Mackintosh Analyzer Company

-Mackintosh Hydraulic Company

-founded by Scottish guy in 1850s in Cincinnati

-originally working on making pipes and valves and the like

-develops analyzers as part of the Analyzers boom


-based on the differential analyzer

-sells models over 1870s, including to government

-which makes it tangential to war effort in this era


-in 1880s gets order as part of the Analyzers > Grand Analyzers of the Hydraulic Era from government

-builds standard water valve for it, a bunch of them, and memory w/ wall effect

-thus becomes very important in rise of numeric analyzers


-in 1894 builds a Grand Mackintosh Analyzer as part of influential business model of timesharing

-aka "Old Mack" or "Mack I"

-businesses can send requests for programmes, and receive results by telegraph

-and company organizes team of programmers

-all women, often referred to as a "programme harem" in "purdah" doing this grunt work

-but with "important" positions of management, planning with mathematics, taken by men

-makes it leading part of analyzer industry


-despite bickering over it being a corporate clique it limbers on as one of several new cartels of the economy


-later faced with the Recessions > Panic of 1911 and the ensuing Great Depression

-causes analyzers to lose revenue as businesses reduce money they spend on it

-forces Mackintosh to make Mack II, a bigger meaner analyzer able to get more orders and compute them better

-which it promotes even more heavily

-also contracts out inventory managing analyzers for big businesses

-which is increasingly viable as water valves reduce