. Modern computing, however, is the result
of the convergence of three much older technologies—office
machinery, mathematical instruments, and telecommunications
—all of which were well established in Europe in the twentieth
century.
EARLY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
Office machinery was first developed in the United States in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century. Office machines mitigated
clerical drudgery and facilitated the systematic organization of
large-scale offices. The most important machines were
typewriters, calculators, punched-card accounting machines,
and filing systems. American companies such as Remington
Typewriter, Burroughs Adding Machine, and International
Business Machines (IBM) were the most prominent firms, and
all established European subsidiaries. Several major European
manufacturers such as Imperial Typewriter (Britain), Olivetti
(Italy), Mercedes (Germany), and Bull (France) became
established in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
The modern electronic computer was invented in the United
States in 1946. As originally conceived, the computer was a
mathematical instrument designed for the solution of numerical
problems. As such, the electronic computer was the culmination
of a line of development that began with Charles
Babbage (1792–1871), who was followed by such pioneers as
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852–1936) in Spain, Louis
Couffignal (1902–1966) in France, Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) in
Germany, and Alan Turing (1912–1954) in England. In the
1950s the scope of the computer broadened to include data
processing, as well as mathematical problem solving. The
office-machine giant IBM quickly dominated the computer
industry worldwide. As well as hosting several IBM subsidiaries,
Europe sustained an indigenous computer industry with firms
such as Britain's ICL, Machines Bull, Siemens, and Olivetti.
Electric telegraph systems were simultaneously developed in
many countries around the middle of the nineteenth century.
Telegraphs were initially used for signaling on the newly built
railways, but soon found a lucrative market for the transmission
of news, market, and financial information. The International
Telegraph Union, established in Bern, Switzerland, in 1865,
created standards for the international transmission of
messages. The early years of the twentieth century saw the
development of national telephone systems. There were several
European telecommunications manufacturers that became
successful multinational operators, including Siemens and
Telefunken in Germany, Ericsson in Sweden, and General
Electric in Britain. The telephone was widely used in business
throughout Europe by about 1910, but domestic diffusion varied
greatly; in some countries of Europe it was not until the 1970s
that telephones were routinely available in homes. In the 1960s
and 1970s telephone systems were fully automated, dispensing
with connections made by human operators, and the
international range was extended so that it became possible to
dial direct to most advanced countries.
THE COMPUTERIZATION OF SOCIETY
From the mid-1960s on, computers and telecommunications
became increasingly integrated, enabling many businesses to
conduct transactions in "real time." The most visible
manifestations of this new way of conducting business included
airline reservation systems, automated teller machines, and
barcode scanning in supermarket checkouts. Less visibly, the
electronic data interchange (EDI) movement enabled firms to
interact electronically, eliminating the economic friction of
paper-based systems. For example, when a supermarket
checkout registered the sale of an item, this information would
be transmitted to the supplier of the item so that stocks could be
replenished automatically. In the 1980s "just-in-time" operations
revolutionized manufacturing: manufacturers and their suppliers
became electronically entwined so that inventories could be
eliminated and orders for components and subassemblies
delivered on demand.
In the 1970s the development of microelectronics and the
invention of the microprocessor transformed not only business
computing but also consumer electronics. The most popular
consumer items of the early 1970s were video games, hand-
held calculators, and digital watches. Video-game hardware
manufacture was initially an American phenomenon, and was
later dominated by Japanese producers. Europe, however, was
well placed to develop video-game software both to appeal to
indigenous tastes and for international markets. The
development of the pocket calculator saw the rise of new
producers such as Sinclair in the United Kingdom, and the
demise of the old-line calculating machine manufacturers.
Digital watches were initially expensive gadgets that appealed
largely to technologically fixated males. As the technology
matured, however, digital watches became cheaper, more
reliable, and more accurate than their mechanical
predecessors. In the second half of the 1970s the mechanical
watch industry, especially in Switzerland, was devastated, and
manufacturers had to reposition their products as fashion
accessories and luxury items for discerning buyers.
The personal computer emerged as a consumer item in the late
1970s. The first machines, such as those made by Apple,
Commodore, and Tandy, were imported from the United States,
but European manufacturers soon entered the market
producing their own designs. Few if any of these personal
computer firms came from the traditional computer industry. In
1981 IBM, the leading business computer manufacturer,
entered the personal computer market with two important
consequences. First, the imprimatur of IBM legitimated personal
computing for businesses, which had not until then generally
viewed desktop computers as being capable of serious
information processing. Second, the entry of IBM established a
standardized "PC," which caused a massive shakeout and
consolidation of the industry. By the end of the decade most
PCs were being supplied by a small number of multinational
firms, predominantly American and Japanese, although Europe
supported a number of second-tier players such as Siemens
and Olivetti.
VIDEOTEX AND THE INTERNET
Although Europe was relatively unsuccessful as a computer
manufacturer, it was very successful in adopting and adapting
information technology to improve its industrial competitiveness
and information infrastructure. By far the most important
European development—though ultimately only partly
successful—was videotex, which promised an Internet-like
experience a full decade before the Internet came to
prominence.
During the period from 1979 to 1984, national videotex systems
were developed in some fifteen countries including Britain,
France, and Germany in Europe and also Canada, Australia,
and Japan (but not the United States). Videotex was intended to
provide an information service for businesses and consumers.
The videotex technology was developed in the United Kingdom
and was based on the teletext system devised there for
broadcast television in the early 1970s. National videotex
systems were developed in complex public–private
partnerships, with the network infrastructure funded and
controlled by the national PTTs (postal, telegraph, and
telephone authorities), augmented by private-sector information
and equipment suppliers. With the single exception of France,
in every country where videotex systems were developed, after
an initial burst of enthusiasm, they failed to take off as
consumer services and gradually faded away or became purely
business systems. France, however, launched its national
videotex system Télétel as a grand project in 1982. Télétel was
seen as a means of modernizing and complementing France's
aging telephone infrastructure—and the "killer application"
would be an online telephone directory. The French government
provided inexpensive terminals for telephone users, and by
1988 there were 4.2 million terminals and 9,500 information
providers. The French initiative showed, long before the Internet
euphoria of the 1990s, that a government could kick-start an
information revolution. The failure of videotex elsewhere had
multiple causes: the technology was expensive and somewhat
immature, and the nonparticipation of the United States
undermined its credibility. By the early twenty-first century,
France was in the uncomfortable position of migrating to the
global Internet.
Although the Internet is generally perceived as an American
invention, in fact it is built on a constellation of technologies and
standards that were negotiated and developed worldwide over a
thirty-year period, starting in the second half of the 1960s. One
of the underlying technologies of the Internet, for example, is
packet-switched communications, which was initially developed
in the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom in the
1960s. Many of the computer networking concepts on which the
Internet is based were first elaborated in the Geneva-
based International Organization for Standardization. Europe's
most important contribution to the Internet was the invention of
the World Wide Web by the British-born computer scientist Tim
Berners-Lee, while working at the CERN European Particle
Physics Laboratory in 1991. Up to that time the Internet had
been primarily used by the technical and scientific communities,
but the World Wide Web opened it up to ordinary citizens by
means of point-and-click software that was very easy to use.
Europe has been an enthusiastic adopter of the Internet. By
2005 nearly 50 percent of European Union citizens had access
to the Internet, and the rest of Europe was catching up fast (with
about 17 percent having access). In the future the Internet will
have massive but unpredictable consequences for Europe, as
for the rest of the world. For example, the Internet is already
enabling firms to reach global markets for which their small size
and remoteness were formally insuperable barriers. The
Internet has enabled the "outsourcing" of labor—from which
some countries benefit, while others lose out. And the adoption
of American English as the lingua franca of the Internet poses a
significant challenge to Europe's diverse cultural heritage.