Roberto Busa, S. J., and the Emergence of Humanities Computing

The Priest and the Punched Cards

Steven E. Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138587250
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317286530
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

It's the founding myth of humanities computing and digital humanities: In 1949, the Italian Jesuit scholar, Roberto Busa, S.J., persuaded IBM to offer technical and financial support for the mechanized creation of a massive lemmatized concordance to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Using Busa's own papers, recently accessioned in Milan, as well as IBM archives and other sources, Jones illuminates this DH origin story. He examines relationships between the layers of hardware, software, human agents, culture, and history, and answers the question of how specific technologies afford and even constrain cultural practices, including in this case the academic research agendas of humanities computing and, later, digital humanities.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction Roberto Busa, S.J. and the Emergence of Humanities Computing
• 1 Priest Walks into the CEO’s Office The Meeting between Father Roberto Busa, S.J. and Thomas J. Watson, Sr. of IBM, November 1949
• 2 Oracle on 57th Street The IBM SSEC Large-scale Calculator, Representations of Computing, and the Role of the Adjacent Possible, 1948–1952
• 3 The Mother of All Humanities Computing Demos The First Public Demo of Busa’s and Tasman’s Punched-Card Method of “Literary Data Processing,” June 27, 1952
• 4 Centers of Activity The Founding of CAAL, the First Literary Data Processing Center in Gallarate, Italy, 1954–1956
• 5 Computing Philology The Dead Sea Scrolls Project, “A Quality Leap and New Dimensions,” 1957–1959
• Works Cited
• Index