The British Computer Industry

The British Computer Industry PDF Author: Tim Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351204378
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Originally published in 1987, this book explores the history and geography of the computer industry in Britain and the evolution of the market leader firms, STC ICL and IBM (UK). It also examines the rising rate of new firm formation in the 1980s and the technology policies adopted by successive governments and analyses how well the industry is placed to cope with the challenges of technological change and increased international competition.

The British Computer Industry

The British Computer Industry PDF Author: Tim Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351204378
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Originally published in 1987, this book explores the history and geography of the computer industry in Britain and the evolution of the market leader firms, STC ICL and IBM (UK). It also examines the rising rate of new firm formation in the 1980s and the technology policies adopted by successive governments and analyses how well the industry is placed to cope with the challenges of technological change and increased international competition.

The Early Computer Industry

The Early Computer Industry PDF Author: A. Gandy
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230389112
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Uses case studies to explore why large scale electronics failed to win a leadership position in the early computer industry and why IBM, a firm with a heritage in the business machines industry, succeeded. The cases cover both the US and the UK industry focusing on electronics giants GE, RCA, English Electric, EMI and Ferranti.

Innovating for Failure

Innovating for Failure PDF Author: John Hendry
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN: 9780262081870
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
From computers to body scanners, from hovercraft to monoclonal antibodies, British researchers have been among the world's leaders in scientific discovery and invention. But British business has failed repeatedly to exploit these discoveries. This first in-depth history of the early British computer industry provides a valuable case study in the implementation of public innovation policy with lessons for any country trying to compete for sales in international high-technology markets.The birth of modern computers in Great Britain coincided with the establishment in the late 1940s of the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), which was charged with assisting commercial development of new technologies. John Hendry details ten years of effort by the NRDC to establish a British computer industry able to compete internationally, particularly with IBM. He examines the reasons for their failure to achieve this and explores the consequences and implications of this failure.Focusing on the creation, implementation, and management of government sponsorship policies and the responses of businesses to those policies, Hendry discusses the broad issues of government policy and the exploitation of technology in the United Kingdom the commercial development of computer technology in post-World War II America and Britain, the genesis and impact of NRDC policies for commercializing the new technology, and the conflict between national competitiveness and the ideals of fairness and consensus.John Hendry is Lecturer in Strategic Management and Director of the Centre for Strategic Management and Organizational Change at the Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield Institute of Technology, England Innovating for Failure is included in the History of Computing series edited by I. Bernard Cohen and William Aspray.

The Computer Industry in the United Kingdom 1966-67

The Computer Industry in the United Kingdom 1966-67 PDF Author: James N. Carr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computer industry
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description


Early British Computers

Early British Computers PDF Author: Simon Hugh Lavington
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719008108
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description


Programmed Inequality

Programmed Inequality PDF Author: Mar Hicks
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535181
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

The American Computer Industry in Its International Competitive Environment

The American Computer Industry in Its International Competitive Environment PDF Author: United States. Bureau of Domestic Commerce
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Computer industry
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description


From Mainframes to Smartphones

From Mainframes to Smartphones PDF Author: Martin Campbell-Kelly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674286553
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This compact history traces the computer industry from its origins in 1950s mainframes, through the establishment of standards beginning in 1965 and the introduction of personal computing in the 1980s. It concludes with the Internet’s explosive growth since 1995. Across these four periods, Martin Campbell-Kelly and Daniel Garcia-Swartz describe the steady trend toward miniaturization and explain its consequences for the bundles of interacting components that make up a computer system. With miniaturization, the price of computation fell and entry into the industry became less costly. Companies supplying different components learned to cooperate even as they competed with other businesses for market share. Simultaneously with miniaturization—and equally consequential—the core of the computer industry shifted from hardware to software and services. Companies that failed to adapt to this trend were left behind. Governments did not turn a blind eye to the activities of entrepreneurs. The U.S. government was the major customer for computers in the early years. Several European governments subsidized private corporations, and Japan fostered R&D in private firms while protecting its domestic market from foreign competition. From Mainframes to Smartphones is international in scope and broad in its purview of this revolutionary industry.

The British Computer Scene, Part Ii. the British Computer Industry

The British Computer Scene, Part Ii. the British Computer Industry PDF Author: J. Cowie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
This is the second of a series of reports on a survey of the British computer scene. The British computer industry is described by presenting the products, capabilities, plans, strengths and weaknesses of English Electric-Leo-Marconi, International Computers and Tabulators, and Elliott Automation. The government role in assisting the industry is discussed. US interests in the British market are reviewed.

The Rhetoric of Americanisation

The Rhetoric of Americanisation PDF Author: Robert James Kirkwood Reid
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This research seeks to understand the process of technological development in the UK and the specific role of a 'rhetoric of Americanisation' in that process. The concept of a 'rhetoric of Americanisation' will be developed throughout the thesis through a study into the computer industry in the UK in the post-war period. Specifically, the thesis discusses the threat of America, or how actors in the network of innovation within the British computer industry perceived it as a threat and the effect that this perception had on actors operating in the networks of construction in the British computer industry. However, the reaction to this threat was not a simple one. Rather this story is marked by sectional interests and technopolitical machination attempting to capture this rhetoric of 'threat' and 'falling behind'. In this thesis the concept of 'threat' and 'falling behind', or more simply the 'rhetoric of Americanisation', will be explored in detail and the effect this had on the development of the British computer industry. What form did the process of capture and modification by sectional interests within government and industry take and what impact did this have on the British computer industry? In answering these questions, the thesis will first develop a concept of a British culture of computing which acts as the surface of emergence for various ideologies of innovation within the social networks that made up the computer industry in the UK. In developing this understanding of a culture of computing, the fundamental distinction between the US and UK culture of computing will be explored. This in turn allows us to develop a concept of how Americanisation emerged as rhetorical construct. With the influence of a 'rhetoric of Americanisation', the culture of computing in the UK began to change and the process through which government and industry interacted in the development of computing technologies also began to change. In this second half of the thesis a more nuanced and complete view of the nature of innovation in computing in the UK in the sixties will be developed. This will be achieved through an understanding of the networks of interaction between government and industry and how these networks were reconfigured through a 'rhetoric of Americanisation'. As a result of this, the thesis will arrive at a more complete view of change and development within the British computer industry and how interaction with government influences that change.