Investigators from University College London (UCL) Release New Data on Geography (A Pioneering Use of Early Computers In Weather and Mortality Research: Ellsworth Huntington’s Work With New York Life Insurance Companies In the 1920s)

2021 FEB 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Computer Business Daily -- Investigators publish new report on Geography. According to news reporting from London, United Kingdom, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “Geographers are familiar with Ellsworth Huntington’s influential, yet frequently derided, claims about climatic determinism, eugenics, and the progress of civilization. His work on weather and mortality in New York City, a study conducted under the auspices of the National Research Council and with the extensive collaboration of New York-based life insurance companies, offers a different insight into Huntington’s approach.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from University College London (UCL), “Although the results of this 1920s research project had a limited impact on the field, the work that produced it represents one of the earliest examples of using computing technology in the atmospheric sciences. Drawing on archival research at Yale University and the National Academy of Sciences, the article argues that not only can Huntington be considered pioneering in his use of early computers but the use of such machines constrained the research in important ways. The limited funding and processing capabilities of early computers, standardized punch card designs, necessary labor and staff time, and clerks’ learned practices all came to define the research project.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “This demonstrates that early computers did not simply enable more efficient numerical analysis of geographical problems but rather that they were part of sociotechnical configurations that were coemergent from the situated development of technologies within user communities.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: A Pioneering Use of Early Computers In Weather and Mortality Research: Ellsworth Huntington’s Work With New York Life Insurance Companies In the 1920s. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2020;111(2):1-16. Annals of the American Association of Geographers can be contacted at: Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2-4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, Oxon, England.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Samuel Randalls, University College London (UCL), Dept. of Geography, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1773233. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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