America And The Computer Industry

America and the Computer Industry


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 U.S. 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 people's lives for the better.


The very earliest existence of the modern day computer's 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 Pascal's father who was a tax collector

(Soma, 32).


In the early 1800's, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 comp
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