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Coping With the “American Giants”
Abstract
At the beginning of the 1960s, several Western European computer firms faced financial issues and pressure from U.S. competitors. A series of negotiations attempted to create a consortium of European manufacturers, and while some of these had a positive outcome, in general they did not succeed; by 1964 IBM had more than a 60% share of the European computer market and General Electric acquired two of the most prominent companies in Europe. This case study examines negotiations during the years 1962–1964, focusing on contacts between U.K. manufacturers English Electric, LEO Computers, and ICT, and Italian Olivetti, French Bull, and German Siemens.
The history of Plan Calcul―France's first information technology program, launched by de Gaulle's government in 1966―has been well described in the literature; however, few studies investigate the arsenal system of the program in depth. Drawing from Plan Calcul's archives, this article is the first to demonstrate that, in the context of de Gaulle's Cold War foreign policy, the French government, initially aiming to avoid an arsenal system, still became the program's funding supplier, entrepreneur, and client. Plan Calcul aimed to establish an industrial-type operation but was ultimately reduced to a state information technology arsenal program.
L’auteur propose un modèle d’analyse historique du développement des premiers ordinateurs et une typologie des entreprises d’informatique : «entrepreneurs » , mécanographes et électroniciens ont réagi différemment, et avec différentes combinaisons d’atouts et de handicaps, à l’innovation que représentait la machine de Von Neumann. Parmi les mécanographes, Bull est un bon exemple du comportement essentiellement réactif de ce secteur, tandis qu’Olivetti tente d’échapper à ses contraintes en adoptant une stratégie de rupture typique des «entrepreneurs » . Les deux entreprises européennes, malgré des succès incontestables, tomberont en 1964 sous le contrôle d’un «électronicien » américain : General Electric, puis Honeywell en 1970. L’article résume des recherches en cours sur les relations entre Bull et Olivetti, notamment dans le cadre de la multinationale GE.
In the decade after the Second World War IBM rebuilt its European operations as integrated, wholly owned subsidiaries of its World Trade Corporation, chartered in 1949. Long before the European common market eliminated trade barriers, IBM created its own internal networks of trade, allocating the production of different components and products between its new subsidiaries. Their exchange relationships were managed centrally to ensure that no European subsidiary was a consistent net importer. At the heart of this system were eight national electric typewriter plants, each assembling parts produced by other European countries. IBM promoted these transnational typewriters as symbols of a new and peaceful Europe and its leader, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., was an enthusiastic supporter of early European moves toward economic integration. We argue that IBM’s humble typewriter and its innovative system of distributed manufacturing laid the groundwork for its later domination of the European computer business and provided a model for the development of transnational European institutions.
“Europe’s answer to the American challenge”1 — this was how the press commented on Unidata. The first European co-operative enterprise in the data processing industry was founded in 1973 as a joint venture by the French Compagnie Industrielle pour L’Informatique (CII), the Dutch Philips combine, and the German Siemens AG.2 Europe’s “technological backwardness” seemed to be highlighted most clearly in high technology areas by the superiority of American competitors. Thus the founding of Unidata, which was pushed forward by both the French and German governments, can be seen as a kind of defensive strategy against American companies such as IBM or General Electric/Honeywell and their aggressive marketing policy in Europe. Although this venture did not develop into the expected strong alliance to counter the American dominance in this market, and indeed failed after a few years, it can be taken as an example for the managerial problems “European Enterprises” still face nowadays.
The first section of the chapter provides an overview of European institutions, particularly the Common Market, known formally as the European Economic Community (EEC). This overview highlights the legal foundations on which European industrial policy was built, and the institutional dynamics that shaped its path of development. The section titled 'The Emergence of SRI Policy within the EEC, 1960-1965' surveys the emergence of European industrial policy in the period from 1960 through 1965; the section on 'Years of Revolution' looks at the period 1966-1967, when a political crisis rocked the Community and fundamental conceptual changes occurred in the realm of technology policy; the next section looks at the period 1968-1970, which witnessed a further Community crisis and a 'relaunch' of European technology policy in CDP; and the section on 'Unidata, 1971-1975' traces the emergence of Unidata, its structure, and its ultimate demise in that period. Finally, the relationship between European technology policy in CDP and the history of Unidata is summarized.
A comprehensive guide to why major companies with a heritage in electronics failed to establish themselves as leaders in the computer industry. Uses case studies to analyze the efforts of GE, RCA, English Electric, EMI and Ferranti to compete with business machine firms in the early mainframe computer market, primarily focusing on the USA's IBM and the UK's ICT. These case studies cover many important themes in enterprise organization and capabilities, and how the heritage which these firms came from was important to the performance of the corporation in a new and innovative market place. It critiques the value of economies of scope in productive and technical capabilities unless matched to equal competencies in customer understanding and market reach, and provides a guide to the both the business strategies and the technologies, which were fundamental to building our current information society.
In the late 1960s, the European Community (EC) Commission tried to develop a common industrial policy to help Europe establish a competitive position in the informatics sector. Before the middle of the 1970s, only a few of its projects were realized, and the most important were abandoned. The lack of progress appears fundamentally due to the member states' reluctance to relinquish control of this key sector.
No technology seems to have spread so fast around the world in such a short period of time as computers. It was a phenomenon that predated the arrival of the Internet and that began to change how businesses, governments, and whole societies functioned. The diffusion of information technologies occurred in dozens of countries all over the world with fascinating similarities and differences. In this book, historian James W. Cortada provides the first world-wide history of how computers appeared and were used in North America, all of Europe, and in most of Asia in barely a half century. He explores the causes of diffusion, arguing that more than the technology itself, other conditions were required for the spread of computers, such as standards of living, education, the Cold War, and globalization of the economy. He argues that these technologies are the glue that hold together today's economies and are propelling increases in the quality of life of over a billion people moving into the middle class. Based on archival and secondary research, extensive use of economic data, and detailed country case studies of over a dozen nations, Cortada tells the history of how computers were discovered, invented, built, and used, and the consequences for whole regions. This is the first attempt by any expert to write a global history of information technologies, and specifically, about how these spread. It is economic and business history, but also a guide to those who want to understand what is happening today in such nations as India, China, and other emerging economies as the Computer Revolution continues. He has insights for historians, economists, public officials, and business executives.
This article continues the story from the immediate post-war developments at NPL and the Cambridge and Manchester computers already discussed in Part 1, which was published in Electronics & Power, 1978, 24, pp. 827–832. It will be remembered that Alan Turing's 1946 design for an Automatic Computing Engine ran into difficulties, not least because the design itself and Turing's personality were incompatible with the other early British computer groups
An abstract is not available.
The patents of Fredrik-Rosing Bull, registered from 1919, were the origins of statistic punched card machines, initially manufactured in Norway, then in Switzerland, and finally in France after the creation of the company there in 1931. From 1935 onwards, the firmly established Compagnie des Machines Bull began to expand internationally until about 1960 when Bull had reached the point of being the second largest electronic business machine manufacturer in the world. Bull's conversion to electronics during the 1950s brought the company new successes (Gamma 3 in 1952, drum-augmented Gamma in 1956) but destabilized the company, since its financial position and management methods were rather unsuited to the new "technical system." Poor commercial distribution of the Gamma 60 (1960) was, in spite of its technical performance, only one of the reasons for the crisis that culminated in General Electric's acquiring a controlling interest in 1964, sold then to Honeywell in 1970. By the end of the 1980s, Bull, once again a company with a French shareholding majority, is now the leading European computer manufacturer and is ranked seventh worldwide.
This report indicates the level of computer development and application in each of the thirty countries of Europe, most of which were recently visited by the author
Information Technology (IT) has become symbolic of modernity and progress almost since its inception. The nature and boundaries of IT have also meant that it has shaped, or become embedded within, a wide range of other scientific, technological, and economic developments. Governments, from the outset, saw the computer as a strategic technology, a keystone of economic development, and an area where technology policy should be targeted. This was true for those economies interested in maintaining their technological and economic leadership, but also figured strongly in the developmental programmes of those seeking to modernize or catch up. So strong was this notion that predominant political economic ideologies have frequently been subverted or distorted to allow for special efforts to promote either the production or use of IT. This book brings together country-based studies to examine in depth the nature and extent of IT policies, as they have evolved from a complex historical interaction of politics, technology, institutions, and social and cultural factors. In doing so, many key questions are critically examined. Where can we find successful examples of IT policy? Who has shaped policy? Who did governments turn to for advice in framing policy? Several chapters outline the impact of military influence on IT. What is the precise nature of this influence on IT development? How closely were industry leaders linked to government programmes and to what extent were these programmes, particularly those aimed at the generation of 'national champions', misconceived through undue special pleading? How effective were government personnel and politicians in assessing the merits of programmes predicated on technological trajectories extrapolated from increasingly complex and specialised information?.
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