1930 to 1939: The Foundations of Digital Computing - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 38

Chapter 2. 1930 to 1939: The Foundations of
Digital Computing
The early years of the 1930s witnessed original papers leading to the design of
digital computers. By the end of the decade, several working digital computers
proved that electronic computers were possible. Also during this decade, the prob-
ability of a major war led to large government investments in military analog com-
puters for fire control, torpedo launches, and bombsights.
The First Innovators of Modern Computing
The decade from 1930 to 1939 was an era without software as we know it today.
But it was a very fruitful era in terms of both the invention of the underlying lo-
gical ideas behind software and also the design of physical computing devices.
Toward the end of this decade, it was obvious that a major war would soon oc-
cur. This created a sense of urgency that led to substantial funding for rapid calcu-
lation devices that could be used for military purposes, such as ballistics calcula-
tions, logistics, and cryptanalysis.
There were significant investments by all countries for analog computers for
military purposes such as naval gun control, submarine torpedo aiming, and bomb-
sights. While many such analog devices were built and tested in this decade, it is
best to discuss them in the chapter discussing the 1940s when they were actually
used for combat.
In 1930, Vannevar Bush developed a differential calculator , which was proof
that calculating devices could handle a range of mathematical problems instead of
a single narrow form of calculation. This was an analog device rather than a digital
computer, so it is not in the line of direct descent to today's digital computers.
In 1934, the German scientist Konrad Zuse put forth the idea that a computer
or calculating engine would need a control unit, memory, and an arithmetic unit.
Zuse was a pioneer of both computing architecture and programming languages.
However, his work was not well known in the United States until after the end of
World War II. He is a contender on the short list of having built the first computer.
His most successful computers were built during the next decade.
In 1935, IBM hired three female employees, among the first for a technology
company. The IBM chairman, Thomas J. Watson Sr., announced that IBM would