Looking Forward by Kenneth Jr. (snow like ashes .txt) 📗

of an inch! The Westclox Corporation of LaSalle, Illinois, uses the TransfeRobot to oil clock assemblies as they speed by on a conveyor belt. It oils eight precision bearings in a second. At the Underwood Corporation typewriter plant in Hartford, the robot picks up and inserts a small typewriter component into a close-fitting nest. The hand of the TransfeRobot can be adjusted to something more tender than a lover’s caress, or it can grab things with the force of a vice. It can use mechanical fingers or electromagnets. For oozy stuff such as chocolate creams, it uses a gentle vacuum.

John Snyder, the maker of the TransfeRobot, says:

So far we have not been able to find any material or any shape or any size it can’t handle. ... We built an automated stamping line for Nissan Motors in Japan. It has six presses with TransfeRobot-type machines to take the stuff out of one press and feed it to the next. One man watches raw sheet metal go in and one more watches finished fenders come out. It replaces, oh, maybe 20 men altogether. But that’s not all. You could extend the process right up to bolting the fender to a car. Even considering how cheap labor is in Japan, the thing saves money.

History of Computers

Just as automated machinery replaces the tired muscles of man, computers are being developed that can replace the bored minds of men who are engaged in the repetitive production of goods and services in our industrial society. And just as automated machinery does a better job on repetitive tasks than the human hand, a computer outperforms a human mind. The circuits in an electronic computer can respond in less than a millionth of a second. This is over a thousand times faster than it takes the neurons in our brains to respond to incoming stimuli. Robert Theobald has pointed out, “...in the near future we will see that the computer can take over any structured task...”

Man worked toward the development of a computer for a long time. The simple abacus of ancient times was a first step. In 1671 Gottfried Leibnitz tried unsuccessfully to invent a mechanical calculating machine. “It is unworthy of excellent men,” he wrote, “to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation.” An Englishman named Charles Babbage worked out many of the principles of modern mechanical calculating machines in 1834, but he was unable to produce a successful model because the technology of his time could not turn out accurate gears. It was not until 1944 that the first true computer was produced by Howard Aiken, a professor at Harvard University. It is a sad reflection of our times that this pioneering computer was used to compute weapon trajectories for the U.S. Navy.

Aiken’s first computer was soon overshadowed by the famous ENIAC, developed at the University of Pennsylvania. Though a great improvement, ENIAC had 18,000 vacuum tubes, was unreliable, and took too much space. Computers began to trim their waistlines and speed up their operations about 1958 when small reliable transistors and other solid-state components replaced the vacuum tubes. Computers today can multiply a half-million ten-digit numbers in a second. Many computers can make more calculations in an hour than an auditorium full of mathematicians could accomplish in their lifetime. In 1951 there were under 100 computers in operation in the United States. By 1965 the number had jumped to 22,500 and is constantly accelerating. Some companies use up to 200 of them.

As long ago as 1959 the Sperry-Rand Corporation produced a computer that was able to handle 250,000 additions and subtractions of twelve-digit numbers per second. This enables it to make up a monthly payroll for 15,000 employees in only fifteen hours. Previously, it took 450 to 900 hours to do this job. Since only a part of the circuits of the computer are used while calculating a payroll, it can simultaneously solve scientific problems on the side!

By 1965 computers had been used in more than 700 specific tasks. At the time you read this page this number will have increased enormously. Major airlines use computers to give instant information on seats available on all flights. Stock Exchanges use computers to give instant stock quotations. Computers are now busy setting newspaper type, pawing over our income tax returns, controlling the flow of electricity of most power companies, helping you make long distance phone calls by ferreting out available circuits, navigating planes and ships, and providing railroads with instant information on where their freight cars are hiding out. Computers can land a plane in foggy weather without any human help. Our space ships that orbit the earth, spy on the moon, and whiz by the planets are highly dependent on computers from the design board to the final inch of their spectacular flights. Much of today’s business, government, and science would be paralyzed if the computers were ever to demand a vacation.

It has been estimated that if there were no computers, the phone company would now have to hire all the working women in the country just to handle the flood of calls. Computers today control the production machinery in the petrochemical, petroleum, paper, and steel industries. At Western Electric’s “Plant of Tomorrow” computers handle the billing, shipping, and warehousing; they order materials, write checks, and decide what to manufacture and how many. Time magazine has pointed out:

Computers have helped scientists to discover more than 100 new subatomic particles, and are busy analyzing strange radio signals from outer space. Biochemists have used the computer to delve into the hitherto unassailable secrets of the human cell, and hospitals have begun to use it to monitor the condition of patients. Computers now read electrocardiograms faster and more accurately than a jury of physicians. The Los Angeles police department plans to use computers to keep a collection of useful details about crimes and an electronic rogue’s gallery of known criminals. And in a growing number of schools, computers have taken jobs as instructors in languages,