Review: Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 by Markus Krajewski

Markus Krajewski, a professor of Media History at Bauhaus University in Weimar, describes his book as the first attempt to trace the development of the card catalog, beginning as an aid to libraries’ flood of books and scholars’ deluge of citations, and later as the corporate office’s ubiquitous indexing system, ordering people, money, and inventory. He sees in the paper index card the prototypical universal machine defined by Alan Turing, and for this he puts its in lineage with the jacquard loom, electronic punch cards, the desktop computer, and today’s palm-sized processors