Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
problems for many particle physics experiments was the sorting of the
signal from the noise: for many kinds of subatomic events, a certain
“background” could be anticipated. Figuring out just how many back-
ground events should be expected inside the volume of a spark chamber
was often a diffi cult problem that could not be solved analytically. Again
following the lead of the military, physicists turned to simulations using
computers. Starting with random numbers, physicists used stochastic
methods that mimicked physical processes to arrive at “predictions” of
the expected background. These “Monte Carlo” processes evolved from
early computer simulations of atomic bombs on the ENIAC to sophis-
ticated background calculations for bubble chambers. The computer it-
self became a particular kind of object: that is, a simulation machine.
The other signifi cant use of computers that evolved between 1945
and 1955 was in the management of data. In many ways, this was a
straightforward extension of the ENIAC's ability to work with large
sets of numbers. The Moore School engineers J. Presper Eckert and John
Mauchly quickly saw how their design for the Electronic Discrete Vari-
able Advanced Calculator (EDVAC) could be adapted into a machine
that could rapidly sort data—precisely the need of commercial work.
This insight inspired the inventors to incorporate the Eckert-Mauchly
Computer Corporation in December 1948 with the aim of selling elec-
tronic computers to businesses. The fi rst computer they produced—the
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)—was sold to the US Census
Bureau in March 1951. By 1954, they had sold almost twenty machines
to military (the US Air Force, US Army Map Service, Atomic Energy
Commission) and nonmilitary customers (General Electric, US Steel,
DuPont, Metropolitan Life, Consolidated Edison). Customers used
these machines for inventory and logistics. The most important feature
of the computer was its ability to “scan through a reel of tape, fi nd
the correct record or set of records, perform some process in it, and
return the results again to tape.”
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It was an “automatic” information
processing system. The UNIVAC was successful because it was able to
store, operate on, and manipulate large tables of numbers—the only dif-
ference was that these numbers now represented inventory or revenue
fi gures rather than purely mathematical expressions.
Between the end of World War II and the early 1960s, computers
were also extensively used by the military in operations research (OR).
OR and the related fi eld of systems analysis were devoted to the sys-
tematic analysis of logistical problems in order to fi nd optimally ef-
fi cient solutions.
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OR involved problems of game theory, probability,
and statistics. These logical and numerical problems were understood as
