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 peoples lives for the better.
The earliest existence of the modern day
computer ancestor is the abacus. These
date back to almost 2000 years ago. It
is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wire 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, 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 into 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 was an enormous step forwards; 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 1930's 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 1950's.
Together they had formed the Mauchley-Eckert Computer Corporation,
America s first computer company in the 1940's.
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 1950's 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 centres--operated by industry, government, and private
laboratories--staffed
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 centres 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 8800. 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.
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق