America And The Computer Industry

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Term Paper Title	America And The Computer Industry
# of Words	2578
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	10.31

America and the Computer Industry

America and the Computer Industry

Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come about to touch every aspect of
our lives. Such a device that changes the way we work, live, and play is a
special one, indeed. A machine that has done all this and more now exists in
nearly every business in the U.S. and one out of every two households (Hall,
156). This incredible invention is the computer. The electronic computer has
been around for over a half-century, but its ancestors have been around for 2000
years. However, only in the last 40 years has it changed the American society.
>From the first wooden abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor, the
computer has changed nearly every aspect of people's lives for the better.

The very earliest existence of the modern day computer's ancestor is the abacus.
These date back to almost 2000 years ago. It is simply a wooden rack holding
parallel wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved along the
wire according to "programming" rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary
arithmetic operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The next innovation in
computers took place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first "digital
calculating machine". It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by
turning dials. It was designed to help Pascal's father who was a tax collector
(Soma, 32).

In the early 1800's, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage designed an
automatic calculation machine. It was steam powered and could store up to 1000
50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations that included
everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It was programmed by—
and stored data on—cards with holes punched in them, appropriately called
"punchcards". His inventions were failures for the most part because of the lack
of precision machining techniques used at the time and the lack of demand for
such a device (Soma, 46).

After Babbage, people began to lose interest in computers. However, between 1850
and 1900 there were great advances in mathematics and physics that began to
rekindle the interest (Osborne, 45). Many of these new advances involved complex
calculations and formulas that were very time consuming for human calculation.
The first major use for a computer in the U.S. was during the 1890 census. Two
men, Herman Hollerith and James Powers, developed a new punched-card system that
could automatically read information on cards wi...

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