Haigh, ThomasThomasHaigh2023-08-172023-08-172023https://dspace.ub.uni-siegen.de/handle/ubsi/2452Modern discourses emphasizes electronic immateriality as the defining feature of digital technology. The idea that digits might be digital when punched onto cards, or even written on a piece of pa- per, is no longer intuitive. Yet by reconstructing the context in which the categories of digital and analog were first distinguished histori- cally in the 1940s, I argue that the concept of digitality is rooted in the mechanical representation of digits in early computers, which con- temporary observers immediately recognized was shared with earlier technologies such as telephone switching systems, punched cards, and calculating devices. Digitality is not a feature of an object itself, but of the way that object is read (whether by human or by machine) as encoding symbols chosen from a finite set. In conclusion, digitality is constituted through reading practices.enAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/302.23 Medien (Kommunikationsmittel), MedienwissenschaftDigitalAnalogBinaryDifferential analyzerBell LabsBookDigitaltechnikMedientechnikurn:nbn:de:hbz:467-245262567–2509