Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
punches, card verifiers, card tabulators, card sorters, and alphabetizers. Users used these
devicestocreate
data-processing systems
that received input data, performed one or
more calculations, and produced output data. Within these systems, punched cards
stored input data, intermediate results, and output data. In the most complicated sys-
tems, punched cards also stored the program—the steps of the computational process to
be followed. Early systems relied on human operators to carry cards from one machine
to the next. Later systems had electrical connections that allowed the output of one ma-
chine to be transmitted to the next machine without the use of punched cards or human
intervention.
Organizations with large data-processing needs found punched-card tabulators
and calculators to be valuable devices, and they continually clamored for new features
that would improve the computational capabilities and speed of their systems [10].
These organizations would become a natural market for commercial electronic digital
computers.
IBM machines played an infamous role in the Holocaust. After Adolf Hitler came
to power in Germany in 1933, IBM chief executive Thomas J. Watson overlooked well-
publicized accounts of anti-Semitic violence and the opening of concentration camps,
focusing instead on a golden business opportunity. The firm expanded the operations of
its German subsidiary, Dehomag, built a new factory in Germany, and actively sought
business from the German government. Tabulating, sorting, collating, and alphabetiz-
ing machines and support services provided by Dehomag allowed the Nazi government
to rapidly conduct censuses, identify acknowledged Jews and those with Jewish ances-
tors, and generate the alphabetical lists of names needed to efficiently seize their assets,
confine them to ghettos, and deport them to death camps [13].
Several computing devices developed during and immediately after World War II paved
the way for the commercialization of electronic digital computers.
Between 1939 and 1941, Iowa State College professor John Atanasoff and his grad-
uate student Clifford Berry constructed an electronic device for solving systems of linear
equations. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first computing device built with vac-
uum tubes, but it was not programmable.
Dr. John W. Mauchly, a physics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, visited
Iowa State College in 1941 to learn more about the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. After
he returned to Penn, Mauchly worked with J. Presper Eckert to create a design for an
electronic computer to speed the computation of artillery tables for the US Army. They
led a team that completed work on the ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and
computer) in 1946. As it turns out, the war ended before the ENIAC could provide the
Army with any ballistics tables, but its speed was truly impressive. A person with a desk
calculator could compute a 60-second trajectory in 20 hours. The ENIAC performed
the computation in 30 seconds. In other words, the ENIAC was 2,400 times faster than
a person with a desk calculator.
The ENIAC had many features of a modern computer. All of its internal compo-
nents were electronic, and it could be programmed to perform a variety of computa-
