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.
_The Computer in Washington_
An inventory of electronic computers installed in the Federal Government
by the end of 1961 totaled 800, with 200 more on order. These figures
are exclusive of those for tactical and classified use by the Department
of Defense. Some 45,000 people are engaged in computer operations in the
government, and a total expenditure of about $1.5 billion is estimated.
An indication of the importance accorded the computer by Washington is
the Interagency Data Processing Committee, concerned with questions of
sharing of computers in geographic areas, setting up of a “library” of
applications, and assurance of continued computer operation in the event
of attack or other emergency. Users of computers, in addition to the
Department of Defense, are the Atomic Energy Commission, Department of
Commerce, National Aeronautics and Space Agency, Federal Aviation
Agency, Post Office Department, and others for a total of 43 agencies.
The Peace Corps, for example, recently announced that it would acquire a
computer for use in its work.
Red tape is not the only output from Washington, D.C. Not long ago the
Hoover Commission estimated that our Federal Government also produces 25
_billion_ pieces of paper each year! Someone else converted this already
impressive statistic into the more startling information that placed end
to end these papers would reach the moon four times—in triplicate, of
course! Data-processing, then, the handling of information, would seem
to be the major part of the computer’s work for Uncle Sam.
The Census Bureau was the first government user of the computer, and it
continues to handle its work in this way. In 1951 the government
procured a UNIVAC I to take over this onerous chore from its
predecessors. Beginning with the 1950 census, the computer has been in
operation practically twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In its
first ten years it performed more than 510 billion mathematical
operations in keeping pace with our exploding population. We are
producing more than paperwork, it seems. The 1950 census required four
years to process. With newer computers the 1960 count will take only
half as long despite the population explosion.
Information-handling computers make possible another important phase of
the government’s work. In 1936, machines began to process Social
Security records, which are becoming a monumental pile of paperwork
themselves with close to 100 million accounts that must be kept up to
date. Social Security numbers recently turned up in government computers
handling another job—that of income-tax bookkeeping.
The U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Mortimer Caplin, put a pilot
system of computer accounting of tax records into operation in January
of 1962 in the Atlanta region. In 1963, the Philadelphia Center will
follow suit, and by 1966 all income-tax accounting will whiz through
tape reels into computers. The figures on tax greenbacks laid end to end
are not available, but it is known that 400 miles of magnetic tape will
be needed to hold all the records.
The new system will make it tough on the income-tax chiseler. Caplin
points out that not only the withholding-tax information from the
employer, and forms from the employee, but also dividend statements and
other supplementary income information will funnel automatically into
John Doe’s portion of the tape. If John is moonlighting, holding down a
second job he might forget to mention, the computer will spot it and
charge a tax on it. The apprehended tax-dodger may well call the
computer an infernal revenue machine.
There are of course many other ways the computer is helping out in the
complex problems of government, both Federal and local. The computer has
already figured in national elections, making predictions well in
advance as to the outcome. Now the machines are being used in the actual
voting procedure. In 1952 an IBM computer predicted Eisenhower’s victory
within two hours after the first polls closed. In the early days of
computer predictions, the men using them were overly cautious and afraid
to accept the machine’s word. Techniques and confidence have improved
with practice, and in 1960 IBM’s RAMAC predicted victory for Kennedy at
8:12 P.M. election night.
To make accurate predictions, the computer is given information from
preceding elections. In 1960 it was fed the results of the 1956, 1952,
1948, and 1928 (because of the religious considerations) elections.
Forecasters were able to ask the computer such questions as, “How is
Nixon doing compared with Eisenhower’s showing in 1952?” “How is Kennedy
doing compared with Al Smith back in 1928?” “Is labor voting as a bloc?”
and “How solid is the South?” The computer is now an accepted part of
network equipment for election reporting. ABC used the Remington Rand
UNIVAC; CBS, IBM RAMAC and other machines; and NBC the RCA 501.
[Illustration:
_International Business Machines Corp._
Computers are used to predict the results of elections.
]
In addition to forecasting results, computers are beginning to do other
election work. Los Angeles County experimented with a computer method of
counting votes in 1960. Greene County, Ohio, used punched cards for
ballots for 50,000 voters in a pioneering computer voting system. The
cards were processed in a UNIVAC computer at Dayton Air Force Depot. A
bolder suggestion is that of political scientist R. M. Goldman of
Michigan State University: actual voting by telephone-operated computer!
To solve another problem area in voting, the use of computers was
recently proposed at a state congressional hearing in Boston.
Redistricting, the bugaboo that led to “gerrymandering,” might well be
done by “unbiased” computers which would arrive at an optimum
redistricting plan. These unbiased results would be “beyond politics and
in the best interests of the voters and the State,” according to the
computer expert who proposed the plan.
Moving from voting to a more complicated problem, that of urban renewal,
the University of Washington is conducting a survey under federal grant
on the extent of deterioration and the causes of decay in Spokane
residential, commercial, and industrial areas. The IBM 709 computer
makes possible an accurate and extensive survey expected to shed light
on areas of arrested development, and on the amount of tax revenue lost
because of existing blight.
_Electronic Legal Eagle_
Some writers see the clearest evidence of the victory of the computer—if
indeed we admit to there ever having been any real battle—in the
admission by the legal profession that it must begin to chart the legal
seas of the computer age.
In 1961 the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association,
feeling that the computer will cast its “automated shadow on every phase
of society,” conducted a joint three-day seminar in Washington, D.C.
Titled “Legal Problems in the Use of Electronic Data Processing in
Business, Industry and Law,” the seminar discussed “function and
operation of computers and their impact on tort, tax, corporation,
labor, contract, banking, sales, antitrust, patent and copyright law, as
well as on the law of evidence and trial practice.”
Lawyer Roy Freed of the Philadelphia Bar, in a booklet called “A
Lawyer’s Guide Through the Computer Maze,” describes the working of the
machine and then poses some challenging legal questions.
What duty does the company acting as a computer service organization
have to preserve the confidential nature of the data it processes for
its customers?
Can business records placed on magnetic tape be used in evidence, or
must the original records be preserved?
How long can corporate management lag behind others in their industry in
adopting machine data-processing systems before they expose themselves
to a mismanagement charge?
To what extent should the manufacturer of a complex product that has a
potential for causing harm try to minimize his liability as a maker by
anticipating design defects through simulated operation on the computer?
Other legal experts asked other questions. If an electronically
processed check is bounced erroneously, who is responsible? If a
noncomputerized railroad has a train wreck, can the road be sued on the
premise that the accident would not have occurred with modern traffic
controls? Or if the reverse occurs, can an anticomputer claimant win a
suit against the machine?
Applications of the computer in patent law may lead to more thorough
search in addition to higher speed. This could well clear another
bottleneck by issuing fewer and faster patents. But copyright violation
problems lie in the possibility of making copies of tapes or other media
suitable for the computer’s use. The altering or falsification of
computer data also poses a tricky legal problem; there is already a
precedent in the Wall Street man who juggled the punched cards on the
computer to his own advantage.
Perhaps there was one question none of the lawyers present had the
courage to bring up: what if the day comes when the court itself is a
computer, and the case is presented to it as a stack of cards, or a
prepunched or magnetized tape? Such a mechanized justice was fancifully
depicted on a television thriller by Ray Bradbury.
_Computers in Khaki_
Despite the low IQ it has been accused of, it was inevitable that the
computer be drafted. In the 40’s we were desperate. Included in
government use of computers are military research, development, and
tactical and strategic methods. World War II was a different kind of
war, a complicated, electronic war that required advanced methods of
operation. At Eastertime in 1942, IBM answered an urgent call from
Washington and gathered all available data-processing machines for use
by the military. Punched cards kept track of allotments, insurance, and
the logistics of running a war. Mobile computing machines operated close
to the front lines, and were important enough that a captured German
officer was carrying urgent orders to bring in one of these units.
[Illustration:
_Motorola, Inc., Military Electronics Division_
Technician checks circuitry of airborne digital computer.
]
Besides the mundane effort of mere data-processing, wartime computers
did important cloak-and-dagger work as well. A report came in from
Allied intelligence that the Germans were working on a frightening new
development—an electrically powered cannon. If it were successful we
would need some kind of counterweapon. But the dike was leaking in a
hundred other places too, and there was not time or equipment to do
everything it seemed we might have to do. The answer was to feed some
complex mathematics to an IBM computer called the Automatic Sequence
Controlled Calculator—mathematics describing the new cannon. The
computer cogitated briefly and decided that the Germans were on the
wrong track; that the gun would not work. We therefore ignored the
threat, letting the Germans waste their valuable time going down the
blind alley, and turned our efforts elsewhere.
We have said that World War II was a different kind of war. One new
development to bear out this difference was called “Operations
Research”—the reduction of any program to mathematical formulas and the
investigation of these formulas rather than a conventional, intuitive
approach. The technique was pioneered in England, spread to the United
States, and is now one of the most powerful tools not only of the
military but also of government and business. The computer has made
operations research a more powerful technique by permitting the analysis
of thousands or millions of possibilities in hours instead of lifetimes.
Back in the days of bows and arrows, the soldier had no need for a
computer. Even the rifleman required little more than a simple sight and
maybe a bit of Kentucky windage. With the coming of long-range
artillery, computers became desirable, and now we have moved into an age
of warfare that would be impossible without high-speed computing
machines.
In 1948 IBM introduced a computer known as SSEC for Selective Sequence
Electronic Calculator. This machine was put to work on a problem for the
Los Alamos Atomic Energy Laboratory, a problem called “Hippo.” Hippo was
as unwieldy as its name, requiring some nine million involved
mathematical operations that would have taken about 1,500 man-years of
skilled time. That many mathematicians or that much time was not
available, of course, and SSEC clicked through the job in 150 hours by
itself. Another computer, the MANIAC, designed by John von Neumann, is
credited with beating the Russians to the punch with the hydrogen bomb.
As an outgrowth of operations research, the simulation of war games has
become an important part of military work. A number of firms, including
System Development Corporation, Technical Operations, Inc., and others,
devote much of their time to “playing games” to work out the optimum
strategy and tactics for war in case we find it necessary again.
It is perhaps not paradoxical that war be considered a game. As William
Cowper said, “War’s a game, which were their subjects wise, Kings would
not play at.” The game of chess, conversely, stems from war and its
tactics. Indeed, the term checkmate, for victory, comes from the Persian
words _shah mat_, the king is dead.
Through the years many war games have been developed, games which
eliminate the physical conflict but preserve the intellectual
maneuvering necessary for waging “war.” John von Neumann was one of the
more recent to turn his great genius to this subject in the development
of his “minimax” theory. This is an outline of a situation in which
consequences of decisions depend on the actions of an opponent. We have
seen that the computer, though not yet world champion, can play chess;
the minimax theory is more grist for its electronic mill.
Tech-ops operates the Combat Operations Research Group for the U.S.
Continental Army Command at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Among the games
played here with computers are SYNTAC, in which field-experienced
officers evaluate new weapons and tactics, and AUTOTAG, a computer
simulation of tank-antitank combat. Other projects of this firm include
air battle simulations, ship loading and other logistics problems,
fallout studies, and defense against missile attacks. The beauty of such
schemes is that we will not make the mistake of the Germans with their
electric cannon. When the computer blinks “Tilt” or an equivalent, the
engineers may have red faces, but no huge amount of time or money will
have been spent before they sigh, “Back to the old drawing board!”
[Illustration:
_Aeronutronic Division, Ford Motor Co._
ARTOC (Army Tactical Operations Central) uses computer techniques for
battlefield display and communications to aid field commanders.
]
At Picatinny Arsenal, computers evaluate ammunition by simulating as
many as a thousand battles per item. Design and management studies for
projects like Nike-Zeus and Davy Crockett are also conducted at
Picatinny. A mobile computer, called MOBIDIC, is designed for field
combat use and has been moved in three 30-foot trailers to location with
the Seventh Army in Europe. There it handles requisitions for rockets,
guided missiles, electronic equipment, and other items. MOBIDIC is just
part of the Army’s FIELDATA family of computers that includes
helicopter-transported equipment to provide field commanders with fast
and accurate data on which to base their risk decisions. Another concept
is ARTOC, for Army Tactical Operations Central, an inflatable command
post in which computers receive and process information for display on
large screens. This is a project of Aeronutronic.
In 1961 an IBM 7090 computer was installed at Ispra, Italy, for use by
the European Atomic Energy Commission (EURATOM). The computer would have
as its duties the cataloging of technical information on atomic energy,
the translation of technical publications, and use in basic research on
solutions of Boltzmann equations and other advanced physics used in
atomic work. In this country, the National Science Foundation has
acknowledged the importance of the computer in scientific investigation
by underwriting costs for such equipment for research centers in need of
them.
[Illustration:
_International Business Machines Corp._
Command post of SAGE, the most complex computer application to date.
]
_In the Air_
Beyond the realm of war gaming, the computer also forms the heart of the
hardware that such simulation and studies develop. SAGE is an example of
this, a complex warning system that protects our country from attack.
The acronym SAGE is a more dignified and impressive name than the words
it stands for—Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, an environment that by
1965 will have cost $61 billion!
Sage is not a single installation, but a vast complex of centers feeding
information from Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site radar and airborne
radar, from ships, Texas towers, and ground-based radar, and from
weather stations into a central control. This control sends the proper
signals to defensive rockets, missiles, and aircraft for action against
an invader. It does this with one hand, while with the other it keeps
tabs on normal military and commercial air traffic.
The System Development Corporation designed and IBM built the SAGE
computer, a computer already old-fashioned since it uses vacuum tubes
instead of the newer transistor devices. Despite this shortcoming, it
does a fantastic job of tracking all the aircraft and missiles in its
ken, labeling them for speed, heading, altitude, as well as the vital
information of friend or foe, and continuously plans a defense. Since it
can monitor civilian traffic as well, SAGE may one day take over control
of that too. Thus the money spent will yield a bonus in addition to the
protection SAGE has already afforded in its military role.
The Air Force uses airborne computers by the thousands. Indeed, the need
for small lightweight computers for applications in aircraft led to
early work in the miniaturization of components that made possible tiny
computers for missile and space use. Small digital computers were built
for “drone” aircraft navigation; now more advanced computers provide
“air data,” air-speed, altitude, flight attitude, pressure, and other
information.
Other Air Force computers, used in BMEWS radar, take the place of human
observers. These smart computers can recognize radar tracks that are
potential missile trajectories, discriminate among these tracks to
select hostile trajectories, and project them to impact points and
times. Called MIPS, for Missile Impact Predictor Set, the computer takes
over from its human forerunner who just can’t seem to perform the
200,000 operations a second required to do the job.
Another space-tracking computer called SPADATS has been installed at
NORAD Combat Operations Center at Colorado Springs. This computer has
the assignment of around-the-clock cataloging of all man-made objects in
space, a sizable and growing task. At Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Air
Force maintains an EDP, or Electronic Data Processing project with a
more earth-bound job of cataloging. Started back in 1957, this project
has as its primary task the efficient allocation of manpower for the
global Strategic Air Command team.
At nearby Edwards Air Force Base, an IBM 7090 computer is helping to
develop the Dyna-Soar manned space glider. This computer is also doing
work for the X-15 program, and research on fuels, lunar probes, rocket
nozzles, and nose cones. At Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, a new
system of keeping track of jet engine parts, so that they go back on the
proper engine, uses a recorder “gun” wired to a central control
computer. Engine parts are metal tagged with coded letters which the
recorder “reads” and transmits to the computer for filing.
Computers play a big part in the “largest and most sophisticated
logistic data and message communications system in the world.” Delivered
to the Air Force in January of 1962, “Comlognet” connects 450 different
air bases and other installations. This system started out modestly,
handling about 10 million punched cards a day, and is heralded as only a
forerunner of an automatic system which will some day take care of the
complete interflow of data among widely separated military and civilian
locations.
Besides being part of complex navigation and bombing systems, computers
help the Air Force to score the results of practice bombing missions.
Computers control the launching of Sidewinder missiles from aircraft and
also permit accurate “toss-bombing” of nuclear payloads from fighter
bombers. These computers do all the mathematics and let the pilot
approach his target from any direction, at any speed and altitude. The
new Skybolt ballistic missile, launched from the B-52 bomber, has its
own guidance computer, which is actually a digital differential
analyzer, a hybrid device like that described in an earlier chapter. One
of the largest single computers in the Air Force is that called Finder.
Using 70,000 transistors, it does analytical work on electronic
countermeasures.
Today there are some 110,000 aircraft flying the skies in this country,
about double the number ten years ago. Not only the quantity but also
the speed of aircraft has increased, and the job of the aircraft
controller has become a nightmare. With the lives of air travelers in
his hands, this overworked FAA employee has until recently used the same
equipment that served in the days of 180 miles-per-hour piston-engine
transports.