Digiajaloo kolm lainet ja praegune uurimisseis
The Three Waves of Digital History and the Current State of Research

Summary/Abstract: This introductory article provides historical context for the special issue on new approaches in digital history. Over the past six decades, the relationship between historians and computers has evolved in three discernible “waves”, each shaped by broader technological changes and gradually giving way to the next. By tracing these developments both internationally and within Estonia, the authors argue that a clearer sense of lineage can temper present-day rhetoric about innovation and promote more critical engagement with inherited methods and assumptions. They propose a tripartite periodisation that distinguishes quantitative, computational, and digital waves in succession, without ignoring the persistence of smaller currents between them. The first, quantitative, wave spanned from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. Mainframe computers, new programming languages, and software such as SPSS encouraged historians – particularly in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union – to pursue large serial datasets and adopt the vocabulary of statistics and economics. Key events included the 1967 Ann Arbor conference and the 1970 Moscow International Congress. Yet, expectations often outpaced results: hardware and software remained cumbersome, data preparation was laborious, and quantitative monographs filled with tables alienated many readers. By the early 1980s, enthusiasm had waned, and international networks formed around UNESCO’s Standing Committee on Data Archives began to dissolve.

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