Part 2

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 players. The IBM 704 computer has been programmed to inspect the results of its possible decisions several moves ahead and to select the best choice. At the end of the game it prints out the winner and thanks its opponent for the game. Rated as polite, but only an indifferent player by experts, the computer is much like the checker-playing dog whose master scoffed at him for getting beaten three games out of five. Chess may well be an ultimate challenge for any kind of brain, since the fastest computer in operation today could not possibly work out all the possible moves in a game during a human lifetime!