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Whatsapp ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was known as the first electronic computer, and was developed by the University of Pennsylvania in 1946.

Born in Sydney in 1907, Gordon Stanley Brown became professor of electrical engineering at MIT, where he contributed to the birth of modern digital technology. Today, however, he’s largely forgotten. Stan Correy looks at his life, and finds his advice is still relevant in an age of technological ‘disruption’.

Born in the Sydney suburb of Drummoyne in 1907 and educated at the Working Men’s College of Melbourne (now RMIT), Gordon Stanley Brown was a pioneer of automation and computer technology. Today, however, Brown is almost completely forgotten in his home country, which he left in the late 1920s.

Automation the concept and not automation the gadget is what we need to understand. Gadgets are short-lived, but a concept is open-ended and lasting, and bears directly on the problem of change: change in your life and mine, and what is important on the rate of change.

One internet biography notes that in Melbourne, ‘Brown excelled in the city’s public technical school, believing that his training gave him the means to build this young nation. He was first in his class and then spent an additional two years at Workingman’s College ... where, by age 18, he had earned three diplomas in mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering.’

Before he left Australia, Brown worked for the Victorian State Electricity Commission, travelling around the state in order to determine what equipment was necessary for the modernisation of the electrical grid.

The Electricity Commission suggested to Brown that he go to the US to learn about the latest developments in electrical technology, so he packed his bags and headed to MIT. However, when he returned to Australia he was told by Melbourne University admissions officers that he would not be credited for his work at MIT, which they did not believe was ‘a true university’.

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Whatsapp Gordon Stanley Brown later in life. He died in America in 1996.

Melbourne’s loss turned out to be a great gain for America. Brown went back to MIT and completed his doctorate on automatic control systems. In 1939 he established the Servo-Mechanism Laboratory, which did much of the original research in automation and digital computing. One of Brown’s students, Jay Forrester, went on to create core memory technology, laying the foundation for modern computers.

Brown worked at the cutting edge of automation research in both civilian and military technology. His views on the future of technological change are still relevant today, as governments, industry and individuals struggle with disruptive technology.

‘It is not possible for any person living today to visualise what the technology of 10 years hence has to offer. The one point that is clear from the record is that the future will be different, that it will surprise us,’ he said in 1959.

I only stumbled upon Brown’s extraordinary life and career by accident when I was searching for historical context for the current media obsession with digital disruption.

Fear and excitement about automation and robots isn’t new, so I wasn’t surprised that 60 years ago there were headlines in our newspapers that mirror stories from today almost exactly.

These articles were about robots and the impact of automation on employment—'Here Comes the Robot', 'Robot Efficiency Made Businessmen Gasp' and 'How will automation hit us? Will it be a Frankenstein flinging thousands into unemployment?'

Future Liberal prime minister Harold Holt was then minister for labour, and to ease the concerns of workers and employers he did what any politician would do: he set up a committee on automation. ‘The use of the term ‘automation’ has tended in recent months to be overdone,’ Holt commented.

The ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ image of automation was helped along by Hollywood’s newfound interest in robots. In April 1956 the science fiction classic Forbidden Planet was released, with a poster featuring a menacing Robby the Robot carrying an unconscious semi-naked young woman.

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Whatsapp 1956's Forbidden Planet.

During the winter months of 1956 when the automation panic was at its height, Gordon Brown decided to pay a visit to Australia.

The Melbourne Argus of 23 June reported that, ‘Dr Gordon Stanley Brown, American automation specialist and professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ... is in Australia to visit his family—two brothers and his mother—who he has not seen for 17 years.’

The ABC invited Brown on Guest of Honour, then ABC radio's flagship talks program. The message of Brown’s talk, which was broadcast on 15 July 1956, was ‘don’t panic’. [You can read the original transcript here].

‘Automation the concept and not automation the gadget is what we need to understand,’ he said. ‘Gadgets are short-lived, but a concept is open-ended and lasting, and bears directly on the problem of change: change in your life and mine, and what is important on the rate of change.

‘The aroused state of mind in the general public on the topic of automation has on several occasions obscured many important issues that today face all industrialised societies. Automation is often presented as both a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, when the truth of the matter it is basically merely a rapidly expanding concept important to you and me.’

Words worth bearing in mind the next time you read about ‘disruptive technology’.

The disruption obsession Listen to this episode of Rear Vision to find out more about Gordon S. Brown and disruptive technologies.

If you have any further information about Gordon Stanley Brown, Rear Vision would love to hear from you. Rear Vision puts contemporary events in their historical context, answering the question, ‘How did it come to this?’



