IBMWatson autobiographythoughts on 769

Charlie Gibbs

Easy and hard are relative and depend on the overall context.

For example, there may be math formula that's relatively 'easy' to calculate using tables. But this formula might be part of an integration where it has to be solved a great many times, changing one variable by a tiny amount each time. A Fortran program to do this may be just a few lines and very easy to write, but could save an immense number of desk hours.

For business, there is calculating the gross wages and deductions for a pay check. Again, for one person it is not a big deal. But for 5,000 employees, let alone 50,000 employees, it's a lot of work. The computer not only does the calculations, but also saves the various answers in appropriate buckets for subsequent processing.

Watson tells us that large businesses were watering in punch card files and wanted mag tape to save space. Further, the EAM machines were slow and the volume large. Calculating a paycheck was easy for say a 604 calculator, but that was still limited by reading the card and punching the result, and then subsequent machines using the answer. An electronic computer using tapes would handle that much faster.

Actually, as I understand it, in the early 1950s there were very few true computers used for science work. They were just too expensive. IBM built thousands of its 604 calculator and hundreds of its CPC systems in the late 1940s and 1950s. These were a "poor man's computer" and widely used for engineering and science work until the real thing could come down in price.

There needs to be more written about the CPC.