7 Uncle Sam’s Computers
The modern electronic version of the computer is about fifteen years old, and like most teen-agers, it is a precocious child. To list all the applications in which it has made a place for itself would take several pages and an inclusive listing from Airlines to Zoology. There are hundreds of different types, priced from less than one hundred dollars to more than ten millions. The latter are so expensive that outright purchase is not usually possible for users. Rental or leasing arrangements are therefore available; and there are a growing number of computer centers to which the customer can take or send his work and have it done. There are also do-it-yourself computer facilities, much like those for laundry, dry cleaning, and so forth, as well as installations in trailers that move from place to place. Most require a source of conventional electric power, but there are some portable models that operate on batteries.
Scanning the list of jobs the computer now does, it would seem impossible to classify the varied tasks. Since many machines are versatile, general-purpose types, it is even more difficult to definitely categorize the computer. Dr. John R. Pierce, an expert at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, describes some of the chores done by a digital computer in a typical session at Bell:
Check parts of a computer program used in connection with machine methods for processing manufacturing information.
Process and analyze data on telephone transmission which have been transmitted to the laboratories by teletypewriter and automatically punched on cards for computer processing.
Solve a partial differential equation.
Compute details of the earth’s magnetic field.
Check part of a program used to handle programming cards.
Fit curves to data by translating numerical information into graphs.
Locate an error in a program designed to process psychological data.
These “simple” problems required but three minutes of the computer’s time. A larger task, something like solving 350 mathematical logic theorems from Principia Mathematica, takes a bit longer—eight and a half minutes, to be exact.
Despite this versatility, it is generally possible to break the computer’s capabilities down into broad classifications. First we can say that it does either simple data-processing, or scientific computations. Each of these can then be further subdivided ad infinitum. Examples will be seen as we describe uses of computers on the following pages. Since the government was the first user of computers, beginning back in 1890 with Hollerith’s punched-card machines, we would do well to see what other work it has put the computer to in the years that have elapsed.