Computer industry: The First Computers
Computer industry: Microcomputers
Computer industry: Mainframes and More
Value of Shipments of Electronic Computers
Herman Hollerith, an engineer hired by the U.S. Bureau of the Census to collect and analyze industrial statistics, devised a machine that could input the necessary information in the form of punched cards and show the resulting count on clocklike dials. After lengthy negotiations, he installed a number of his machines and kept them working throughout the tabulation process. As a result of his diligent work, the 1890 census was tabulated in a year and a half.
Hollerith was soon receiving requests from other countries for his machines to be used in their periodic censuses. In addition, the railroads and other large companies were interested in such equipment to streamline their accounting departments. As a result, Hollerith formed a business, the Tabulating Machine Company, to build and market his machines. After a series of mergers, it would ultimately form part of International Business Machines (IBM), an early giant of the computer industry. The best-known computing companies were known as the Seven Dwarfs: Burroughs, Control Data Corporation (CDC), General Electric, Honeywell, National Cash Register (NCR), the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and Sperry Rand.
During the early decades of computing, each device was built specially for the agency or corporation that would use it. These devices were in many ways as experimental as those built by research institutions to study computing. The lack of uniformity among installations meant their production and operation were more craft than an industry. Individual components might be mass-produced, but beyond that level, economies of scale could not be brought to bear.
In 1964, IBM introduced the System/360, the first mass-produced mainframe computer using a standardized architecture and instruction set. For the first time, it was possible for a business or government agency to order a computer and software from stock. The shift fromcomputer as a custom-designed item to computer as a product was as critical to the creation of the modern computer industry as the technological progression fromelectromechanical relay to vacuum tube to transistor. However, mainframe computers and their smaller siblings, the minicomputers (machines about the size of an entire desk) were all sold on the same service-contract model as the original computers. The computer company did not sell its customers a device, but a long-term relationship of integrated software and support.
This concept is critical to understanding just how revolutionary the microcomputer was. Rather than being the end of a steady shrinking of the mainframe, the microcomputer had its roots in the youth culture of electronics enthusiasts in California’s Silicon Valley. Like the radio enthusiasts of the 1920’s, they were in love with the pioneering spirit of the new technology. With the development of the microprocessor, which put all the components of the traditional mainframe central processing unit onto a single piece of silicon, they could build up from this one chip to create a tiny computer.
