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_Computers and Computing _
By: John Romano
Background on Computers and Computing. Only once in a lifetime will a new
invention come about to touch every aspect of our lives. Such a device that
changes the way we work, live, and play is a special one, indeed. A machine
that has done all this and more now exists in nearly every business in the US
and one out of every two households (Hall, 156). This incredible invention is
the computer. The electronic computer has been around for over a half-century,
but its ancestors have been around for 2000 years. however, only in the last
40 years has it changed the American society. From the first wooden abacus to
the latest high-speed microprocessor, the computer has changed nearly every
aspect of peoples lives for the better. The very earliest existence of the
modern day computers ancestor is the abacus. These date back to almost 2000
years ago. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wires on which beads
are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire according to
"programming" rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary arithmetic
operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The next innovation in computers took
place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first digital calculating
machine . It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by turning
dials. It was designed to help Pascals father who was a tax collector (Soma,
32). In the early 1800s, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage
designed an automatic calculation machine. It was steam powered and could
store up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations
that included everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It was
programmed by--and stored data on--cards with holes punched in them,
appropriately called punchcards . His inventions were failures for the most
part because of the lack of precision machining techniques used at the time
and the lack of demand for such a device (Soma, 46). After Babbage, people
began to lose interest in computers. However, between 1850 and 1900 there were
great advances in mathematics and physics that began to rekindle the interest
(Osborne, 45). Many of these new advances involved complex calculations and
formulas that were very time consuming for human calculation. The first major
use for a computer in the US was during the 1890 census. Two men, Herman
Hollerith and James Powers, developed a new punched-card system that could
automatically read information on cards without human intervention (Gulliver,
82). Since the population of the US was increasing so fast, the computer was
an essential tool in tabulating the totals. These advantages were noted by
commercial industries and soon led to the development of improved punch-card
business-machine systems by International Business Machines (IBM),
Remington-Rand, Burroughs, and other corporations. By modern standards the
punched-card machines were slow, typically processing from 50 to 250 cards per
minute, with each card holding up to 80 digits. At the time, however, punched
cards were an enormous step forward; they provided a means of input, output,
and memory storage on a massive scale. For more than 50 years following their
first use, punched-card machines did the bulk of the world's business
computing and a good portion of the computing work in science (Chposky, 73).
By the late 1930s punched-card machine techniques had become so well
established and reliable that Howard Hathaway Aiken, in collaboration with
engineers at IBM, undertook construction of a large automatic digital computer
based on standard IBM electromechanical parts. Aiken's machine, called the
Harvard Mark I, handled 23-digit numbers and could perform all four arithmetic
operations. Also, it had special built-in programs to handle logarithms and
trigonometric functions. The Mark I was controlled from prepunched paper tape.
Output was by card punch and electric typewriter. It was slow, requiring 3 to
5 seconds for a multiplication, but it was fully automatic and could complete
long computations without human intervention (Chposky, 103). The outbreak of
World War II produced a desperate need for computing capability, especially
for the military. New weapons systems were produced which needed trajectory
tables and other essential data. In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchley,
and their associates at the University of Pennsylvania decided to build a
high-speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as
ENIAC, for "Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator". It could multiply
two numbers at the rate of 300 products per second, by finding the value of
each product from a multiplication table stored in its memory. ENIAC was thus
about 1,000 times faster than the previous generation of computers (Dolotta,
47). ENIAC used 18,000 standard vacuum tubes, occupied 1800 square feet of
floor space, and used about 180,000 watts of electricity. It used punched-card
input and output. The ENIAC was very difficult to program because one had to
essentially re-wire it to perform whatever task he wanted the computer to do.
It was, however, efficient in handling the particular programs for which it
had been designed. ENIAC is generally accepted as the first successful
high-speed electronic digital computer and was used in many applications from
1946 to 1955 (Dolotta, 50). Mathematician John von Neumann was very interested
in the ENIAC. In 1945 he undertook a theoretical study of computation that
demonstrated that a computer could have a very simple and yet be able to
execute any kind of computation effectively by means of proper programmed
control without the need for any changes in hardware. Von Neumann came up with
incredible ideas for methods of building and organizing practical, fast
computers. These ideas, which came to be referred to as the stored-program
technique, became fundamental for future generations of high-speed digital
computers and were universally adopted (Hall, 73). The first wave of modern
programmed electronic computers to take advantage of these improvements
appeared in 1947. This group included computers using random access memory
(RAM), which is a memory designed to give almost constant access to any
particular piece of information (Hall, 75). These machines had punched-card or
punched-tape input and output devices and RAMs of 1000-word capacity.
Physically, they were much more compact than ENIAC: some were about the size
of a grand piano and required 2500 small electron tubes. This was quite an
improvement over the earlier machines. The first-generation stored-program
computers required considerable maintenance, usually attained 70% to 80%
reliable operation, and were used for 8 to 12 years. Typically, they were
programmed directly in machine language, although by the mid-1950s progress
had been made in several aspects of advanced programming. This group of
machines included EDVAC and UNIVAC, the first commercially available computers
(Hazewindus, 102). The UNIVAC was developed by John W. Mauchley and John
Eckert, Jr. in the 1950s. Together they had formed the Mauchley-Eckert
Computer Corporation, Americas first computer company in the 1940s. During
the development of the UNIVAC, they began to run short on funds and sold their
company to the larger Remington-Rand Corporation. Eventually they built a
working UNIVAC computer. It was delivered to the US Census Bureau in 1951
where it was used to help tabulate the US population (Hazewindus, 124). Early
in the 1950s two important engineering discoveries changed the electronic
computer field. The first computers were made with vacuum tubes, but by the
late 1950s computers were being made out of transistors, which were smaller,
less expensive, more reliable, and more efficient (Shallis, 40). In 1959,
Robert Noyce, a physicist at the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, invented
the integrated circuit, a tiny chip of silicon that contained an entire
electronic circuit. Gone was the bulky, unreliable, but fast machine; now
computers began to become more compact, more reliable and have more capacity
(Shallis, 49). These new technical discoveries rapidly found their way into
new models of digital computers. Memory storage capacities increased 800% in
commercially available machines by the early 1960s and speeds increased by an
equally large margin. These machines were very expensive to purchase or to
rent and were especially expensive to operate because of the cost of hiring
programmers to perform the complex operations the computers ran. Such
computers were typically found in large computer centers--operated by
industry, government, and private laboratories--staffed with many programmers
and support personnel (Rogers, 77). By 1956, 76 of IBMs large computer
mainframes were in use, compared with only 46 UNIVACs (Chposky, 125). In the
1960s efforts to design and develop the fastest possible computers with the
greatest capacity reached a turning point with the completion of the LARC
machine for Livermore Radiation Laboratories by the Sperry-Rand Corporation,
and the Stretch computer by IBM. The LARC had a core memory of 98,000 words
and multiplied in 10 microseconds. Stretch was provided with several ranks of
memory having slower access for the ranks of greater capacity, the fastest
access time being less than 1 microseconds and the total capacity in the
vicinity of 100 million words (Chposky, 147). During this time the major
computer manufacturers began to offer a range of computer capabilities, as
well as various computer-related equipment. These included input means such as
consoles and card feeders; output means such as page printers,
cathode-ray-tube displays, and graphing devices; and optional magnetic-tape
and magnetic-disk file storage. These found wide use in business for such
applications as accounting, payroll, inventory control, ordering supplies, and
billing. Central processing units (CPUs) for such purposes did not need to be
very fast arithmetically and were primarily used to access large amounts of
records on file. The greatest number of computer systems were delivered for
the larger applications, such as in hospitals for keeping track of patient
records, medications, and treatments given. They were also used in automated
library systems and in database systems such as the Chemical Abstracts system,
where computer records now on file cover nearly all known chemical compounds
(Rogers, 98). The trend during the 1970s was, to some extent, away from
extremely powerful, centralized computational centers and toward a broader
range of applications for less-costly computer systems. Most
continuous-process manufacturing, such as petroleum refining and
electrical-power distribution systems, began using computers of relatively
modest capability for controlling and regulating their activities. In the
1960s the programming of applications problems was an obstacle to the
self-sufficiency of moderate-sized on-site computer installations, but great
advances in applications programming languages removed these obstacles.
Applications languages became available for controlling a great range of
manufacturing processes, for computer operation of machine tools, and for many
other tasks (Osborne, 146). In 1971 Marcian E. Hoff, Jr., an engineer at the
Intel Corporation, invented the microprocessor and another stage in the
development of the computer began (Shallis, 121). A new revolution in computer
hardware was now well under way, involving miniaturization of computer-logic
circuitry and of component manufacture by what are called large-scale
integration techniques. In the 1950s it was realized that "scaling down" the
size of electronic digital computer circuits and parts would increase speed
and efficiency and improve performance. However, at that time the
manufacturing methods were not good enough to accomplish such a task. About
1960 photo printing of conductive circuit boards to eliminate wiring became
highly developed. Then it became possible to build resistors and capacitors
into the circuitry by photographic means (Rogers, 142). In the 1970s entire
assemblies, such as adders, shifting registers, and counters, became available
on tiny chips of silicon. In the 1980s very large scale integration (VLSI), in
which hundreds of thousands of transistors are placed on a single chip, became
increasingly common. Many companies, some new to the computer field,
introduced in the 1970s programmable minicomputers supplied with software
packages. The size-reduction trend continued with the introduction of personal
computers, which are programmable machines small enough and inexpensive enough
to be purchased and used by individuals (Rogers, 153). One of the first of
such machines was introduced in January 1975. Popular Electronics magazine
provided plans that would allow any electronics wizard to build his own small,
programmable computer for about $380 (Rose, 32). The computer was called the
Altair 8800Ó. Its programming involved pushing buttons and flipping switches
on the front of the box. It didnt include a monitor or keyboard, and its
applications were very limited (Jacobs, 53). Even though, many orders came in
for it and several famous owners of computer and software manufacturing
companies got their start in computing through the Altair. For example, Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple Computer, built a much cheaper, yet
more productive version of the Altair and turned their hobby into a business
(Fluegelman, 16). After the introduction of the Altair 8800, the personal
computer industry became a fierce battleground of competition. IBM had been
the computer industry standard for well over a half-century. They held their
position as the standard when they introduced their first personal computer,
the IBM Model 60 in 1975 (Chposky, 156). However, the newly formed Apple
Computer company was releasing its own personal computer, the Apple II (The
Apple I was the first computer designed by Jobs and Wozniak in Wozniaks
garage, which was not produced on a wide scale). Software was needed to run
the computers as well. Microsoft developed a Disk Operating System (MS-DOS)
for the IBM computer while Apple developed its own software system (Rose, 37).
Because Microsoft had now set the software standard for IBMs, every software
manufacturer had to make their software compatible with Microsofts. This
would lead to huge profits for Microsoft (Cringley, 163). The main goal of the
computer manufacturers was to make the computer as affordable as possible
while increasing speed, reliability, and capacity. Nearly every computer
manufacturer accomplished this and computers popped up everywhere. Computers
were in businesses keeping track of inventories. Computers were in colleges
aiding students in research. Computers were in laboratories making complex
calculations at high speeds for scientists and physicists. The computer had
made its mark everywhere in society and built up a huge industry (Cringley,
174). The future is promising for the computer industry and its technology.
The speed of processors is expected to double every year and a half in the
coming years. As manufacturing techniques are further perfected the prices of
computer systems are expected to steadily fall. However, since the
microprocessor technology will be increasing, its higher costs will offset
the drop in price of older processors. In other words, the price of a new
computer will stay about the same from year to year, but technology will
steadily increase (Zachary, 42) Since the end of World War II, the computer
industry has grown from a standing start into one of the biggest and most
profitable industries in the United States. It now comprises thousands of
companies, making everything from multi-million dollar high-speed super
computers to printout paper and floppy disks. It employs millions of people
and generates tens of billions of dollars in sales each year (Malone, 192).
Surely, the computer has impacted every aspect of peoples lives. It has
affected the way people work and play. It has made everyones life easier by
doing difficult work for people. The computer truly is one of the most
incredible inventions in history.
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U.S. Computer Industry. Garden City, NY: Doubleday &Co., 1985. Osborne, Adam.
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