Historical Inquiry

Problem solving in history goes well beyond your textbook. Instead of memorizing names and dates from a secondary source, you can engage history firsthand by going to primary sources. You follow the same basic process you’ve learned:

Ask a question or identify a problem.

What are the historic roots of the modern computer?Who invented the first computer? Where did the idea come from? What previous technology was included?

Decide how you will find out about the question or problem. Create a hypothesis.
Engage tertiary sources to find initial answers, including textbooks and Web sites.
Find secondary sources to understand what others have said, reading scholarly books and journal articles.
Find primary sources to understand the issue firsthand, conducting interviews and attending museums.

Conduct research, focusing on primary sources.

Tertiary sourcesreveal that Konrad Zuse created the first programmable computer in 1936.

Secondary sources reveal that computers stored data using perforated paper like player pianos.

Primary sources let you study your grandmother’s player piano and rolls to understand how data is stored.

Synthesize your findings in a form to share.

Improve your work so it clearly expresses what you found.

Share your findings in the appropriate form.

One critical piece of pre-computer technology arrived in 1801, when Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a mechanical loom that used a series of punched cards to program a textile pattern.

This history shows just the most recent resurgence of computer technology. The Antikythera mechanism is a computer from the first or second century B.C.E. that calculated the position of planets and stars. A reconstruction at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan shows its precision.

We tend to think of computers as modern innovations, but they have been with us at least 2,000 years, and the technology that went into modern computers began in looms and player pianos.

Your Turn Solve a problem in history. Ask questions and identify problems. Plan how you will find answers to your questions, and delve into research. Follow the rest of the steps above to put your findings in a form that you can share.

Inquiry into Society

You don’t have to limit your inquiry to solving problems of the past. The present and future offer plenty of problems to examine. Use inquiry to identify those problems and come up with solutions, much as the Liter of Light project has done (see pages 49–52). The following report focuses on solutions to a terrible problem—genocide.

Ancient Crime, New Solutions

Genocide is as old as the world itself, though the word is shockingly new. In 1944, when the Allies began to discover the depravities occurring in Nazi concentration camps, the Polish-Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide. The word combines the Greek word for “race” with the Latin word for “kill” (“Genocide”). Four years later, the United Nations created a convention to prevent and punish genocide. The definition of genocide, however, was problematic because it referred to the intent to kill “wholly or in part” a group based upon race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion—a definition perpetrators have twisted to their own ends (Carlson).

Definitions and rulings, however, did not stop genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. In response to these tragedies, Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch established eight stages of genocide, outlining the actions that the international community should take to prevent genocide:

Stage	Problem	Solution
1. Classification	A population is divided.	Develop institutions to transcend divisions.
2. Symbolization	Outcasts become associated with hate symbols and speech.	Outlaw hate symbols and hate speech.
3. Dehumanization	Outcasts are compared to vermin and disease.	International leaders should condemn this and freeze assets of perpetrators.
4. Organization	Perpetrators train and arm militias.	The U.N. should sanction governments.
5. Polarization	Hate propaganda is broadcast.	The U.N. should launch human-rights interventions.
6. Preparation	Victims are separated from the populace.	The U.N. should declare a genocide emergency.
7. Extermination	Victims are murdered.	Armed intervention must be launched.
8. Denial	Perpetrators deny wrongdoing.	International tribunals must act.