2024 Mahoney Prize Winner

Corinna Schlombs. “Built on the Hands of Women: Data, Automation, and Gender in West Germany’s Financial Industry” Technology and Culture 64, no. 1 (January 2023): 63-89. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2023.0002.

“Built on the Hands of Women” explores the topic of data entry which has been neglected in the history of computing. Though under-explored, achieving efficient, large scale data entry was a pressing concern in the early days of mainframe business computing, and continues to be important today. Schlombs’ detailed research consists of two in-depth case studies of different approaches taken by German finance companies to address this issue. Allianz insurance company adopted a technological solution, while Sparkassen savings bank went for a sociotechnical approach. Utilizing detailed archival sources Schlombs explores the implications of these differing tactics focusing particularly on the consequences for the female workforce employed for data entry. The cases are firmly situated in the social, political, and economic climate of midcentury post-war Germany.

The article offers an outstanding critique of labour relations and in particular establishes that white-collar work can have a real physical impact on employees, even down to the food they are provided with. The technological details of the development of equipment used for data entry are well positioned in the broader international literature. Schlombs draws on novel archival materials demonstrating expert use of sources in English and German. She offers a carefully written detailed history which is highly original. Her research into data entry undercovers a crucial component of computing history which has been overlooked despite being an essential precondition for computerization. The research is transnational in perspective and opens up a generative area for future scholarship.