Historical Information Science: An Emerging Unidiscipline

A wide range of views about history and historians is provided in the literature. Jean Cocteau has rather a jaundiced view. He says in his Journal d’un Inconnu: “L’histoire est un alliage de réel et de mensonge” (“history is a combination of reality and lies”). Oscar Wilde considers that: “The one duty we owe to history is to re‐write it”. Henry Ford is often misquoted as saying in a 1916 interview with the Chicago Tribune that “history is bunk”. In fact he said “history is more or less bunk” – but Americans usually take the subject more seriously. For instance Robert Blackey, an academic from California, writes: “Since our memories tend to be selective – remembering mostly what serves our purpose – the burden of the historian is to restore and retain that memory until it is as true and complete as we can make it”.

Eugene Garfield has established a fellowship in the history of scientific information in order to support research in that subject. The writer of the book being reviewed here notes (p. 161) Garfield’s remark at a conference “if you would understand the future, study the past”.

Professor McCrank, from Chicago State University, has compiled an interesting, if not monumental tome. He believes that the “motivation for this present endeavour” is the consequence of asking himself the question “What would it take to construct a holistic approach to historical information access, retrieval, analysis, and presentation using modern information technology?” The book is not quite so monumental as the number of pages might suggest. There are about 600 pages of text followed by at least 6,000 references which occupy over 300 pages. They are followed by an index of about 200 pages. The index is very large because it covers not only the preceding text but also all of the references; there must be about 10,000 entries in it.

The headings of the six chapters are as follows:

1. 1.

   (1) “Foundations and definitions”.

2. 2.

   (2) “The inspection: information, technology, and culture”.

3. 3.

   (3) “Sources and evidence: data and electronic archives”.

4. 4.

   (4) “New historicism and unidisciplinary history”.

5. 5.

   (5) “Historical information science issues”.

6. 6.

   (6) “The future of the past”.

Several appendices follow.

The chapters thoroughly cover each subject. For example in Chapter 4, text, image and art information analysis are discussed, to be followed by “medieval studies and electronic sources: exemplary syncretism” (a new word to me, this one. My dictionary tells me that to “syncretise” means “to combine or attempt to combine the characteristic teachings, beliefs, or practices of differing systems of religion or philosophy”).

Near the end of the book McCrank provides some comments about computer assisted and remote learning techniques when discussing their value for teaching history. He makes the perceptive remark:

… sheer availability and accessibility bring with them a subtle imperative for use, if for nothing more than to justify the investment … of course, faculty privilege can be used to dismiss the possibilities of taking a beating from the action crowd … emotional conviction may be evident in such discussions, but a firm basis on research is often lacking .

McCrank does not think much of the adoption by historians of computers. He says:

The potential for the alliance between history and Information Science was thought almost entirely in terms of employment opportunities for historians in archives, rather than any strong intellectual reinforcement. Indeed many of my colleagues wondered sceptically about the whole enterprise, and had little understanding of the early evolution of information science or a relationship between it and library and and archival science.

Continuing:

… these issues have changed slightly but it seems that the same kinds of the prejudices are common. One of these is that the historians work is so unique, existential, and rarefied, that he or she cannot gain assistance from modern information technology except in preliminary ways, because in the end human judgement must prevail.

Two important questions need to be answered while reading a book of this kind. “Does it cover non‐American work in this field? and “What is information science”, Tefko Sarajevic (Rutgers University) has addressed both questions in a very good article (Sarajevic, 1999). In “What is now TREC (text retrieval experiment)” he writes:

… started with the Cranfield evaluations in the late fifties and sixties … remarkably the basic evaluation principles developed then there are still the underpinning of TREC today.

The Cranfield work, led by Cyril Cleverdon in England, was followed by the International TREC project – both covering research into indexing and retrieval. In a section headed “Computer science” Sarjevic (1999) quotes a definition of it:

The discipline of computing is the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transfer information: their theory, analysis, design, efficiency, implementation and application.

The fundamental question underlying all of the computing is “What can be (efficiently) automated?”

Referring to McCrank’s exclusion of non‐American work, you will realise that the title of his book should really be “Historic American Information Science”. Important early work in the subject done in England is excluded. With regard to “information science”, criticism of exclusions depends on what is meant by those words. Sarajevic (1999) in common with many others, has difficulties in defining information science. He distinguishes between the systems centred approach and the user centred approach. McCrank believes that information science includes information and computer technology as he provides extensive coverage of these subjects in Chapter 2 and, a further 45 pages in Chapter 5 which includes the sub‐title “software solutions”. In a historical work covering this area it seems extraordinary that nothing is said about UK inventions in radar and computer technology in the Second World War and up to about 1950. I know many Americans who are delightful people. None of them are affected by the Not Invented Here Syndrome. But for those who are, permit me to write a few words which wll be (I hope) of interest.

The work done in the UK from 1939 onwards on the development of radar led directly to the immediate post‐war work on computers. It was started at Orford Ness and at Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk in1936. When war broke out the research was moved to Dundee and to a second sight on the edge of the Purbeck Hills near Langton Matravers. Subsequently Malvern College in the Midlands was taken over, the whole then being called the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE)

F.C. Williams (“Freddie”), a brilliant engineer, worked in the cricket pavilion at Malvern. Later he became Professor Sir F.C. Williams FRS. Consider the importance of measuring extremely short time intervals. Circuits were devised to achieve great accuracy in the linearity and duration of a cathode‐ray tube’s trace – leading to very accurate time interval measurements. Almost the same circuits are used today in computers with transistors instead of valves. Williams invented a circuit which he christened the Phantastron by reason of its remarkable performance to perform this function

Williams invented the world’s first magnetic drum store. He noticed a motor cycle‐parts plating shop from his window. Taking a brass cylinder with him he popped across the road to have it nickel electroplated. It was tested on the Manchester Mark 1 computer.

His best known invention was the Williams Tube – one of the first , if not the very first, program storage device for an electronic computer. This electrostatic store held 1,024 bits. Williams and his colleague Tom Kilburn, moved to Manchester University where, In 1948, Kilburn wrote a program which was successfully stored on a Williams tube. This method of storage was used on the world’s fastest computers between 1949 and 1954. The invention was licensed to IBM and used on their 701 machine.

The National Research Development Organisation (NRDC) was set up partly to save large amounts of valuable foreign currency being used to buy devices made by successful exploiters of UK inventions. One of its first activities was to defend the patented Williams Tube against rival claims made in the USA.

Although the cavity magnetron was associated with radar, not computers, it seems appropriate to include it here because it was one of the great inventions of the war. Until 1940 radar worked at metre wavelengths, measuring the time it took transmitted pulses to be reflected and returned from a remote object. Until 1940 it used wide beam metre wavelengths. In 1940 John Randall and Henry Boot took their invention, the cavity magnetron, to the USA. It was put into production in weeks. It generated kilowatts of power at centimetric wavelengths with that power concentrated into a narrow beam revolutionising radar performance.

In the 1950s, the British lead in computer developments was surpassed by reason of US expertise, resources and marketing.