were being telescoped into weeks or even days; second, _complete_
investigation rather than sketchy sampling was possible. Optimum
solutions took the place of the guesswork once necessary because of the
lack of sufficient brainpower to run down all the possibilities. Still
there were scientists and designers in other fields who shook their
heads loftily and said, “Not for me, thanks.” The computer was but a
diligent clerk, they held, relieving the engineer of some onerous
chores. It could do nothing really creative; that must be left to man
and his brain.
By now many industrial firms had purchased or rented computers for the
technical people so that they would not have to fight for a place in
line at the payroll computer. Civil engineering agencies, perhaps a
hundred strong, used computers to design bridges and plan and lay out
highways. Designers at the Tudor Engineering Company of San Francisco
put its Bendix G-15D to work planning the highway that Contra Costa
County will need in 1980. Almost all of our fifty states now use
computers in their highway departments. In 1960, Georgia solved more
than a thousand highway bridge design problems in its computers. Besides
doing the work faster and cheaper, the computer produces a safer
product. For example, if substandard materials are programmed in, the
computer will print out a warning or even stop working altogether so
that the error can be corrected.
Steel companies, like Jones & Laughlin, use computers not only to run
production mills, but also as research tools. Three hours of operation
of a new furnace can be simulated in the computer in thirty seconds.
Tracing the steel back to its ore, the computer is used again. The
Bureau of Mines has used the machines for several years; they are
helpful in problems ranging from open-pit operation, grades of ore,
drill-core data logging, reserve calculations, and process control.
[Illustration:
_General Electric Co., Computer Dept._
Computer operation of Jones & Laughlin steel mill.
]
Gradually, then, the resistance was worn down. Grudgingly at first, and
accepting the computer only as an assiduous moron, engineers in other
fields put it to work. Complex machine operations like gear-shaping were
planned and carried out by computers that even punched out tapes for
controlling the production tools. Optics designers switched from desk
calculators to electronic computers. Mechanical engineers in jobs from
ultrasonic vibrators to tractor design became users of computers. Mass
spectrometry, heat-exchanger design, and waterworks design joined the
jobs the computer could do.
The computer had figured in plotting trajectories for missiles, and in
the production of aircraft; engineers found it could design them too.
Back in 1945, an analysis of twenty-one different flight conditions at
each of twelve stations of an airplane fuselage took 33 days and cost
more than $17,000. Today, by using a high-speed computer instead of a
desk calculator, the analysis is completed in a day and a half, at a
cost of $200!
The last of the diehards seemed to be the electronics people themselves.
A survey conducted by a technical journal in the field showed that in
1960 many designers were not using computers in their work. Admitting
that the computer was a whiz just about everywhere else, the electronics
engineer still could say, “The machine is great on paperwork, but I do
_creative_ work. The computer can’t help me.” Other reasons were that
computers were expensive, took much time to program, and were helpful
only with major design problems. Fortunately, all designers do not feel
that way, and progress is being made to put the computer to work in the
electronics field. It is helping in the design of components (Bendix
saves ten man-hours in computing a tenth-order polynomial and associated
data) and of networks (Lenkurt Electric saves close to 250 engineering
hours a week in filter network design). Bell Telephone uses the computer
approach in circuit analysis, and Westinghouse in the design of radar
circuitry. It is interesting that as we move up the design scale, closer
to what the engineer once considered the domain of human creativity, the
computer still is of great value. In systems design it is harder at the
outset to pin down the saving in time and the improvement in the system
(the latter is perhaps hard to admit!) but firms using computers report
savings in this field too.
One interesting job given the computer was that of designing the
magnetic ink characters to be used in its own “reading” applications.
This project, conducted by Stanford Research Institute, is typical of
the questions we have begun to ask the computer about its needs and ways
to improve it. A larger scale application of this idea is that of
letting the computer design itself. Bell Telephone Laboratories
developed such a system, called BLADES, for Bell Laboratories Automatic
Design System, to design a computer used in the Nike-Zeus antimissile
defense system.
A wag once noted that the computer would one day give birth to an
electronic baby. His prophecy came true perhaps quicker than he
anticipated, but there is one basic difference in that the progeny is
not necessarily a smaller machine. The giant LARC, for instance, was
designed by lesser computers. As A. M. Turing has pointed out, it is
theoretically possible for a simple computer to produce a more complex
one. This idea is borne out in nature, of course, and man is somewhat
advanced over the amoeba. Thus the implication in the computer-designed
computer is far more than merely the time and money saved, although this
was certainly a considerable amount. The BLADES system in twenty-five
minutes produced information for building a subassembly, a job that
required four weeks of manual computation.
Notable improvements in the general-purpose computer are doing much to
further its use as a technical tool. Present machines do jobs as varied
as the following: personnel records, inventorying, pattern
determination, missile system checkout, power-plant control, system
simulation, navigation, ballistic trajectory computations, and so on.
Special computers are also provided now for the engineer; and among
these is the Stromberg-Carlson S-C 4020 microfilm recorder. Engineering
specifications are put into the computer and the machine can then
produce on request mechanical drawings as required by the engineer. Data
stored in the memory is displayed on a Charactron tube. There is little
resistance to this type of computer, since the engineer can say it is
doing work below his level of ability! Of course, the draftsman may take
a dim view of computers that can do mechanical drawing.
[Illustration:
_Bell Telephone Laboratories_
Engineer checks design information for first computer built from
complete information furnished by another computer. Shown is a
subassembly of the computer, which will be used in the Army’s
Nike-Zeus antimissile defense system.
]
After a rather hard to explain slow start, then, the computer is now
well established as a scientific and engineering tool. Blue-sky schemes
describe systems in which the engineer simply discusses his problem with
the machine, giving specifications and the desired piece of equipment.
The machine talks back, rejecting certain proposed inputs and suggesting
alternatives, and finally comes up with the finished design for the
engineer’s approval. If he laughs overly loud at this possibility, the
engineer may be trying to cover up his real feelings. At any rate the
computer has added a thinking cap to its wardrobe of eyeshade and work
gloves.
_Digital Doctor_
Medical electronics is a fairly well-known new field of science, but the
part being played in medicine by the computer is surprising to those of
us not close to this work. Indicative of the use of the computer by
medical scientists is a study of infant death rates being conducted by
the American Medical Research Foundation. Under the direction of Dr.
Sydney Kane, this research uses a UNIVAC computer and in 1961 had
already processed information on 50,000 births in ninety participating
hospitals. Punched-card data include the mother’s age, maternal
complications, type of delivery, anesthetics used, and other pertinent
information. Dr. Kane believes that analysis by the computer of this
information may determine causes of deaths, after-birth pathological
conditions, and incapacity of babies to reach viability. A reduction in
infant mortality of perhaps 12,000 to 14,000 annually is believed
possible as a result of the studies.
Another killer of mankind, cancer, is being battled by the computer.
Researchers at the University of Philadelphia, supported in part by the
American Cancer Society, are programming electronic computers to act as
cancer cells! The complexity of the problem is seen in the fact that
several man-years of work and 500 hours of computer programming have
barely scratched the surface of the problem. A third of a million
molecules make up the genes in a human cell, and the actions of these
tiny components take place many times faster than even the high-speed
computer can operate. Despite the problems, some answers to tough
chemical questions about the cancer cells are being found by using the
computer, which is of course thousands of times faster than manual
computation.
If you were discharged from a hospital in 1962, there is a chance that
your records are being analyzed by a computer at Ann Arbor, Michigan as
part of the work of the Commission on Professional and Hospital
Activity. Information on 2-1/2 million patients from thirty-four states
will be processed by a Honeywell 400 computer to evaluate diagnostic and
hospital care and to compare the performance of the various
institutions.
In the first phase of a computerized medical literature analysis and
retrieval system for the National Library of Medicine, the U.S. Public
Health Service contracted with General Electric for a system called
MEDLARS, MEDical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System. MEDLARS will
process several hundred thousand pieces of medical information each
year. New York University’s College of Engineering has formed a
biomedical computing section to provide computer service for medical
researchers. Using an IBM 650 and a Control Data Corporation 1604, the
computer section has already done important work, including prediction
of coronary diseases in men under forty.
The success of computers in these small-scale applications to the
problems of medicine has prompted the urging of a national biomedical
computer system. It is estimated that as yet only about 5 per cent of
medical research projects are using computer techniques, but that within
ten years the figure will jump to between 50 and 75 per cent.
An intriguing possibility is the use of the computer as a diagnostic
tool. Small office machines, costing perhaps only $50, have been
suggested, not by quacks or science-fiction writers, but by scientists
like Vladimir Zworykin of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research.
Zworykin is the man who fathered the iconoscope and kinescope that made
television possible. The simple diagnostic computer he proposes would
use information compiled by a large electronic computer which might
eventually catalog the symptoms of as many as 10,000 diseases. Using an
RCA 501 computer, a pilot project of this technique has already gathered
symptoms of 100 hematological diseases.
Another use of the computer is in the HIPO system. Despite its
frightening acronymic name, this is merely a plan for the automated
dispensing of the right medicine at the right time to the right patient,
thus speeding recoveries and preventing the occasional tragic results of
wrong dosage. More exotic is a computer called the Heikolator which is
designed to substitute for the human brain in transmitting messages to
paralyzed limbs that could otherwise not function.
The simulation of body parts by the computer for study is already taking
place. Some researchers treat the flow of blood through arteries as
similar to the flow of water through a rubber tube, analyze these
physical actions, and use them in computer simulation of the human
system. The Air Force uses a computer to simulate the physical chemistry
of the entire respiratory and circulatory systems, a task that keeps
track of no less than fifty-three interdependent variables.
Dr. Kinsey of the Kresge Eye Institute in Detroit is directing computer
work concerning the physiology of the eye. According to Kinsey it was
impossible previously to approximate the actual composition of cell
substances secreted from the blood into the eye. Even those whose eyes
no longer serve them are being benefited by computer research. The
Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, uses an IBM computer to
develop reading devices for the blind. These complicated readers use a
digital computer to convert patterns of printed letters into musical
tones. Further sophistication could lead to an output of verbalized
words. Interestingly, it is thought that the research will also yield
applications of use in banking, postal service, and other commercial
fields.
Russia is also aware of the importance of the computer in the medical
field. A neurophysiologist reported after a trip to Russia that the
Soviet Union is training its brightest medical students in the use of
the computer. Such a philosophy is agreed to by medical spokesmen in
this country who state that no other field can make better use of the
computer’s abilities. Among advanced Russian work with computers in the
biomedical field is a study of the effects on human perception of
changes in sound and color.
Visionary ideas like those of radio transmitters implanted in patients
to beam messages to a central computer for continuous monitoring and
diagnosis are beginning to take on the appearance of distinct
possibilities. Some are beginning to wonder if after it has learned a
good bedside manner, the computer may even ask for a scalpel and a TV
series.
_Music_
The computer has proved itself qualified in a number of fields and
professions, but what of the more artistic ones? Not long ago RCA
demonstrated an electronic computer as an aid to the musical composer.
Based on random probability, this machine is no tongue-in-cheek gadget
but has already produced its own compositions based on the style of
Stephen Foster. Instead of throwing up their hands in shocked horror,
modern composers like Aaron Copland welcome the music “synthesizer” with
open arms. Bemoaning only the price of such a computer—about
$150,000—Copland looks to the day when the composer will feed in a few
rough ideas and have the machine produce a fully orchestrated piece. The
orchestration, incidentally, will include sounds no present instruments
can produce. “Imagine what will happen when every combination of
eighty-eight keys is played,” Copland suggests. Many traditionalists
profess to shudder at the thought of a machine producing music, but
mathematical compositions are no novelty. Even random music was
“composed” by Mozart, whose “A Musical Dice Game” is chance music with a
particularly descriptive title, and Dr. John Pierce of Bell Laboratories
has extended such work.
[Illustration:
Taken from “_Illiac Suite_,” by L. A. Hiller
and L. M. Isaacson, copyrighted 1957, by
_Theodore Presser Co._ Used by permission.
Random chromatic music produced by ILLIAC computer
resembles the compositions of some extreme modern composers.
]
In 1955, Lejaren A. Hiller, Jr., and L. M. Isaacson began to program the
ILLIAC computer at the University of Illinois to compose music. The
computer actually published its work, including “Illiac Suite for String
Quartet,” Copyright 1957, New Music Editions, done in the style of
Palestrina. All music lies somewhere between the complete randomness of,
say, the hissing of electrons in vacuum tubes and the orderliness of a
sustained tone. No less a master than Stravinsky has called composition
“the great technique of selection,” and the computer can be taught to
select in about any degree we desire. Hiller describes the process, in
which the machine is given fourteen notes representing two octaves of
the C-major scale, and restricted to “first-species counterpoint.” By
means of this screening technique, the computer “composed” by a
trial-and-error procedure that may be analogous to that of the human
musician. Each note was examined against the criteria assigned; if it
passed, it was stored in memory; if not, another was tried. If after
fifty trials no right note was found, the “composition” was abandoned,
much as might be done by a human composer who has written himself into a
corner, and a new start was made. In an hour of such work, ILLIAC
produced several hundred short melodies—a gold mine for a Tin Pan Alley
tunesmith! It was then told to produce two-voice counterpoint for the
basic melodies. “Illiac Suite” is compared, by its programmers at least,
with the modern music of Bartok.
Purists whose sensibilities are offended by the very notion of computer
music point out that music is subjective—a means of conveying emotion
from the heart of the composer to that of the listener. Be that as it
may, the composition itself is objective and can be rigorously analyzed
mathematically, before or after the fact. From a technical standpoint
there seems to be only one question about this new music—who composed
it, the programmer or the computer?
An interesting sidelight to computer music is its use to test the
acoustics of as yet unbuilt auditoriums. Bell Telephone Laboratories has
devised such a machine in its Acoustical and Visual Research Department.
The specifications of the new auditorium are fed into the computer,
followed by music recorded on tape. The computer’s output is then this
music as it will sound in the new hall. Critical experts listen and
decide if the auditorium acoustics are all right, or if some redesign is
in order.
_The Machine at Play_
The computer’s game-playing ability in chess and other games has been
described. It is getting into the act in other fields, spectator sports
as well. Baseball calls on the computer to plan season strategy and
predict winners. When Roger Maris began his home-run string, an IBM 1401
predicted that he had 55 chances in 100 of beating Ruth’s record.
Workers at M.I.T. have developed a computer program that answers
questions like “Did the Red Sox ever win six games in a row?” and “Did
every American League team play at least once in each park in every
month?”
An IBM RAMAC computer is handling the management of New York’s Aqueduct
race track, and promises to do a better job than the human bosses, thus
saving money for the owners and the State of New York Tax Commission.
The Fifteenth Annual Powderpuff Derby, the all-women transcontinental
air race, was scored by a Royal Precision LGP-30 computer, and sports
car enthusiasts have built their own “rally” computers to gauge their
progress. The Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, will be scored by
IBM’s RAMAC, and even bowling gets an assist from the computer in the
form of a scoring device added to the automatic pin-setter, bad news to
scorekeepers who fudge to boost their points.
An IBM 704 has proved a handy tool for blackjack players with a system
for winning 99 per cent of the time, and rumor has it that a Los Angeles
manufacturer plans to market a computer weighing only two pounds and
costing $5, for horse-players.
Showing that the computer can be programmed with tact is the
demonstrator that answers a man’s age correctly if he answers ten
questions but announces only that a woman is over twenty-one. Proof that
the computer has invaded just about every occupation there is comes to
light in the news that a Frankfurt travel agency uses a computer called
Zuse L23 as an agent. The traveler simply fills out a six-question form,
and in a few seconds Zuse picks the ideal vacation from a choice of 500.
Computers, it seems, are already telling us where to go.
_Business Outlook_
The computer revolution promises to reach clear to the top of the
business structure, rather than find its level somewhere in middle
management. The book, _Management Games_ lists more than 30,000 business
executives who have taken part in electronic computer management “games”
in some hundred different versions. The first widely used such game was
developed in 1956 by the American Management Association. While such
games are for educational purposes, their logical extension is the
actual conduct of business by a programmed computer.
In his book, _Industrial Dynamics_, Dr. J. W. Forrester points out that
a high-speed digital computer can be used in analyzing as many as 2,000
variables such as costs, wages, sales, and employment. This is obviously
so far beyond human capability that the advantage of computer analysis
becomes evident. A corollary benefit is the speed inherent in the
computer which makes it possible to test a new policy or manufacturing
program in hours right in the computer, rather than waiting for months
or years of actual implementation and possible failure. For these
reasons another expert has predicted that most businesses will be using
computer simulations of their organizations by 1966. Regardless of the
timetable, it is clear that the computer has jumped into business with
both its binary digits and will become an increasingly powerful factor.
[Illustration:
Lichty, © _Field Enterprises, Inc._
“Our new ‘brain’ recognizes the human factor, doctor!... After feeding
it the symptoms, it gives the diagnosis and treatment.... But YOU
set the fee!”
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
“_Men have become the tools of their tools._”
—Thoreau
9: The Computer and Automation
In his movie, _City Lights_, Charlie Chaplin long ago portrayed the
terrible plight of the workman in the modern factory. Now that the
machine is about to take over completely and relieve man of this
machinelike existence, it is perhaps time for Charlie to make another
movie pointing up this new injustice of civilization or machine’s
inhumanity to man. It seems to be damned if it does and damned if it
doesn’t.
For some strange reason, few of us become alarmed at the news of a
computer solving complex mathematics, translating a book, or processing
millions of checks daily, but the idea of a computer controlling a
factory stimulates union reprisals, editorials in the press against
automation, and much general breast-beating and soul-searching.
Perversely we do not seem to mind the computer’s thinking as much as we
do its overt action.
It is well to keep sight of the fact that automation is no new
revolution, but the latest development in the garden variety of
industrial revolution that began a couple of centuries ago in England:
Mechanization was the first step in that revolution, mechanization being
the application of power to supplement the muscles of men. Mass
production came along as the second step at the turn of this century. It
was simply an organization of mechanized production for faster, more
efficient output.
Automation is the latest logical extension of the two earlier steps,
made possible by rapid information handling and control. Recent layoffs
in industry triggered demonstrations, including television programs,
that would indicate we suspect automation of having a rather cold heart.
The computer is the heart of automation.
[Illustration:
_Remington Rand UNIVAC_
Control operations require “real-time” computers that perform
calculations and make necessary decisions practically
instantaneously.
]