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New Technology and the Future
Published in Ervan Garrison, A History of Engineering and Technology Artful Methods, 2018
In 1890, it became obvious to Herman Hollerith (1860–1929) and John Shaw Billings (1839–1913) that a system of machines was necessary to adequately take the U.S. Census. Hollerith was an engineer with a doctoral degree from Columbia University. He later instructed at MIT in mechanical engineering. Hollerith patented a tabulating machine in 1889. Hollerith later associated with Thomas J. Watson, Sr. in 1914, in the Computer Tabulating-Recording Company which later (1924) became the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Billings was in charge of the work on vital statistics in both the 1880 and 1890 censuses. Hollerith was a member of his staff. Proceeding on Billing’s suggestions, Hollerith designed a punch-card reading tabulating machine which characterized vital statistics on the cards. The roll of cards ran under a set of contact brushes which completed an electrical circuit if and only if a hole was present. The completed circuits activated counters which advanced a unit/hole counted. With this device the 1890 Census handled the records of 63,000,000 people. Even with this initial success, analog devices were those most favored by scientists of the caliber of Maichelson and Kelvin. Mechanical improvements allowed successful application of two-step integrations and held sway until 1945. The development of the first successful electronic digital machine — ENIAC (1945) — and an earlier innovative design, ABC, matched closely the theoretical work of John von Neumann. The basic structure of the modern automatic computer was outlined by A.W. Burks, H.H. Goldstine, and John von Neumann in a 1946 paper.3 Their machine required: (1) a control unit for executing orders, (2) a memory unit for storing orders and data, (3) an arithmetic-logic unit to perform elementary operations, and (4) input and output units for either machine-machine communication. This design has been termed von Neumann (computer) architecture.4 This is shown in the diagram of Figure 14.1. The designation also implies a sequence to the processing of orders and operations termed “linear” or more commonly “serial.”
The Los Alamos Computing Facility During the Manhattan Project
Published in Nuclear Technology, 2021
The third computing method was to adapt PCAMs to solve scientific equations.7 Punch-card tabulating machines had been developed by Herman Hollerith for the 1890 census. His machines were very successful, but the business was not. This result led to a merger with two other companies in 1911 to create the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which was renamed International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924 (Ref. 11). Originally the machines were tabulators that could add numbers and sort cards. Functionality was gradually added to make the machines more versatile for use in accounting and recordkeeping. The added functionality included subtraction, alphanumeric records, sorting options, collation, and removable control plug boards. The first IBM machine that could multiply, the type-601 multiplying punch, was released in 1931 (Ref. 12). The highly successful type-405 alphabetical accounting machine, the most advanced tabulator, was released in 1934 (Refs. 11 and 12). Eventually, a full suite of IBM machines would include a collator, an interpreter, a keypunch, a reproducer, a sorter, and a verifier in addition to the type-405 tabulator and type-601 multipler.11 Descriptions of the eight types of IBM machines, which are discussed later in this paper, can be found in Refs. 8, 10, 11, and 13.