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Generations of Scientists and Engineers: Origins of the Computer Industry in Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

Erick D. Langer
Erick D. Langer*
Affiliation:
Carnegie Mellon University
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Brazil today constitutes one of the major manufacturers of microcomputers in the world, a seemingly surprising feat for a country that many view as part of the Third World. How was it possible for a developing nation like Brazil to create a high-technology industry and join the exclusive club of highly industrialized countries like the United States, Japan, and Germany as one of the major manufacturers of computers? Many political scientists, economists, and sociologists have tried to explain this exceptional phenomenon in primarily political terms. Most have studied the rise of nationalistic technocrats who began in the mid-1970s to implement a series of regulations that made it possible for Brazilian manufacturers to monopolize the domestic markets for minicomputers and microcomputers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , 1989 , pp. 95 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Ronaldo Hultmann and Edith Ranzini for their assistance in Brazil and Edward W. Constant III, Glen Langdon, Jr., and Joel Tarr for their helpful comments. Funding for this research was provided by a Technology and Society Program grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

References

Notes

1. As of 1986, Brazil ranked eighth in domestic market size, with a market projected for 1987 of 3.7 billion dollars, and its growth rate of 60 percent is the second-fastest in the world (only China's 80 percent growth rate is higher). See U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Industrial Outlook 1986 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), 287. The only other Third World country with a substantial domestic computer industry is India. On this topic, see Joseph M. Grieco, “Between Dependency and Autonomy: India's Experience with the International Computer Industry,” International Organization 36, no. 3:609–32; and his book with the same title (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984).

2. For example, see Emanuel Adler, The Power of Ideology: The Quest for Technological Autonomy in Argentina and Brazil (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). Also representative of this approach is The Computer Question in Brazil: High Technology in a Developing Society, edited by Antonio Botelho and Peter H. Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985).

3. Harold C. Mattraw, “Capabilities for Scientific Research and Engineering in Selected Latin American Countries,” Tempo, Research Memorandum RM 60TMP–59 (Santa Barbara, Calif.: General Electric Co., 1960), pp. 18, 21–22.

4. Simon Schwartzman, Science and Higher Education in Brazil: An Historical View (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 1979), especially pp. 13–17; and interview with Mário Schenberg, São Paulo, 24 May 1985. For an overview of the Brazilian nuclear program, see Joseph A. Camilleri, The State and Nuclear Power: Conflict and Control in the Western World (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 178–85. An excellent analysis of the nationalization of the petroleum industry is included in John D. Wirth, The Politics of Brazilian Development, 1930–1954 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1970).

5. Interview with Schenberg. The installation of this new computer was hailed in an article in the Folha da Tarde, 8 Aug. 1959. See the archives for the state of São Paulo (in São Paulo), under the section “Computadores.”

6. “Quatro Computadores Já com Importação Aprovada,” O Globo, 2 May 1960.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.; also an article in Folha da Tarde, 14 Oct. 1959. See the archives for the state of São Paulo (in São Paulo), under the section “Computadores.”

9. Interview with Cláudio Mammana, a former engineering student at the ITA now a faculty member of the physics department at the Universidade de São Paulo, in São Paulo, 31 May 1985; interview with Katuchi Techima, an ITA graduate and a professor at the Universidade de Brasília, São Paulo, 22 May 1985; and interview with Carlos Américo Morato de Andrade, São Paulo, 28 May 1985. For a description of the Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica, see Mattraw, “Capabilities for Scientific Research,” 20–21; on the Escola Superior de Guerra, see Alfred Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).

10. Interviews with Techima and Mammana; see also J. C. Melo, A Incrível Política Nacional de Informática (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1982), 17–18. Based on my information, Mário Ripper's reminiscence asserting that the Zezinho was meant to serve as an example to industry (as quoted in Adler) is probably inaccurate and appears retrospectively significant in this respect only because of the success of the Brazilian computer industry during the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Adler, The Power of Ideology, 244–45.

11. Interview with Mammana.

12. Interview with Schenberg.

13. Interview with Mammana.

14. Adler, The Power of Ideology. Also see Adler's article, “Ideological ‘Guerrillas’ and the Quest for Technological Autonomy: Brazil's Domestic Computer Industry,” International Organization 40 (1986):673–705.

15. See Adler, The Power of Ideology, 206–7, 245. Also see “Brasil Fará Computador,” Estado de São Paulo, 29 Oct. 1970.

16. Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico (BNDE) and the Universidade de Brasília, “Relatório das Visitas Efectuadas às Instituções de Ensino e Pesquisa,” 1969, typescript. My sincere thanks to Katuchi Techima for providing access to this important document.

17. Ibid. Parts of this report are summarized in “Brasil Já Pensa em Computadores,” O Estado de São Paulo, 20 Mar. 1969.

18. BNDE, “Relatório das Visitas,” appendix 1, p. 25.

19. Interview with Edson Fregni, São Paulo, 28 May 1985. A participant in Langdon's course, Fregni went on to found Scopus, a computer manufacturer, and to head the Associação Brasileira de Indústria de Computadores e Periféricos (ABICOMP), a computer industry interest group. Also, interview with Antônio Hélio Guerra Vieira, São Paulo, 31 May 1985.

20. Antônio Hélio Guerra Vieira, “EPUSP/LSD,” mimeo, São Paulo, 1971. This document lists five U.S. computer scientists who taught classes at the LSD between 1968 and 1971. Glen Langdon, Jr., also provided information on Vieira's strategy in a telephone interview on 18 April 1985. Work on computer peripherals in the initial stages of the LSD are also well documented by the grants listed in the Relatónos of the Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), an important source of funding for engineering and scientific research in São Paulo.

21. BNDE, “Relatório das Visitas”; interviews with Morato de Andrade and Langdon; also see FAPESP's Relatónos from 1966 onward.

22. Information on Guaranys's career and education comes from his curriculum vitae, kindly provided by Admiral César Moácir Bastos Cardoso, and from my interview with retired Admiral Roberto de Paula Messiano, a former classmate of Guaranys, who was also involved with GTE after 1973. The interview took place in Rio de Janeiro on 30 May 1985.

23. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, The American Challenge (New York: Atheneum, 1968). The book was cited by Guaranys in an interview with O Estado de São Paulo published 23 Mar. 1971 under the title “Computador Une Marinha, Universidade e Indústria.”

24. See “Brasil Deve Fazer os Computadores,” O Estado de São Paulo, 7 Jan. 1971; and “Brazil perto do seu 1a Computador,” O Estado de São Paulo, 21 Mar. 1971.

25. “Brazil perto do seu 1a Computador,” O Estado de São Paulo, 21 Mar. 1971.

26. “Podemos Construir um Computador Moderníssimo (Aguardamos Ordern),” Jornal da Tarde, 16 June 1971.

27. Interview with Fregni.

28. Masters' theses produced at the LSD include these titles (translated): “System of Graphic Representation on an Oscilloscope Screen,” by Francisco J. de Oliveira Dias (1971); “Modem for the Transmission of Data,” by Paulo Wanderley Patullo (1971); “Terminal for the Transmission of Data,” by Lucas Antônio Moscato (1971).

29. Interview with Edson Fregni. He later joined with Manasterski and Ikeda to found Scopus Tecnología, the largest privately owned manufacturer of microcomputer systems in the country. Also see Peter B. Evans, State, Capital, and the Transformation of Dependence: The Brazilian Computer Case, Working Paper no. 6 (Providence, R.I.: Center for the Comparative Study of Development, Brown University, 1985), 5.

30. “Na USP, Computador Brasileiro,” O Estado de São Paulo, 25 July 1972.

31. Interview with Edith Ranzini, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the LSD, São Paulo, 28 May 1985; and Adler, The Power of Ideology, 245.

32. Interviews with Mammana and Fregni.

33. Paulo Bastos Tigre, Technology and Competition in the Brazilian Computer Industry (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 110. Cláudio Fritschak, “The Informatics Sector in Brazil: Policies, Institutions, and the Performance of the Computer Industry,” paper presented at the National Science Foundation Symposium. “National Policies for Developing High Technology Industries: International Comparisons,” Washington, D.C., 12–13 Sept. 1985, p. 41; Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Computadores e Periféricos (ABICOMP), Catálogo da Indústria Brasileira de Informática 84/85 (Rio de Janeiro: ABICOMP, 1985), 5.

34. Adler, The Power of Ideology, 238–79. Also Evans, State, Capital; Bastos Tigre, Technology and Competition; Botelho and Smith, The Computer Question.

35. Regina Lúcia M. Morel and Carlos Médicis Morel, “Um Estudo sobre a Produção Científica Brasileira segundo os Dados do Institute for Scientific Information,” Ciência de Informação (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1978), as cited in Schwartzman, Science and Higher Education, p. 33, n. 34. University education is discussed in Fay Haussman and Jerry Haar, Education in Brazil (Hamden: Archon Books, 1978), 92–94.

36. Adler, The Power of Ideology, 262.

37. Simon Schwartzman, “High Technology or Self-Reliance? Brazil Enters the Computer Age,” The Computer Question, 29–34.

38. For an elaboration of this idea, see particularly the articles in Technology and Culture 17, no. 3 (1976), which deal with definitional problems of the developmental phase of technological change. Also see Raymond H. Isenson et al., Project Hindsight (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, 1969).