Automatic Calculating

AUTOMATIC CALCULATING • W. H. Watson One morning recently my interest was attracted to the behaviour of my dog, who interrupted his walk when he spied a cat sitting on a window ledge and engaged in a series of bellicose gestures towards this cat. By tapping the dog with the newspaper that had just been purchased, I abruptly terminated the display, and he went on with no further interest in the cat. Whatever the physiological details of the connection between the stimulus of the dog's seeing the cat and the overt performance, his behaviour seemed to follow a controlling programme. This control was switched off by my intervention. Doubtless if the cat had moved, the dog would have altered his programme in response to the altered stimuli. It must be confessed that it is- somewhat odd to apply to a dog's behaviour a conception that is proper for an automatic calculating machine: nevertheless it will bear reflection. During the war the development of electronic devices for military purposes initiated the growth that is evident today in the impressive scope of automatic digital-computing machines. There are now very many large machines under construction or in operation in the United States. In Britain and other countries significant effort has also been committed to learning the possibilities of such machines and applying them to numerical applied mathematics, accounting, and the multiplicity of arithmetical and "data-processing" activities that enter into private and governmental business. In presenting to the public the amazing capabilities of electronic computers the daily press has out-metaphored its most extravagant confections of bygone days and has claimed that these "giant brains" can think. We do little credit to our intelligence if we are lured to regard the human brain only in this oversimplified fashion. Even the behaviour of my dog is a very complicated affair that would tax the ingenuity of engineer and mathematical programmer to imitate. Nevertheless, in attempting to impress their readers concerning the modern computing engine, the newspapers do not err in the essential. On the other hand, there is some danger that the academic world may be generally disposed to dismiss the matter that lies behind the headlines as unworthy of its attention. The main ideas of the logical structure required of a universal calculating machine were conceived over a hundred years ago by Charles Babbage in England.1 We are now entering on the social revolution that must follow from the fact that the advent of electronic invention has drastically reduced the time required for large-scale computing. Elementary arithmetical operations on numbers comprising ten decimal digits can be carried out in a few millionths of a second. In whatever field of human activity computing or accounting (in its widest sense) can be brought to bear for practical affairs, there we can contemplate with assurance the intervention of the electronic computing device-provided , of course, that it has the capacity to store the relevant information and the speed necessary to use that information to produce results in time to control other machines or to influence executive decisions. The control of traffic in transportation systems, automatic control of factory production, inventory control, and other obvious applications in business, industry, and commerce are now being achieved, and new uses are being planned whose consequences for the economy under which we live are very difficult to forecast. At present the main restrictions on the rate at which this change can take place lie in the large cost of the machines (of the order of a few million dollars for one of large capacity) and the lack of men trained to use them effectively. That both the cost and physical size of these machines will be greatly reduced is no doubt the expectation of the engineers engaged in designing them. It is also envisaged that many machines will be introduced to operate with infrequent changes of programme, so that the demand for the services of mathematicians, physicists, and engineers will be mainly for those machines that are applied to scientific or engineering computing services and for the staffs of those concerns which design machines and new ways of using them. The digital computing machine operates with...