Time And The Uses Of The Computers example essay topic

Computers in the 1950'people have been in awe of computers since they were first invented. At first scientist said that computers would only be for government usage only. "Then when the scientists saw the potential computers had, scientist then predicted that by 1990 computers may one day invade the home of just about ever citizen in the world" ("History" Internet), the scientists were slightly wrong, because by 1990 computers were just beginning to catch on. Then a few years later when scientists when to major corporations to get help with a special project, the corporations said no, because computers would just be a fad and they wouldn't make much money off of it. "By definition Abacus is the first computer (the proper definition of a computer is one who or that which computes) ever invented" (Internet).

The subject of this term paper will be about computers in the 1950's. The divisions that will be covered are; the types of computers there were, the memory capacity of computers, the programming languages of that time, and the uses of the computers for that time. Information will be gathered from the Internet, from books, and from magazines, and from the encyclopedia. Ali 2 In the fifties, computers were in the experimental stage they were extremely hard to work with, and were a constant technicians worst nightmare, because often enough you had to replace the fuses (s Appendix a). The memory capacity of that time was rather limited. "There were not many external drives, the only external drives of that time were I / O cards, I cards and O cards" ("Whirlwind" Internet) "computers of that time were capable of a multitude of small tasks, like data processing (i.e. IRS related material, and information storage. ), word processing (i.e. extremely early model of Microsoft word), data analysis (i.e. survey taking), complex calculations (i.e. weather prediction) communications (i. e., the telephone system (switching) ) " (" Computers" Internet).

The lack of the internal drive, even 1 k drives proved to be very hard on the computers of the 1950's ("Hackers" Internet) "with out the hard drives, programmers had to leave everything running all the time or print what they typed for the day and retype it the next day or they could save it to a I / O card" ("Computers" Internet). All three of these choices posed as a problem from programmers of that time, as first off to leave on the computer would cost a lot of money as it required a lot of money to maintain them while they are on. The second option also wouldn't work because if the programmer printed out everything he typed that day it would take him most of the day to reenter it into the consol, the last reason isn't actually that bad, as the programmer only has to save all the information on to I / O cards, the only possible problem would come along if the program Ali 3 lost one of the cards, as it would take more than one, maybe even more than 20 or 30 cards. "The Eniac is capable of processing complicated math in less than. 0002 seconds" (s Whirlwind Internet). The Eniac has no real hard drive space as it was a computer of the fifties, the closest things it had to a hard drive of any kind was the external hard drive called the I / O card, it also had the monitor which let people see its graphical unit interface (GUI), which for the time was rather advanced, the Eniac had a central processing unit for sorts, but was not that advanced and processed information at a very slow rate ("History" Internet)".

The Eniac computer took up eighteen hundred square feet of floor space and used about 180,000 watts of power and had to have the fuses be reset and reconfigured after ever few hours of usage or when ever it was shut down, so that they might be operational again" (s Appendix c) ("Computers" Internet)". The standard programming technique involves many features of computer design and functions" ("Computers" Internet). In combination, both the designs and the functions, they make high speeds and graphic interfaces obtainable. "Most computers can process faster than a person can type in the commands to be done" ("History" Internet). Programmers, decided to make a command in assemblers called sub routines (s Appendix b), this enabled them to continue using computers at the same constant speed rather than loose the speed for a better program. "Conditional control transfers allowed Ali 4 programmers to be able to step and start from anywhere into the program" ("Computers" Internet).

By letting this happen programmers were giving major lee way in their programs and letting people be capable of entering commands stopping the program go eat lunch and then start it right back up again, this lead the way for many operating systems". C programming was in the experimental stages just about in the 1950's. While it was not in practical use, it was in fundamental use, because of its need scientists and programmers's aught to create it so as they could make programming easier to do" ("Hackers" Internet). One of the most important uses a computer can have is for air navigation, be it airplanes. Some of the other uses consisted of, "weather studies, trajectories, night time maneuvers, navigation of ships and planes, radar, and sonar" ("History" Internet). They were used in mission control tower so as the planes knew where to land, they told the exact path that would be to take for a safe and fast flight.

They told how many planes were in the air so as there would not be any collisions. "The navy had many uses for the computer, the computers were used to control submarines for example controlling the amount of water intake to water output, which in turn controls the depth of the submarine" ("Computers" Internet). The computers are used to navigate the ships and to do nighttime maneuvers (Internet). Also the computers were used to judge depth (Internet), judge pressure (Internet) and used to map the sea (Internet).

Ali 5 The navy used the computers to maintain computer and radio contact so that they were updated on all orders given by higher commands in the event of an emergency ("History" Internet). "The navy's usage of the sonar and radar was extensive and important, with out sonar and radar the world my just be different place today" (Internet). The navy used sonar to find the positions of the enemy ships, this helped out a lot in the cold war. Sonar incorporates a ping like command that sends out waves of sound that reflect off of an object and then comes back, then the machine processes the amount of time the waves took to reach the object minus the underwater drag, and using that equation they got distance the object (usually a ship) from where they were located ("Computers" Internet) The navy used radar to find the location of ships above water, or planes in the air. "Radar like sonar incorporates a ping like command that sends out a wave of sorts that is reflected off the object in question and then comes back relaying the location of the object" (Internet)". The computer can also ping, and when the computer pings it sends out little bits of data called bytes that hit the computer with packets and then come back with a time relay and a bit percentage relay.

A bit percentage relay means how man bits were returned, the more bits returned the merrier, the reason for this is because when you get bits back you usually want to make sure you are talking to a server computer and not a clone computer, this is usually to cut down on computer crimes of sorts" ("Hackers" Internet). Ali 6 In conclusion computers of the 1950's were not as powerful as they are today, but they were good for their usage, and they did what they had to. The computers helped the navy the army, and the computer helped the word in times of war. I believe that computers are an every day essential that is necessary to even complete the most menial of tasks now, as bad as that sounds it is also good, for in this day and again precision is necessity and with out it the world would be a stranger place.

Ali 7 Work cited:" Whirl wind Project". Internet web "Computers in the 1950's". Internet http: //info / is oc. org / guest //Internet / History/HIT. html " Hackers". Internet web "History of the Computer".

Internet web of computers 1950. htm.