From giant despair to a new heaven: The early years of automatic collation

Abstract

This article presents a commented history of automatic collation, from the 1940s until the end of the twentieth century. We look at how the collation was progressively mechanized and automatized with algorithms, and how the issues raised throughout this period carry on into today’s scholarship. In particular, we examine the inner workings of early collation algorithms and their different steps in relation to the formalization of the Gothenburg Model. The scholars working with automatic collation also offer fascinating insights to study the collaborations between Humanists and Computer Scientists, and the reception of computers by philologists.