Today, for today's image, we're doing a bit of technology archaeology, since the letter above is the origin of a word that is now very familiar to us: computer !
This correspondence of April 16, 1955, signed by the philologist* Jacques Perret, professor at the Faculty of Letters of Paris (Sorbonne), is a response to the IBM firm, then looking for a French translation for the word Desktop.
And here is the transcription of the complete letter:
"16th IV 1955
Dear Sir,
What would you say about computer? It is a correctly formed word, which is even found in the Littré as an adjective designating God who puts order in the world. A word of this kind has the advantage of easily giving a verb ordiner, a noun of action ordination. The disadvantage is that ordination designates a religious ceremony; but the two fields of meaning (religion and accounting) are so far removed and the ordination ceremony known, I believe, to so few people that the disadvantage is perhaps minor. Besides, your machine would be computer (and not ordination) and this word is completely out of theological usage. Systémateur would be a neologism, but one that does not seem offensive to me; it allows systematized; — but system does not seem very usable to me — Combinateur has the disadvantage of the pejorative sense of combine; combiner is common and therefore not very capable of becoming technical; combination does not seem very viable to me because of the proximity of combination. But the Germans do have their combines (a sort of trust, I believe), so the word might have possibilities other than those evoked by combine.Congestor, digester evoke too much congestion and digestion. Synthesizer does not seem to me to be a new enough word to designate a specific object, determined like your machine.
Rereading the brochures you gave me, I see that several of your devices are designated by feminine agent names (sorter, tabulator). Computer would be perfectly possible and would even have the advantage of separating your machine even more from the vocabulary of theology. It is also possible to add to an agent name a complement: computer of complex elements or an element of composition, for example: selecto-systemator. Selecto-computer has the disadvantage of two o's in hiatus, like electro-computer.
I think I would lean towards electronic computer. I hope that these suggestions will stimulate and guide your own inventive faculties. Do not hesitate to give me a call if you have an idea that seems to you to require the advice of a philologist.
Your
Jacques Perret »
And so it was that a man of letters, having nothing to do with technology, invented the word computer on behalf of IBM, which first registered the name before leaving it in the public domain!
Source
*Philology is the study of language.
