IBMWatson autobiographythoughts on 776

Yes things were simpler back then but getting more and more complex.

Beginning in the 1930s, employers had to deduct social security taxes. The pbuttage of this law put IBM on the map as it created demand for its accounting machines for both employers and the govt to process social security (which included unemployment insurance too).

During WW II, payroll deductions were introduced for working people for federal taxes. Also some localities introduced wage taxes which were also deducted. I'm not sure if US Savings Bonds--which were strongly pushed--were deducted then. All that involved a lot of paperwork and calculations.

There were certainly a number of workers who were exempt from Social Security and paid in full in cash. But as time went on into the 1950s this situation changed, and payroll became more and more complex.

Actually, in those days there were many employers with over 50,000 employees. There wasn't as much automation and many more people were required. Labor was relatively cheaper in those days, too. Take railroading--the Pennsylvania Railroad had over 100,000 people working for it. Most stations had an agent who performed various functions. An army of clerks were needed to issue psgr tickets and freight waybills and track movements of trains. Dispatchers and tower operators were needed to control train movements. Improved communication technology allowed automation of many of these jobs after WW II; for exampled automated "centralized traffic control" reduced the need for local towers. Diesel engines needed much less backshop maintenance than steam engines (the main reason they replaced steam.)

Your statement contradicts Watson's statements in the book.

After 1940, a great many of the information processing (business needs) and computing (science-eng needs) were the same then as now. An basic IBM EAM installation of a keypunch, sorter, and tabulator was basically the same as a spreadsheet program of today, only much slower, more cumbersome, and more expensive. An advanced EAM installation with collators, reproducers, caculators was basically the same as a database program of today.

The change over time was that information processing machines became cheaper and easier to use so that it became cost effective to add more and more applications to them instead of doing by hand or more primitive machines. But many applications were always there. New uses were developed that previously were too cumbersome to be done by hand.

The context of the 1940s and 1950s was a huge increase in the need for science and engineering calculations. Following the success of the physicists at Los Alamos, the govt continued funding for research and development for defense purposes. Los Alamos was and remains one of the "drivers" of demand for the most powerful number crunchers available.

The development of the DC-3 (C-47) airplane was done on desk caculators and slide rules. But postwar jets were far more sophisticated. The aircraft industry was desperate for more computing power, indeed, I believe it was Northrup who developed the concept of the CPC on its own.

The business world faced a booming postwar economy after the war and a new way of doing business. Wartime pressures introduced math models of operations to save time and material. Products were more sophisticated. Information machines were needed to handle the higher demand and sophistication--clerks just couldn't keep up.

IBM's new line of EAM machines were in high demand and its pre-war products remained in service as well. I think they still provided really old non-printing dial-read tabulators at a cheap price.