Along with the military, corporations have played a significant role in the development of computer science. Many key developments in computer science have taken place in corporations, and corporations' need for computing power and technology have provided an important market for computers.
The first corporation formed to build and sell computers was the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. It was established in 1946 by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who also created one of the first digital electronic computers, the ENIAC (Electronic and Numerical Integrator and Calculator). In 1951 the Eckert-Mauchly company made and sold a successor to ENIAC, the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer). Fast, reliable, and useful for both scientific and business tasks, the UNIVAC was the dominant computer of the 1950s. The UNIVAC was also significant because it was the first computer that had programs stored in its memory. Before the UNIVAC, programs were stored on punch cards or tape. The stored-program principle is the basis of the von Neumann architecture, which continues to be the most common computer design. The stored-program principle eventually led to software development as an activity distinct from hardware development.
The company that kept the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation from forming a monopoly was International Business Machines Inc. (IBM). Realizing the threat computers posed to mechanical business machines, IBM began making computers in 1952. IBM's computers eventually outperformed the UNIVAC, and IBM went on to dominate the computer industry during the 1960s and 1970s, creating or putting to the best use several key computer technologies:
Magnetic-core memory. In the 1950s IBM built the 30 computers that comprised the Air Force's Semi-Automatic Ground Control (SAGE), an air-defense system. The SAGE computers contained magnetic-core memory, which had recently been developed at MIT and, in part, by an inventor named Frederick Viehe, an inspector of streets and sidewalks for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works. (IBM bought Viehe's patent.) Magnetic-core memory, which functions as random-access memory, involves magnetizing a series of doughnut-shaped metal cores by means of wires threaded horizontally and vertically through their holes; the polarity of each magnet's field represents a binary digit (bit), 0 or 1, and the wires can be used to remagnetize the cores individually. The main advantages of magnetic-core memory were its speed and reliability.
Disk storage. In 1956 IBM invented this fast and inexpensive means of saving and directly accessing large amounts of data. Disk storage replaced punch cards, magnetic tape, and magnetic drums and eventually made batch processing obsolete and personal computing possible.
FORTRAN. IBM achieved another major development in computer science when it created this highly successful programming language in 1957.
Small, transistorized computers. IBM capitalized on the transistor, which was invented at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1947. The replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors led to smaller, cheaper computers. IBM's 1401 computer of 1959 was the most successful of this era of computers. IBM sold over ten thousand 1401s, making it one of the first mass-marketed computers.
Personal computers. As with transistorized computers, IBM's personal computers (PCs) were not the first of their type, but eventually dominated the market. In the 1970s IBM was focusing on its mainframe computer business. IBM came into the PC market relatively late, but the IBM PC that it offered in the early 1980s was a good machine and became very popular. IBM PCs sold so well that they became the standard for business use and shaped the future of personal computing and of the PC software market.
In the 1960s, a time when computers were large and expensive, the arrival of the minicomputer brought high technology to small businesses and other small organizations. The first minicomputer was created in 1961 by Seymour Cray at Control Data Corporation (Cray was later responsible for the Cray supercomputer). But it was Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that had the most success building and selling minicomputers. Beginning in the mid-1960's DEC offered minicomputers that competed directly with IBM's computers yet were smaller and much cheaper. The availability and interactivity that characterized minicomputers created the market for the PC (which eventually replaced the minicomputer).
The integrated circuit, or "chip," was invented in 1959 by two corporations working separately. At Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit on a wafer of germanium. Soon after, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor built an integrated circuit on a silicon wafer (the material commercial chips are currently made of). Chips are now the physical basis of all computing.
Corporations have not only pushed the advancement of computer science by providing critical developments, they have also pulled its advancement by providing critical markets. Early computers were relatively rare devices created to solve complex computations for military and scientific purposes. Corporations needed numerous computers to store, access, and process large amounts of data. These business needs created the early computer market, which led to the major developments in the field.
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