Role of the US Government in the Acceleration of the Advancement of Essay

Role of the US Government in the Acceleration of the Advancement of Computers - Essay Example The electronic computr has been approximately for over a half-century, but its intimates have been approximately for 2000 years. However, only in the last 4 decades has it changed the American society which resulted from U.S government policies towards the advancements of computrs. From the 1st wooden "abacus" to the latest high-speed "microprocessor chip", the computr has altred nearly every aspect of people's lives for the bettr. The outburst of "World War II" twisted a desperate need for computing capability, particularly for the military. New weapons' systems were created which required trajectory tables and other indispensable data. In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Meauchley, and their associates at the "University of Pennsylvania" detrmined to build a high-speed electronic computr to do the job. This machine became recognized as "ENIAC", for "Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator". It may well multiply two numbers at the tempo of 300 products per second, by finding the value of each product from a multiplication table stored in its memory. ""ENIAC"" was consequently about 1,000 times quicker than the preceding generation of computrs (Dolotta, 47). "ENIAC" used 18,000 standard vacuum tubes, engaged 1800 square feet of floor space, and used about 180,000 watts of electricity. (Ceruzzi, 36) The input and output was done by punched-card. The "ENIAC" was very complicated to program because one had to fundamentally re-wire it to execute whatever task he required the computr to do. It was, though, well-organized in handling the particular programs for which it had been planned. "ENIAC" is normally accepted as the 1st victorious high-speed electronic digital computr and was used in various applications from 1946 to 1955 (Dolotta, 50). Mathematician John von Neumann was very fascinated in the "ENIAC". In 1945 he undertook a hypothetical study of computation that confirmed that a computr could have a very straightforward and yet be able to perform any kind of computation effectively by means of appropriate programmed control devoid of the need for any changes in hardware. Von Neumann came up with incredible ideas for methods of building and organizing practical, fast computrs. These ideas, which came to be referred to as the stored-program technique, became essential for future generations of high-speed digital computrs and were across the world adopted. The 1st gesture of modern programmed electronic computrs to take benefit of these improvements appeared in 1947. This group incorporated computrs using random access memory (RAM), which is a memory designed to give almost steady access to any particular portion of information. This equipment used punched-card or punched-tape input and output devices and RAM's of thousand-word capability. Physically, they were much more compact than "ENIAC": some were regarding the size of a grand piano and required two thousand five hundred small electron tubes. This was fairly a development over the earlier machines. The 1st generation stored-program computrs required considerable maintenance, usually attained 70% to 80% reliable operation, and were used for 8 to 12 years. Typically, they were programmed directly in machine language, although by the mid-1950s progress had been made in several aspects of advanced programming. This group of machines included "EDVAC "and "UNIVAC ", the 1st