History Of Computers
Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come about to touch every aspect
of
our lives. Such devices changed the way we manage, work, and live. A
machine
that has done all this and more now exists in nearly every business
in the
United States. 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 the computer
changed American management to it's greatest extent. From
the first wooden
abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor, the computer
has changed nearly
every aspect of management, and our 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 (Dolotta, 1985). 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 on
the abacus. This was one of the first
management tools used. 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, manage the town's taxes (Beer, 1966).
In the
early 1800s, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage designed
an
automatic calculation machine (Dolotta, 1985). 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. This machine was extremely useful to
managers that delt with
large volumes of good. With Babbage's machine,
managers could more easily
calculate the large numbers accumulated by
inventories. The only problem was
that there was only one of these machines
built, thus making it difficult for
all managers to use (Beer, 1966). 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. 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 (Dolotta, 1985). Since the population of the U.S.
was
increasing so fast, the computer was an essential tool for managers
in
tabulating the totals (Hazewindus,1988). These advantages were noted
by
commercial industries and soon led to the development of improved
punch-card
business-machine systems by International Business Machines,
Remington-Rand,
Burroughs, and other corporations (Chposky, 1988). 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
(Jacobs, 1975). 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 (Chposky, 1988). Aiken's machine,
called the Harvard
Mark I, handled 23-digit numbers and could perform all four
arithmetic
operations (Dolotta, 1985). 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.
The outbreak of
World War II produced a desperate need for computing
capability, especially for
the military (Dolotta, 1985). 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 (Chposky, 1988). 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. 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 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.
However, the ENIAC was not accessible to managers of
businesses (Beer, 1966).
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
(Dolotta,
1985). 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 (Dolotta,
1985). 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 (Hazewindus,1988).
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. With
this invention, managers had even more power to
perform calculations for such
things as statistical demographic data (Beer,
1966). Before this time, it
was very rare for a manager of a larger business to
have the means to process
large numbers in so little time. The UNIVAC was
developed by John W. Mauchley
and John Eckert, Jr. in the 1950s. 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,1988). 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 1950s computers
were being made out of transistors, which
were smaller, less expensive, more
reliable, and more efficient (Dolotta, 1985).
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.
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
(Jacobs, 1975). 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. By
1956, 76 of IBM's large computer mainframes
were in use, compared with only 46
UNIVAC's (Chposky, 1988). 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. During this time the
major
computer manufacturers began to offer a range of computer capabilities,
as well
as various computer-related equipment (Jacobs, 1975). 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
management for such
applications as accounting, payroll, inventory control,
ordering supplies, and
billing. Central processing units 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 (Dolotta,
1985). 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 (Jacobs, 1975). 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. 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 (Chposky,
1988). 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 (Jacobs, 1975). 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. 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 (Dolotta,
1985). Many companies, some new to the computer
field, introduced in the
1970s programmable minicomputers supplied with software
packages (Jacobs,
1975). 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 (Beer, 1966). 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. 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. 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 (Jacobs, 1975). 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. 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,
1988). 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 (Chposky,
1988). 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. 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 even more inventories for
managers. 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
management and built up a huge industry (Beer,
1966). 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
(Jacobs, 1975). 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. 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 (Hazewindus,1988). 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. Surely, the computer has impacted every aspect of
people's lives
(Jacobs, 1975). 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 to ever
influence
management, and life.
Bibliography
Beer, S. (1966).
Decision and Control, The meaning of Operational Research
and Management
Cybernetics Chposky, J. (1988) Blue Magic, New York: Facts on
File, San
Jose, CA: Idthekkethan Publishing Company Dolotta, T. (1985).
Data
Processing: 1940-1985, New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons
Hazewindus, N.
(1988). The U.S. Microelectronics Industry, New York, NY:
Pergaman Press Jacobs,
C. W. (1975, January). The Altair 8800, Popular
Electronics, New York, NY:
Popular Electronics Publishing