Disseminating to demystify

The First National Symposium on Eletronic Computers (Brazil, 1961)

Abstract

The present study brings an analysis of the first event of Informatics in Brazil, I National Symposium on Electronic Computers, held in Rio de Janeiro in April 1961. Organized by the Executive Group for the Application of Electronic Computers (GEACE), with the support of a new association organized to disseminate technological contributions in data processing, ABRACE (Brazilian Association of Electronic Computers), the event counted on the participation of the main manufacturers and specialists in the new field of Informatics. Our analysis involves understanding the organization, realization and repercussion of the seminar, observing the protagonism of its participants. Preliminarily, in a context in which computers were trumpeted as essential to process data related to the Juscelino Kubitschek's Plano de Metas, the event was an attempt to represent the computational technologies as examples of the modernization of the activities, within a perspective of technological optimism of the period - which included the public exhibition of the "electronic brains" in the iconic building of the Ministry of Education. This is an opportunity to understand how the modernity proposed by specialists was linked, as well as what issues involved the computing world of the early 1960s in Brazil.