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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Computers—the
machines we think with
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

Title: Computers—the machines we think with

Author: D. S. Halacy

Release date: January 1, 2024 [eBook #72572]

Most recently updated: February 3, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harper & Row, 1962

Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell, Linda Cantoni and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
images made available by the HathiTrust Digital
Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

COMPUTERS—THE MACHINES WE THINK WITH ***
COMPUTERS—THE MACHINES WE
THINK WITH
Computers—

THE MACHINES WE THINK

WITH

D. S. HALACY, Jr.

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK, EVANSTON, AND LONDON
COMPUTERS—THE MACHINES WE THINK WITH. Copyright © 1962, by Daniel
S. Halacy, Jr. Printed in the United States of America. All rights in
this book are reserved. No part of the book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers,
Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.

Library of Congress catalog card number: 62-14564

F-S
Contents

1. Computers—The Machines We Think 1

With

2. The Computer’s Past 18

3. How Computers Work 48

4. Computer Cousins—Analog and Digital 72

5. The Binary Boolean Bit 96

6. The Electronic Brain 121

7. Uncle Sam’s Computers 147

8. The Computer in Business and Industry 171

9. The Computer and Automation 201

10. The Academic Computer 219

11. The Road Ahead 251

COMPUTERS—THE MACHINES WE
THINK WITH
1: Computers—The Machines
We Think With

While you are reading this sentence, an electronic computer is

performing 3 million mathematical operations! Before you read this
page, another computer could translate it and several others into a
foreign language. Electronic “brains” are taking over chores that
include the calculation of everything from automobile parking fees to
zero hour for space missile launchings.
Despite bitter winter weather, a recent conference on computers
drew some 4,000 delegates to Washington, D.C.; indicating the
importance and scope of the new industry. The 1962 domestic
market for computers and associated equipment is estimated at just
under $3 billion, with more than 150,000 people employed in
manufacture, operation, and maintenance of the machines.
In the short time since the first electronic computer made its
appearance, these thinking machines have made such fantastic
strides in so many different directions that most of us are unaware
how much our lives are already being affected by them. Banking, for
example, employs complex machines that process checks and
handle accounts so much faster than human bookkeepers that they
do more than an hour’s work in less than thirty seconds.
 General Electric Co., Computer Dept.

Programmer at console of computer used in electronic processing of bank

checking accounts.

Our government is one of the largest users of computers and

“data-processing machines.” The census depends on such
equipment, and it played a part in the development of early
mechanical types of computers when Hollerith invented a punched-
card system many years ago. In another application, the post office
uses letter readers that scan addresses and sort mail at speeds
faster than the human eye can keep up with. Many magazines have
put these electronic readers to work whizzing through mailing lists.

General Electric Co., Computer Dept.

Numbers across bottom of check are printed in magnetic ink and can be read by
the computer.

In Sweden, writer Astrid Lindgren received additional royalties for

one year of 9,000 kronor because of library loans. Since this was
based on 850,000 total loans of her books from thousands of
schools and libraries, the bookkeeping was possible only with an
electronic computer.
Computers are beginning to take over control of factories, steel
mills, bakeries, chemical plants, and even the manufacture of ice
cream. In scientific research, computers are solving mathematical
and logical problems so complex that they would go forever
unsolved if men had to do the work. One of the largest computing
systems yet designed, incorporating half a million transistors and
millions of other parts, handles ticket reservations for the airlines.
Others do flight planning and air traffic control itself.
Gigantic computerized air defense systems like SAGE and
NORAD help guard us from enemy attack. When John Glenn made
his space flight, giant computers on the ground made the vital
calculations to bring him safely back. Tiny computers in space
vehicles themselves have proved they can survive the shocks of
launching and the environment of space. These airborne computers
make possible the operation of Polaris, Atlas, and Minuteman
missiles. Such applications are indicative of the scope of computer
technology today; the ground-based machines are huge, taking up
rooms and even entire buildings while those tailored for missiles may
fit in the palm of the hand. One current military project is such an
airborne computer, the size of a pack of cigarettes yet able to
perform thousands of mathematical and logical operations a second.
Computers are a vital part of automation, and already they are
running production lines and railroads, making mechanical drawings
and weather predictions, and figuring statistics for insurance
companies as well as odds for gamblers. Electronic machines permit
the blind to read a page of ordinary type, and also control material
patterns in knitting mills. This last use is of particular interest since it
represents almost a full circle in computer science. Oddly, it was the
loom that inspired the first punched cards invented and used to good
advantage by the French designer Jacquard. These homely
forerunners of stored information sparked the science that now
returns to control the mills.
Men very wisely are now letting computers design other
computers, and in one recent project a Bell Laboratories computer
did a job in twenty-five minutes that would have taken a human
designer a month. Even more challenging are the modern-day
“robots” performing precision operations in industrial plants. One
such, called “Unimate,” is simply guided through the mechanical
operations one time, and can then handle the job alone.
“TransfeRobot 200” is already doing assembly-line work in dozens of
plants.
The hope has been expressed that computer extension of our
brainpower by a thousandfold would give our country a lead over
potential enemies. This is a rather vain hope, since the United States
has no corner on the computer market. There is worldwide interest in
computers, and machines are being built in Russia, England,
France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Africa, Japan, and
other countries. A remarkable computer in Japan recognizes 8,000
colors and analyzes them instantly. Computer translation from one
language to another has been mentioned, and work is even being
done on machines that will permit us to speak English into a phone
in this country and have it come out French, or whatever we will,
overseas! Of course, computers have a terminology all their own too;
words like analog and digital, memory cores, clock rates, and so on.
The broad application of computers has been called the “second
industrial revolution.” What the steam engine did for muscles, the
modern computer is beginning to do for our brains. In their slow
climb from caveman days, humans have encountered ever more
problems; one of the biggest of these problems eventually came to
be merely how to solve all the other problems.
At first man counted on his fingers, and then his toes. As the
problems grew in size, he used pebbles and sticks, and finally
beads. These became the abacus, a clever calculating device still in
constant use in many parts of the world. Only now, with the advent of
low-cost computers, are the Japanese turning from the soroban,
their version of the abacus.
The large-scale computers we are becoming familiar with are not
really as new as they seem. An Englishman named Babbage built
what he called a “difference engine” way back in 1831. This complex
mechanical computer cost a huge sum even by today’s standards,
and although it was never completed to Babbage’s satisfaction, it
was the forerunner and model for the successful large computers
that began to appear a hundred years later. In the meantime, of
course, electronics has come to the aid of the designer. Today,
computer switches operate at billionths-of-a-second speeds and thus
make possible the rapid handling of quantities of work like the 14
billion checks we Americans wrote in 1961.
There are dozens of companies now in the computer
manufacturing field, producing a variety of machines ranging in price
from less than a hundred dollars total price to rental fees of $100,000
a month or more. Even at these higher prices the big problem of
some manufacturers is to keep up with demand. A $1 billion market
in 1960, the computer field is predicted to climb to $5 billion by 1965,
and after that it is anyone’s guess. Thus far all expert predictions
have proved extremely conservative.
The path of computer progress is not always smooth. Recently a
computer which had been installed on a toll road to calculate
charges was so badly treated by motorists it had to be removed.
Another unfortunate occurrence happened on Wall Street. A clever
man juggled the controls of a large computer used in stock-market
work and “made” himself a quarter of a million dollars, though he
ultimately landed in jail for his illegal computer button pushing.
Interestingly, there is one corrective institution which already offers a
course in computer engineering for its inmates.
So great is the impact of computers that lawyers recently met for a
three-day conference on the legal aspects of the new machines.
Points taken up included: Can business records on magnetic tape or
other storage media be used as evidence? Can companies be
charged with mismanagement for not using computers in their
business? How can confidential material be handled satisfactorily on
computers?
Along with computing machines a whole new technology is
growing. Universities and colleges—even high schools—are
teaching courses in computers. And the computer itself is getting into
the teaching business too. The “teaching machine” is one of the
most challenging computer developments to come along so far.
These mechanical professors range from simple “programmed”
notebooks, such as the Book of Knowledge and Encyclopedia
Britannica are experimenting with, to complex computerized systems
such as that developed by U.S. Industries, Inc., for the Air Force and
others.
The computer as a teaching machine immediately raises the
question of intelligence, and whether or not the computer has any.
Debate waxes hot on this subject; but perhaps one authority was
only half joking when he said that the computer designer’s
competition was a unit about the size of a grapefruit, using only a
tenth of a volt of electricity, with a memory 10,000 times as extensive
as any existing electronic computer. This is a brief description of the
human brain, of course.
When the first computers appeared, those like ENIAC and BINAC,
fiction writers and even some science writers had a field day turning
the machines into diabolical “brains.” Whether or not the computer
really thinks remains a controversial question. Some top scientists
claim that the computer will eventually be far smarter than its human
builder; equally reputable authorities are just as sure that no
computer will ever have an original thought in its head. Perhaps a
safe middle road is expressed with the title of this book; namely that
the machine is simply an extension of the human brain. A high-
speed abacus or slide rule, if you will; accurate and foolproof, but a
moron nonetheless.
There are some interesting machine-brain parallels, of course.
Besides its ability to do mathematics, the computer can perform
logical reasoning and even make decisions. It can read and
translate; remembering is a basic part of its function. Scientists are
now even talking of making computers “dream” in an attempt to
come up with new ideas!
More similarities are being discovered or suggested. For instance,
the interconnections in a computer are being compared with, and
even crudely patterned after, the brain’s neurons. A new scientific
discipline, called “bionics,” concerns itself with such studies. Far from
being a one-way street, bionics works both ways so that engineers
and biologists alike benefit. In fact, some new courses being taught
in universities are designed to “bridge the gap between engineering
and biology.”
At one time the only learning a computer had was “soldered in”;
today the machines are being “forced” to learn by the application of
punishment or reward as necessary. “Free” learning in computers of
the Perceptron class is being experimented with. These studies, and
statements like those of renowned scientist Linus Pauling that he
expects a “molecular theory” of learning in human beings to be
developed, are food for thought as we consider the parallels our
electronic machines share with us. Psychologists at the University of
London foresee computers not only training humans, but actually
watching over them and predicting imminent nervous breakdowns in
their charges!

Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory

Bank of “association” units in Mark I Perceptron, a machine that “learns” from

experience.

To demonstrate their skill many computers play games of tick-tack-

toe, checkers, chess, Nim, and the like. A simple electromechanical
computer designed for young people to build can be programmed to
play tick-tack-toe expertly. Checker- and chess-playing computers
are more sophisticated, many of them learning as they play and
capable of an occasional move classed as brilliant by expert human