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History of the Computer Industry in America
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 me! morize, 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 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 "punch cards". 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
handled 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,
America's 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 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 laboratoriesstaffed with many programmers and support
personnel (Rogers, 77). By 1956, 76 of IBM's large computer mainframes
were in use, compared with only 46 UNIVAC's (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 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
didn't 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 Wozniak's 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 Microsoft's. 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, it's
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 people's lives. It has
affected the way people work and play. It has made everyone's life easier
by doing difficult work for people. The computer truly is one of the most
incredible inventions in history.
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