Computer-Aided Design in the United States, 1949–1984: Designing in a Closed World

Drawing together four interconnected contexts or sites—radar defense, numerical control, technology transfer programs, and the gradual formation of a software market—this article offers a history of computer-aided design in the United States. It focuses on this technology’s formative period, beginning in the Second World War’s aftermath and ending in the transitional decade of 1980 when—with the rise of personal computing—computer-aided design expanded beyond research labs and industry niches into a multibillion-dollar business. It traces the role of political doctrines and economic anxieties in shaping both academic and industry developments in computer-aided design, fostering it as a domain of speculative research, technical development, and ultimately commerce. It further documents this project’s ambition to reorganize a broad range of practices around computers for increased productivity and control, arguing the technology project of computer-aided design is best understood as an infrastructure—not an aid—for design.