Computer Industry In US
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 1800Ős, 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 1950Ős.
Together they had formed
the Mauchley-Eckert Computer Corporation, America's
first computer company in
the 1940Ős. 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
1950Ős 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 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 8800Ó. 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.