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Burroughs
This snapshot deals with Burroughs, the US-based hardware
and software group that was a corporate pioneer of electronic
computing but did not last the distance.
It covers -
introduction
[under development]
the enterprise
Computation using mechanical devices has a long and often
glorious history, reaching its prime during the final
third of the 19th century when companies such as National
Cash Register (the future NCR) provided a basis for the
corporate developments explored in James Beniger's The
Control Revolution: Technological & Economic Origins of
the Information Society (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press
1986), JoAnne Yates' Control Through Communication:
The Rise of System In American Management (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Uni Press 1989) and Alfred Chandler's
The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American
Business (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1980).
There is a more detailed, although less entertaining,
exploration of 'thinking digital' during the 1950's and
1960's in Steve Heims' The Cybernetics Group (Cambridge:
MIT Press 1991), The Mechanization of the Mind: On
the Origins of Cognitive Science (Princeton: Princeton
Uni Press 2000) by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and The Closed
World: Computers & the Politics of Discourse in Cold
War America (Cambridge: MIT Press 1997) by Paul Edwards.
Papers in Systems, Experts & Computers: The Systems
Approach in Management and Engineering,World War II and
After (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) edited by Agatha
Hughes and Thomas Hughes are of considerable value.
Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing
for the Pentagon 1962-86 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Uni Press 1996) by Arthur Norberg & Judy O'Neill and
Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine
Intelligence, 1983-1993 (Cambridge: MIT Press 2002)
by Alex Roland & Philip Shiman are excellent introductions
to DARPA and the interaction of the military, industry
and academia in developing both the net and modern computing.
It is complemented by From WHIRLWIND to MITRE: The
R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer (Cambridge:
MIT Press 2000) by Kent Redmond & Thomas Smith. The
Early History of Data Networks (Los Alamitos: IEEE
Computer Society Press 1994) by Gerald Holzmann &
Bjorn Pehrson explores early networks.
Digital computing effectively dates from around November
1945, with commissioning of ENIAC
(Electronic Numerical Integrator & Computer), a mainframe
devised by John Mauchly and Prosper Eckert at the University
of Pennsylvania.
ENIAC, like similar devices over the next decade, used
thousands of electronic valves, weighed several tonnes
and cost upwards of US$1 million. The machines were temperamental,
expensive and inflexible: as a result there were fewer
than 800 machines worldwide by 1957 and under 6,000 mainframes
at the end of 1960, with a combined processing power equivalent
to many small agencies.
High purchase/leasing costs and maintenance expenses meant
that they were reserved for major academic institutions
(particularly those with military affiliations) and those
businesses whose large-scale corporate accounting or other
finance-related needs could justify significant expenditure.
Most machines were stand-alone devices, often custom-built,
with limited communication capability.
Networking was slow to develop because of incompatible
or non-standard hardware, data formats and software and
because few users saw much value in sharing data or processing.
Why share corporate accounting activity with a competitor,
for example.
By 1950 the computing industry, in terms of units and
sales, was dominated by the mechanical tabulator companies
that had grown over the preceding one hundred years and
are described in James Cortada's Before The Computer:
IBM, NCR, Burroughs & Remington Rand & the Industry They
Created 1865-1956 (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press
2000). Eckert and Mauchly had left academia in 1946 to
commercialise their research, resulting in what became
the UNIVAC mainframe.
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation was absorbed by Remington
Rand within five years, along with competitor Engineering
Research Associates (ERA). Remington at that time had
around 10% of the US calculator market, which was dominated
by IBM (large-scale punch card-based
processing using technology developed by Herman Hollerith),
Burroughs and NCR.
After considerable heart-searching, IBM went electronic,
leveraging its market share, superb sales force and significant
military contracts. By the mid-1960s it had around 74%
of the US market (and upwards of 60% of the global market)
for electronic computing, tacitly setting a standard with
its 360 series of compatible machines.
The first large-scale data network dates from 1958, with
establishment by the US Air Force of SAGE (Semi-Automated
Ground Environment): over 500,000 kilometres of telephone
lines linking radar and other facilities with mainframes
dedicated to warnings that the Kremlin was about to fry
the land of the free.
Overviews of computing and networking in that period are
provided in Transforming Computer Technology: Information
Processing for the Pentagon 1962-86 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Uni Press 1996) by Arthur Norberg & Judy O'Neill
and The Closed World: Computers & the Politics of Discourse
in Cold War America (Cambridge: MIT Press 1997) by
Paul Edwards; other works are highlighted on the following
pages.
The first minicomputer - developed by Digital Equipment
Corporation (DEC) - was released in 1959 at a cost of
around US$120,000 per machine. By 1965 a comprable machine
cost US$60,000, diving to US$35,000 in 1966 and US$18,000
in 1968. An indication of ongoing cost reductions is provided
in William Nordhaus's 61 page The Progress of Computing
(PDF),
which suggests that the price of computation has fallen
a trillionfold in the past 60 years: 35% per year compounded
continuously, with a halving time of 2 years.
Concurrent with declining hardware costs and increasing
availability of standard software (and human support),
business began to network devices - linking mainframe
to mainframe or tying terminals to a mainframe.
In 1964, for example, American Airlines launched its SABRE
(Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment) flight reservation
system, with around 1,200 terminals and several thousand
kilometres of leased lines. Two decades later the value
of SABRE was significantly greater than that of AA's aircraft
and its major competitors. Perspectives are provided by
James McKenney's Waves of Change: Business Evolution
Through Information Technology (Boston: Harvard Business
School Press 1995) and Alfred Chandler's Inventing
the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer
Electronics & Computer Industries (New York: Free
Press 2001)
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