Name: Analog Superpowers: How 20th Century Tech. Theft Built the Natl. Sec. State
Start: 2025-03-11T19:00:00-07:00
End: 2025-03-11T21:00:00-07:00
Location: 567 Yosemite Dr

Analog Superpowers: How 20th Century Tech. Theft Built the Natl. Sec. State

This talk will explore the importace of analog computing, and its surprising connections with digital devices and major powers at war.
About this Event

Join us for Analog Superpowers: How 20th Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State, an event on Tue, March 11, 2025 at 7pm at SEMI, 567 Yosemite Drive, Milpitas, CA 95035. (Also available via Zoom - see https://californiaconsultants.org/event/analog-superpowers-how-20th-century-technology-theft-built-the-national-security-state/)

We'll have free quality pizza and drinks starting at 6:30pm. Come early and network with our members, other engineers, interested parties, and possible consulting clients.

In this talk, which draws on her new book , Katherine C. Epstein will explore a little-known but important chapter in the history of analog computing, and its surprising connections with today’s world of digital devices and great-power competition.

In the decade before World War I, two British civilians named Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood invented an artificially intelligent analog computer for aiming the big guns of battleships. Rather than pay for their invention, however, first the British navy and then the US navy pirated it. When the inventors sued for patent infringement, both governments invoked legal privileges to withhold evidence on the grounds of national-security secrecy. The US lawsuits became entangled with high-level Anglo-American diplomacy during World War II and with the Manhattan Project. The talk will thus speak to several major—and timely—issues: the intersection of computer technology and geopolitical rivalry, the impact of patent laws on defense innovation, and the scope of government secrecy.

Speaker Bio:

Kate Epstein is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden. Her research examines the intersection of defense contracting, government secrecy, and intellectual property in the United States and Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century, as well as Anglo-American relations and great-power competition.

Besides the new book that is the subject of this talk, she is also the author of (Harvard University Press, 2014). Her work has appared in numerous scholarly journals as well as in The Wall Street Journal, Liberties, and American Purpose.