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 peopleOs lives for the better.
The very earliest existence of the modern day computerOs 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
machineO. It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by turning dials. It was
designed to help PascalOs father who was a tax collector (Soma, 32).
In the early 1800Os, 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 ?punchcardsO. 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 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 1950Os. Together
they had formed the Mauchley-Eckert Computer Corporation,
AmericaOs first computer company in the 1940Os. 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 U.S. Census Bureau in 1951 where it was used to help
tabulate the U.S. 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
1950Os 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
IBMOs large computer mainframes were in use, compared with only 46 UNIVACOs (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 deveopment 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
photoprinting 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 8800O. Its programming involved pushing buttons and flipping
switches on the front of the box. It didnOt 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 WozniakOs 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
MicrosoftOs. 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, itOs 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 supercomputers 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 peopleOs lives. It has
affected the way people work and play. It has made everyoneOs life easier by doing
difficult work for people. The computer truly is one of the most incredible
inventions in history.
Works Cited
Chposky, James. Blue Magic. New York: Facts on File Publishing. 1988. Cringley, Robert X.
Accidental Empires. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing, 1992.
Dolotta, T.A. Data Processing: 1940-1985. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1985.
Fluegelman, Andrew. ?A New WorldO, MacWorld. San Jose, Ca: MacWorld Publishing, February,
1984 (Premire Issue).
Hall, Peter. Silicon Landscapes. Boston: Allen & Irwin, 1985 Gulliver, David. Silicon
Valey and Beyond. Berkeley, Ca: Berkeley Area Government Press, 1981.
Hazewindus, Nico. The U.S. Microelectronics Industry. New York:
Pergamon Press, 1988.
Jacobs, Christopher W. ?The Altair 8800O, Popular Electronics. New York: Popular
Electronics Publishing, January 1975. Malone, Michael S. The Big Scare: The U.S.
Coputer Industry. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1985.
Osborne, Adam. Hypergrowth. Berkeley, Ca: Idthekkethan Publishing Company, 1984.
Rogers, Everett M. Silicon Valey Fever. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Publishing, 1984.
Rose, Frank. West of Eden. New York: Viking Publishing, 1989.
Shallis, Michael. The Silicon Idol. New York: Shocken Books, 1984. Soma, John T. The
History of the Computer. Toronto: Lexington Books, 1976.
Zachary, William. ?The Future of ComputingO, Byte. Boston: Byte Publishing, August 1994.
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