In 1921, for instance, concerned about high prices for steel amid war-driven demand, the US government embarked on an effort to make its own. It did eventually build a plant, but the steel it produced was half as good as what was commercially available and cost three times as much.6 Commodities like steel are best left to the market. It followed that the same would be true of automatic data processing. Both A-76 and the Brooks Act sought to make sure that the new tools of computing didn’t meet the fate of government steel.
