HISTORY of COMPUTERS

Пособие представляет сборник оригинальных текстов пр истории возникновения и развития компьютерных технологий. Рассчитано на студентов уровней Pre-Intermediate и Intermediate с целью развития навыков чтения, монологической речи, ведения дискуссии и активизации лексики по специальности.6

History of computers. Reload

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The Silent Arms Race: The Role of the Supercomputer During the Cold War, 1947-1963

One of the central features of the Cold War is the Arms Race. The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist republics vied for supremacy over the globe for a fifty-year period in which there were several arms races; atomic weapons, thermonuclear weapons and various kinds of conventional weapons. However, there is another arms race that goes unsung during this period of history and that is in the area of supercomputing. The other types of arms races are taken for granted by historians and others, but the technological competition between the superpowers would have been impossible without the historically silent arms race in the area of supercomputers. The construction of missiles, jets as well as the testing of nuclear weapons had serious implications for international relations. Often perception is more important than fact. Perceived power maintained a deterrent effect on the two superpowers. If one superpower suspected that they, in fact, had an advantage over the other then the balance of power would be upset and more aggressive measures might have been taken in various fronts of the conflict, perhaps leading to war. Due to this, it was necessary to maintain a balance of power not only in weapons but in supercomputing as well. Considering the role that the computers played, it is time for closer historical scrutiny

The ingenuity of common workmen: and the invention of the computer

Since World War II, state support for scientific research has been assumed crucial to technological and economic progress. Governments accordingly spent tremendous sums to that end. Nothing epitomizes the alleged fruits of that involvement better than the electronic digital computer. The first such computer has been widely reputed to be the ENIAC, financed by the U.S. Army for the war but finished afterwards. Vastly improved computers followed, initially paid for in good share by the Federal Government of the United States, but with the private sector then dominating, both in development and use, and computers are of major significance.;Despite the supposed success of public-supported science, evidence is that computers would have evolved much the same without it but at less expense. Indeed, the foundations of modern computer theory and technology were articulated before World War II, both as a tool of applied mathematics and for information processing, and the computer was itself on the cusp of reality. Contrary to popular understanding, the ENIAC actually represented a movement backwards and a dead end.;Rather, modern computation derived more directly, for example, from the prewar work of John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, a physics professor and graduate student, respectively, at Iowa State College (now University) in Ames, Iowa. They built the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC), which, although special purpose and inexpensive, heralded the efficient and elegant design of modern computers. Moreover, while no one foresaw commercialization of computers based on the ungainly and costly ENIAC, the commercial possibilities of the ABC were immediately evident, although unrealized due to war. Evidence indicates, furthermore, that the private sector was willing and able to develop computers beyond the ABC and could have done so more effectively than government, to the most sophisticated machines.;A full and inclusive history of computers suggests that Adam Smith, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, had it right. He believed that minimal and aloof government best served society, and that the inherent genius of citizens was itself enough to ensure the general prosperity

From tabulators to early computers in the U.S. life insurance industry : co-evolution and continuities

"October 1993."Includes bibliographical references.JoAnne Yates

NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo

A historical account of NASA's Apollo era engineers is presented. This book is based on interviews that were conducted with fifty-one 'typical' engineers

The entry of established electronics companies into the early computer industry in the UK and USA.

This thesis studies the efforts of a number of large electronics firms to enter and survive in the computer industries of the USA and Britain, from the Second World War to the early 1970s. It contrasts the relative failure of these firms with the greater ability to survive in this sector displayed by single product business machine companies and a number of new, start up, computer firms. The potential advantages that the multi-product electronics enterprise should have had in the new computer market are seen to have been outweighed by these firms being over burdened by the very scope of their operations. Their efforts to cover the whole electronics industry, rather than concentrating on a few sectors, mitigated the potential that they had. A number of case studies of such firms, both British and American, form the heart of this study. The main studies are:- UK: Ferranti, Electrical and Musical Industries and English Electric. US: Radio Corporation of America, and General Electric. To contrast the strategies and structures of the electronics combines, a number of short studies are made of British and American business machines and start-up companies: UK: International Computers and Tabulators. US: International Business Machines, and shorter studies on Burroughs, Control Data Corp., Digital Equipment Corp., Honeywell, National Cash Register, and Sperry-Rand. Study of the electronics firms in the computer industry sheds light on the overall weakness of the broad-based, multi-product, British and American electronics company in the electronics industry as a whole. There is also some comment on the roles of the two governments in shaping the computer industry

Technical change in US industry: A cross-industry analysis

The nature of the public policies which have influenced the pace and pattern of technical progress in a number of American industries is studied with the view of assessing the broad effects of these policies. The industries studied are agriculture, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, computers, civil aircraft, automobiles and residential construction. The policies considered include research and development funding as well as government procurement, education, information dissemination, patent protection, licensing, regulations, and anti-trust policies