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OLSTYN, Edward Joseph. Modus Operandi System of Police Reporting as Applied to Criminal Investigation. May, 1938. No place of publication, and no mention of printer. I assume that Mr. Olstyn printed this himself. Mimeograph from typed sheets. 11"x 8.5", 100 leaves (unpaginated). Of great interest are the three original photographs of Hollerith tabulating cards pasted into the text. Wrappers. Provenance: Library of Congress, with their rubber stamp on front cover. (This may or may not have had a thicker rear cover, I can't tell.it would be easier to say that it is missing and let it go at that.) Dusty covers, though the text is clean and bright. [++] WorldCat locates only two paper copies (USC and Duke). VG Rare. "A thesis presented t the faculty of the school of government, University of Southern California, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Public Administration." [++] This is a rare computer science work applying the punch card tabulator (a Hollerith device) to sorting and calculating crime, criminal type, and etc., according to Atcherley's newly-adopted Modus Operandi approach to crime detection and prevention. What makes this item particularly interesting is that the LAPD had only just in the past few years prior to the publication of this work used Hollerith machines in police work. For the rest of the country the application of computers to police work and police departments really didn't begin to flourish until the early 1960s. [++] I can tell you straight-off that at first glance this work did not seem all that interesting however, when I flipped from back-to-front and saw the first of three punch hole cards my perspective changed entirely. [++] Part of the story here is that this paper is one of those that may well have helped frame a very early foundational change in policing using the power of the computer and a very early algorithmic-type approach to exploiting the modus operandi features of crime detection. As it is, this work is quite a tour de force of the existing elements of computer-based criminology in the 1930s.[++] Also, as an aside, the social history of the listing and classification of jobs, offenses, people, and so on are really extraordinary in themselves. For example, very few of the occupations classified in this work have existed in quite some time. Also the outlines for classification of human characteristics can be pretty deflating and sad.ditto the types of stores that are robbed/burglarized. [Some of the crystalline examples of times-gone by (though only by 80-odd years include the hard-to-imagine bootlegger, checker, barfly, chorus girl, clairvoyant, cowboy-cowpuncher [sic], floorwalker, fortune teller, pinsetter, watchman, magazine agent, sewing machine agent, copyist, bathhouse keeper, barker, capitalist (!), bootblack, baggage man, swamper, mine owner, buttermaker, diver (sea), bill poster, tent maker, vulcanizer, pressman, and so on.you get the picture. There are several hundred of these classifications.].
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