It is an Ill wind that blows nobody any good - from Berlin to Haiti

For as long as I can remember I have been reading the phrase "EDI has its beginnings in the Berlin Airlift in 1948". The next bit of history usually jumps to the 1960's American Transport industry. I read this again recently and for once it got me wondering. What electronic communication was there in 1948? What message was it and in what format, and how was it delivered? How was it developed and agreed? What was it about the Berlin Airlift that needed an EDI message?

The details took quite a bit of tracking down (I have included some links below), but the best source I could find for this bit of history is one Maj. Edward Guilbert who was a traffic manager in Berlin. On leaving the army he went to work... ...in the transport industry.

To answer the questions above,

What electronic communication was there in 1948? Teletype.

What message was it, in what format, and how was it delivered? Manifest or Advanced Ship Note. No examples are believed to survive. It was radioed by teletype to Berlin from the planes departing airport, as soon as possible after the planes wheels left the ground.

How was it developed and agreed? You're in the Army now. You do as you are told. I don't know if the supplying airports and plane companies adopted the same procedures for their other business, but I doubt it. But it made clear what was possible.

What was it about the Berlin Airlift that needed an EDI message? In a word "Bottleneck" Every last kilo of supplies was vital but it couldn’t just sit on the ground at the Berlin airports. At the rate of a plane every few minutes, parking space for planes would soon disappear. Even if planes unloaded and departed, hangers would soon fill up. The goods needed to be moved on which meant the right people needed to be ready to receive the right goods.

There is a wonderful story about how they tried to stop the incoming pilots disappearing for a hot drink and a snack, by supplying mobile refreshment manned by pretty young frauleins, all to shave valuable minutes off the turnaround time.

It struck me that what was game changing about this was not Electronics or Message Formats. It wasn’t about Cost Saving. When you are fighting a Cold War, cost is no object. It seems to me that what made all the difference was Standardization. Different parties, all did the same thing, in the same way, to speed up processes that would otherwise jam up and slow to a crawl.
The Berlin Airlift would make a good motion picture. The struggle to overcome adversity through perseverance and ingenuity. How the little guys succeeded by teamwork and coordination. I can see it now, “EDI – The Movie”. Well OK, maybe not.

When listening to news reports of the Haiti earthquake relief efforts, I was struck at the similarities in the problems they experienced at the airport. It seems there is nothing new under the sun.

Computerworld Article - 1910 Telegraphs to XML

ECommerce Google Books - The Maj. Edward Guilbert Story

Ecommerce Connexion Artitcle - A short history summary of the Berlin Airlift

Million Dollar Traders, Nickel & Dime EDI

They don't seem to do "Documentaries" any more. It is all "Reality TV" these days, and I have mostly had enough of them. I wish shows like "The Apprentice" would show more details of the problem solving, less of the problem personalities. But such is the rarity of Business related material I gave this new show a go.

Million Dollar Traders - the premise: take some ordinary people who show some promising aptitude, train them intensively for a short period, then let them loose with real money and see how then perform as a Hedge Fund.

Unfortunately I didn't learn much about the workings of The City, Finance and Hedge Funds. I learnt more than I wanted to about ordinary people under stress.

What caught my eye was the technology on display. Each trader had 2 or 3 computer monitors showing large amounts of numbers and graphs. Real time data was so important it was considered a major faux pas not to be at the desk the moment the markets opened. They were constantly crunching numbers with calculators as they balanced (or hedged) risk trying to find a profit margin. All this was happening as the Credit Crunch Tsunami hit, and banks crumbled into chaos. After 3 weeks I think the best trader made about 1% gain, compared with an industry average of 5% loss. My rough guess is that this represents £2,000.

Throughout this time we watched as the trainee traders weighed their investment decisions, the tension and drama was built up. We sat on the edge of our seats as they finally committed themselves to make a deal....

...and then they picked up the phone...

Uh?

No "Accept" button to click. No https protocol session. But a conversation with a real person. A request to buy or sell (go long or short in the jargon). A query on the price and a confirmation on the total cost. They then got out of their chair with a piece of paper (presumably some sort of record of the deal), walked across the room and got it stamped in some sort of machine that made a satisfying "kerching" sound.

At first I put this down to artistic license and the program makers wanting to make more interesting imagery. Like in the film Independence Day where, they bring down an alien war machine with a software virus. As unlikely as it is that the aliens have no anti-virus software, they leave out the incredibly quick development of the USB port to NBSA port adapter hardware (Never Before Seen Alien port).

Then in the last episode a strange thing happened. The boss was upset. He was a REAL trader. He knew how it was. The new guys were not coming up to scratch. He didn't like their attitude. It was all wrong. So they started discussing acceptable telephone manners when on the phone to a broker. At issue was the fact that some of the traders were spending too much time saying "hello", "please" and "thank you". He insisted that the Brokers will be laughing at them the minute the phone was put down. If the traders were not short and blunt they would get no respect. The brokers would be less likely to do their job as efficiently.

My jaw dropped. It was for real. The boss was prepared to openly admit a willingness to trample all in his way in the focused pursuit of money. I understood that. It was in the nature of the job. Yet he was prepared to rely on a fallible human, being able to interpret verbal instructions communicated by another fallible human. Indeed, in the first episode one guy accidentally got his "buy" and "sell" mixed up. In the 20 seconds it took to correct his mistake, he lost money.

The labour cost of those transactions was just silly. Yet the volume of trading, city wide, is huge. I know the term "EDI" is not a trendy buzzword, but where was the - Electronic - Data - Interchange?

I know the world of Finance has taken a heavy PR knock recently. I have heard the view expressed elsewhere that those in charge didn't really understand what was going on. But so long as the money kept rolling, questionable practices remained under the radar. If this TV program is representative then to me it would seem to confirm this view.

Here is an important life lesson I learnt as a small child watching The Wizard of Oz.

Despite what the Wizard says, don't ignore the man behind the curtain. His presence is telling you something!

Freedom !

I have just read Craig's post on EDITalk and was motivated to leave a long comment. So I have decided to re-post it here.

Quoting Braveheart is like a red rag to a bull to me. I have got to respond.

I am going to go on a bit about history here, but bear with me. I will come back to EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) at the end.

For the average Joe, the freedom Wallace (and Mel Gibson) was fighting for was to be lorded over by a Scotsman (Bruce) rather than an Englishman (Edward). In both cases Joe remained a peasant/serf with no right to land ownership, an obligation to pay taxes (without representation) and with little hope of a evenly applied "rule of law". Is the race of the King significant?

The attempts by various English Kings of this period (1200-1350 ?) to acquire Scotland was a MAJOR historical cock up that delayed the creation of a unified nation (Britain) by hundreds of years. For all the historical inaccuracies of the Braveheart film, one point it did correctly portray was that the Scottish ruling elite owned significant landholdings in England.

Inter-marriage and cross-cultural exchanges was bringing both countries together. If things had been left alone and there hadn’t been the many wars, unification might have happened anyway by joint inheritance. This eventually happened in 1603 when Elizabeth I of England was succeeded by James VI of Scotland (her fathers, sisters, great-grandson - or first cousin, twice removed - I think!)

Even then, things were not settled. The last big rebellion happened in 1745 when "Bonnie Prince Charlie" was defeated at the battle of Colloden. This event holds an emotional place in the culture of Scots and is seen by many as the "death of nationhood". However in this battle there were more Scots fighting on the "English" side than English. The alternative view is that this event marks the end of "tribalism" on this island and the rise of the modern Nation State.

Back to EDI.

From this perspective the freedom to choose a format looks like a freedom to choose to be enslaved by a ruling elite.

The freedom to depart from the standard is the freedom to not to be bothered with the law - that is for little people (or suppliers).

The freedom to reject the established standards and formats completely and develop your own is like sailing off to the New World in hope of a better life. You know it is not going to be a bed of roses but you think it is the future.

So how do we avoid repeating the mistakes of history? I think it is important understand what is important and makes a difference to our lives.

A N other encoding format is no better than one we already support. The new one might be easier to utilise but is requires effort to get to there from here. Using what we have is easier.

A single dominating format that was accepted by all, would produce future savings and improvements. This would be disruptive to the status quo. So to succeed it would need additional benefits beyond simple convergence, or we are in for a long wait.