This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the Third IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on the History of Nordic Computing, HiNC3, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2010. The 50 revised full papers presented together with a keynote address and a panel discussion were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers focus on the application and use of ICT and ways in which technical progress affected the conditions of the development and use of ICT systems in the Nordic countries covering a period from around 1970 until the beginning of the 1990s. They are organized in the following topical sections: computerizing public sector industries; computerizing management and financial industries; computerizing art, media, and schools; users and systems development; the making of a Nordic computing industry; Nordic networking; Nordic software development; Nordic research in software and systems development; teaching at Nordic universities; and new historiographical approaches and methodological reflections.

This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the 4th IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on the History of Nordic Computing, HiNC 4, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in August 2014. The 37 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this volume. The papers focus on innovative ICT milestones that transformed the nordic societies and on the new ideas, systems and solutions that helped creating the welfare societies of today, in particular solutions and systems for public services, e.g., tax, social benefits, health care and education; solutions and systems for the infrastructure of the society, e.g., banking, insurance, telephones, transport and energy supply; and technologies and IT policies behind the major IT milestones, e.g., user centric innovation, programming techniques and IT ethics. They are organized in topical sections on IT policy, infrastructure, public services, private services, telesystems, health care, IT in banking, transport and IT technology.

Computing in the Nordic countries started in late 1940s mainly as an engineering activity to build computing devices to perform mathematical calculations and assist mathematicians and engineers in scientific problem solving. The early computers of the Nordic countries emerged during the 1950s and had names like BARK, BESK, DASK, SMIL, SARA, ESKO, and NUSSE. Each of them became a nucleus in institutes and centres for mathematical computations programmed and used by highly qualified professionals. However, one should not forget the punched-card machine technology at this time that had existed for several decades. In addition, we have a Nordic name, namely Frederik Rosing Bull, contributing to the fundaments of punched card technology and forming the French company Bull. Commercial products such as FACIT EDB and SAAB D20-series computers in Sweden, the Danish GIER computer, the Nokia MIKKO computer in Finland, as well as the computers of Norsk Data in Norway followed the early computers. In many cases, however, companies and institutions did not further develop or exploit Nordic computing hardware, even though it exhibited technical advantages. Consequently, in the 1970s, US computers, primarily from IBM, flooded the Nordic market.

This book reviews the shift in the historiography of computing from inventors and innovations to a user-perspective, and examines how the relevant sources can be created, collected, preserved, and disseminated. The text describes and evaluates a project in Sweden that documented the stories of around 700 people. The book also provides a critical discussion on the interpretation of oral evidence, presenting three case studies on how this evidence can inform us about the interaction of computing with large-scale transformations in economies, cultures, and societies. Features: describes a historiography aimed at addressing the question of how computing shaped and transformed Swedish society between 1950 and 1980; presents a user-centered perspective on the history of computing, after explaining the benefits of such an approach; examines the documentation of users, describing novel and innovative documentation methods; discusses the pros and cons of collaborative projects between academia and industry.

The First Conference on the History of Nordic Computing (HiNC1) was organized in Trondheim, in June 2003. The HiNC1 event focused on the early years of computing, that is the years from the 1940s through the 1960s, although it formally extended to year 1985. In the preface of the proceedings of HiNC1, Janis Bubenko, Jr. , John Impagliazzo, and Arne Sølvberg describe well the peculiarities of early Nordic c- puting [1]. While developing hardware was a necessity for the first professionals, quite soon the computer became an industrial product. Computer scientists, among others, grew increasingly interested in programming and application software. P- gress in these areas from the 1960s to the 1980s was experienced as astonishing. The developments during these decades were taken as the focus of HiNC2. During those decades computers arrived to every branch of large and medium-sized businesses and the users of the computer systems were no longer only computer s- cialists but also people with other main duties. Compared to the early years of comp- ing before 1960, where the number of computer projects and applications was small, capturing a holistic view of the history between the 1960s and the 1980s is conside- bly more difficult. The HiNC2 conference attempted to help in this endeavor.

In the history of education, the question of how computers were introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The contributions shed light on the computerization of education from a historical perspective, by attending closely to the different actors involved – such as politicians, computer manufacturers, teachers, and students –, political rationales and ideologies, as well as financial, political, or organizational structures and relations. The case studies highlight differences in political and economic power, as well as in ideological reasoning and the priorities set by different stakeholders in the process of introducing computers into education. However, the contributions also demonstrate that simple cold war narratives fail to capture the complex dynamics and entanglements in the history of computers as an educational technology and a subject taught in schools. The edited volume thus provides a comprehensive historical understanding of the role of education in an emerging digital society.

The history of how computers spread to over 20 nations globally in less than six decades, exploring economic, political, social and technological reasons and consequences. It is based on extensive research into primary and secondary sources, and concludes with a discussion of implications for key players in the globalized economy.