Conquering the Electron: The Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels Who Built Our Electronic Age by Derek Cheung & Eric Brach

Conquering the Electron: The Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels Who Built Our Electronic Age by Derek Cheung & Eric Brach

Author:Derek Cheung & Eric Brach [Cheung, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2014-10-09T04:00:00+00:00


Framework for the Future

The U.S. Army’s investment in the ENIAC and EDVAC projects established the foundation necessary to create the modern electronic computer. Because of the high cost and high level of risk involved—especially given the unclear commercial market potential for such a novel product—private enterprise would likely have been reluctant to invest in such a project. Even the most laissez-faire economist and businessman must take note that sometimes it takes government involvement to push past such catch-22s and help create something truly revolutionary. It was true of the telegraph, it was true of radar, and it was true of the computer—and later, it would be true of the Internet. It will surely be true of some other game-changing innovation in the future as well.

It would be impossible to discuss computers without mentioning International Business Machines—IBM—a company that can actually trace its roots to mechanical computers. In 1888, Herman Hollerith, the American pioneer for mechanical computing machines, founded the Tabulating Machine Company. This predecessor company to IBM won a contract from the U.S. Census Bureau to build punch card equipment to help tabulate results from the 1890 Census. IBM continued to gain computer expertise in the 1930s through collaboration with Harvard on the Mark I computer.

At the height of the Cold War, IBM worked closely with MIT and the U.S. Air Force to develop the most advanced and complex computer system, code-named SAGE, which was a large-scale air defense system, linking a large amount of information from multiple radar systems across the country to a centralized command and control center. This experience allowed IBM to be at the cutting edge of computer hardware and systems software technology.

IBM owned a unique culture that put special emphasis on delivering total solutions to satisfy customer needs. The company recognized early on that the applications for powerful computers lay not just in complex scientific and engineering calculations, but also in the more mundane processing and analysis of massive amount of repetitive information. As the amount of information in the business world swelled exponentially in the postwar era, the market potential for computers grew correspondingly. Starting from the early 1950s and for several decades later, IBM was the indisputable leader in the global computer industry. It even played a key role in starting the personal computer revolution. Along the way IBM also pioneered many foundational computer hardware and software technologies, including the magnetic hard disks for mass data storage, which played a key role in today’s information age.



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