Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the applications developed by computer programmers and systems ana-
lysts. Over the course of the 1950s corporations had discovered that the
electronic computer was more than just an improved version of the
mechanical calculator or Hollerith machine. What was originally envi-
sioned as a “chromium-plated tabulator,” as Haigh has portrayed it, was
increasingly seen as a tool for managerial control and communication.
8
As the electronic computer was gradually reinterpreted in larger organi-
zational terms, fi rst as an “electronic data processing” device and then
again as a “management information system,” it was increasingly seen
as a source of institutional and professional power.
Computers Can't Solve Everything
The 1960s were something of a golden age for the computer industry.
The industry grew at an average annual rate of 27 percent during this
period.
9
At the beginning of the decade there were roughly fi fty-four
hundred computers installed in the United States; by 1970 this number
had grown to more than seventy-four thousand.
10
In 1969 alone U.S.
fi rms purchased $7 billion worth of electronic computers and related
equipment. An additional $14 billion was spent on computer personnel
and materials. The corporate world's total investment in computing that
year represented 10 percent of the nation's total annual expenditure on
capital equipment.
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These corporate investors were also getting increas-
ingly more for their money. In the fi rst half of the decade, innovations
in transistor and integrated circuit technology had increased the memory
size and processor speed of computers by a factor of ten, providing an
effective performance improvement of almost a hundred. By the end of
the decade, the inexorable march toward smaller, faster, and cheaper
computing predicted by Gordon Moore in 1965 was clearly in
evidence.
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It was during this period that the IBM Corporation rose to worldwide
dominance, establishing in the process a series of institutional structures
and technological standards that shaped developments in the industry
for the next several decades. Under IBM's substantial umbrella a broad
and diverse set of subsidiary industries fl ourished, including not just
manufacturers of complementary (or even competing) hardware prod-
ucts but also programming services companies, time-sharing “computer
utilities,” and independent data processing service providers. When we
consider such subsidiary industries, our estimate of the total size of the
computer industry almost doubles.
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