New Technology

The basic breakthrough came as a result of wartime scientific research conducted in the world’s leading universities and research institutions: the universities of Cambridge and Manchester in Britain, and in the United States the university of Pennsylvania (where the Moore School of Engineering produced the first complete operating electronic computer, ENIAC) and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, where John von Neumann developed applications for the new machines. Translating this high-level research into practical production required immense resources, which could only be supplied by large corporations working across national frontiers.

With the introduction of the IBM 360 series in 1964, affordable and powerful enough for widespread commercial use, the computerization of Europe began. It is an interesting case of the transnational or multinational character of the new high technology: the model 360/40 was developed in Britain by IBM UK, the 360/20 by IBM Deutschland. States realized very quickly that they could not afford to miss out on this technology; but much more slowly that they could not afford to imitate it or substitute for it by themselves. The case of IBM in Europe is telling: in order to attempt to meet the potential American monopoly, France tried to support its own electronics industry. But even there it needed US help: in 1964 a very nationalistic French government was nevertheless obliged to accept a 50 per cent ownership of the French national champion, Machines Bull, by the American corporation General Electric. In 1966 as part of a Plan Calcul launched by de Gaulle, a new national champion was created, the Compagnie Internationale pour l’Informatique (CII). But the scale of investment required in high-technology branches was gigantic. France could hardly hope to spend the amounts required for technical development: the development of the 360 line cost $5 billion, or approximately the same amount spent by France between 1965 and 1970 on its nuclear force. Even on a European level, a plan to create a large multi-country corporation (named UNIDATA) in 1972, composed of the Dutch Philips, the German Siemens, and CII, broke down within four years. Technology had clearly overtaken the economic capacities of the nation-state.