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DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTERS

In the 19^th century the need for rapid calculation expanded throughout the industrial world. Governments taxed and policed larger populations than ever before. Commerce expanded so that there were more money transactions than ever before.

Armies of clerks were employed to calculate and record the mass of transactions conducted by business houses, banks and insurance companies. Scientists and engineers required ever more extensive tables of figures.

To meet the demand, new designs of calculating machine were devised.

In the 20^th century electricity was harnessed to drive a variety of calculating machines. But the first general-purpose computing machine that was fully electronic was ENIAC (Electronic Numeral Integrator and Calculator), completed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945. It employed more than 18,000 thermionic valves, weighed 30 tons and occupied 1,500 sq. ft of floor space.

In the post-war years more computers were built, generally in university research departments. The term “electronic brain” was coined.

The first part of the economy in which computers became important was finance. In banks and finance houses information began to be recorded directly in machine-readable form by operators at keyboard machines. At first numbers were recorded on punched paper tape or cards; later these were supplanted by magnetic tape and discs. The number of clerical staff did not fall, but their productivity rose as the number of transactions they could process swelled. In the early 1980s, for instance, in Britain the National Westminster Bank processes some 2 million cheques and 650,000 credits in each working day.

Large companies computerized their payrolls. Shops and stores kept track of goods with the aid of computers and cut their reserve stocks; hence they could reduce their warehouse costs and free space for a wider variety of goods.

Complex industrial processes such as oil refining and steel-rolling were handed over to the control of the computer. Industrial design depended more and more on the computer. It would be impossible to design a new car or jet airliner with a reasonable expenditure of time and money without computers to carry out the enormous number of calculations involved.

The mammoth American company IBM dominated these developments. When delivery of Univac II, announced by IBM’s rival Remington Rand in 1955, was delayed until 1957 by production difficulties, IBM captured the market in large computers.

IBM maintained its lead when the “second generation” of computers appeared around 1960. These employed transistors in place of valves and were more powerful than their predecessors, yet more compact, reliable and economical of energy. They could be housed in a few cabinets, rather than filling a large air-conditioned room.

The trend towards smallness and cheapness was enormously accelerated when the “third generation” of computers, based on the silicon chip, appeared around 1965. Electronic components, such as transistors, could now be made in large numbers on a thin square of silicon, typically ¼ in. square. By 1971 the first microprocessor had appeared in America: the microprocessor was the heart of a computer – the part that does the actual calculating – on a single chip. Other chips could provide memory stores.

When input/output devices, such as a keyboard and printing machine, were added, a complete computing system was obtained that could fit on to a desktop. Such a unit can store about 2 ½ million characters – letters or numbers – of information. Calculations are completed in seconds and the print-out is between 80-120 characters a second.

A visual display unit – a TV screen that could display text punched in by means of a keyboard, together with the computer’s replies – permitted an operator to put instructions and questions to the computer and receive responses.

The computer, now smaller, cheaper and more accessible to ordinary people than ever before, has appeared in the office, on the factory floor and in the home. Computer terminals are seen at airline and theater reservations desks, in stockbrokers’ offices, in factory stockrooms, on power-station control rooms and in banks.

Words:

To expand – расширять(ся), развиваться

Expenditure- трата, расход

To employ – держать на службе, давать работу

Demand – требовать, предъявлять, требование

General-purpose computer – компьютер общего назначения

To harness- покорять, войти в повседневную жизнь

Thermionic valve – термоионная лампа

Payrolls (амер.)- платежная ведомость

Transaction- дело, сделка, деловая операция