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to handle the millions of calculations necessary to support modern armies, navies,
and air forces.
Because Germany was the prime aggressor in World War II, many of the com-
puter programs in other countries were aimed at interfering with German military
success and breaking German codes.
Analog Computers During World War II
Combatants used analog computers throughout World War II and digital com-
puters only near the end of World War II after about 1943. Analog computers
are not “programmed” via separate stored programs; rather, the programming was
built in by the designers of their circuits, gears, spindles, vacuum tubes, and other
electronic devices.
Note
Analog computers received more funding than digital computers
because they were used for ballistics calculations. Most of the belli-
gerents devised analog computers for use on submarines in aiming
torpedoes.
Analog computers were small enough and sophisticated enough to handle com-
plex military problems such as naval gun control, bombsights, and submarine tor-
pedo launching. It would be another 30 years before digital computers with em-
bedded software programs would be small enough and reliable enough to replace
analog devices onboard ships at sea and in combat aircraft.
The future inventions of transistors, integrated circuits, and dynamic random-
access memory (DRAM) would be needed in order to shrink digital computers
to small-enough physical sizes and low-enough electric power consumption to be
useful on military aircraft and small ships such as submarines. In addition, the in-
vention of better programming languages than basic assembly would be needed to
handle the very complex calculations involved in target acquisition and fire con-
trol, bomb runs, and naval gunnery.
Better software quality control would also be needed, because the embedded
applications used for weapons control were complex and large. Bugs or defects in
the embedded software operating weapons systems can be fatal to the crews and
vessels using them.
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