IG 0.006 POST | !!! technoloffspring !!!! [v.8] component of new part
I am working on a part of a new !!! technoloffspring !!! that includes one of my favorite things to do: go biking with my kids. I found this historic image on the Library of Congress website of women riding a bike while reading books from the 1890s. I LOVE this image. So, in my !!! technoloffspring !!! this group of women will use their strength and physical power (and mind power as referenced by the books!) to generate the power for another part of the machine that I am working on.
The sounds of this machine are loud and distracting. Loud like the sounds that women who operated electromechanical punch card tabulators must endure while working. “Cards were sorted at a rate of hundreds per minute using distractingly noisy machines.” (p. 67). “Packed into huge, factory-like rooms with dozens of other punchers, these women had to be able to tolerate noise and distraction while performing monotonous work accurately at a consistently high speed; it was crucial to the entire data-processing chain that the punchers’ work be virtually error-free.” (p. 67) References from the book “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologies and Lost Its Edge in Computing” by Mar Hicks.
The sound also includes the recorded voice of the man who coined the term “girl hour” and “kilo girl hour” which is (according to wiktionary) a “A unit of computing power in the context of 1940s–1970s technology equal to one female worker working for one hour, for example, writing code or entering data to punch cards”. In my mind, these women also ride while listening to the song “Bike Mission” by Kimya Dawson & Antsy Pants
Link to the song “Bike Mission” by Kimya Dawson & Antsy Pants https://www.shazam.com/track/59661267/the-mission
Link to “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologies and Lost Its Edge in Computing” by Mar Hicks “ by Mar Hicks https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535182/programmed-inequality/
Link to “Bearings for Sale” image. www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b27502/
Link to the recorded discussion of how the term “girls hours” was coined. https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/audio/4888-1
!!! techn010ffspring !!! 
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