America And The Computer Industry

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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 1800's, 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
"punchcards". 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 ...

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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 handle 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 ...

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