to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951 where it was used to help tabulate the U.S. population (Hazewindus,1988). Early in the 1950s two important engineering discoveries changed the electronic computer field. The first computers were made with vacuum tubes, but by the late 1950s computers were being made out of transistors, which were smaller, less expensive, more reliable, and more efficient (Dolotta, 1985). In 1959, Robert Noyce, a physicist at the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, invented the integrated circuit, a tiny chip of silicon that contained an entire electronic circuit. Gone was the bulky, unreliable, but fast machine; now computers began to become more compact, more reliable and have more capacity. These new technical discoveries rapidly found their way into new models of digital computers. Memory storage capacities increased 800% in commercially available machines by the early 1960s and speeds increased by an equally large margin (Jacobs, 1975). These machines were very expensive to purchase or to rent and were especially expensive to operate because of the cost of hiring programmers to perform the complex operations the computers ran. Such computers were typically found in large computer centers operated by industry, government, and private laboratories staffed with many programmers and support personnel. By 1956, 76 of IBM's large computer mainframes were in use, compared with only 46 UNIVAC's (Chposky, 1988). In the 1960s efforts to design and develop the fastest possible computers with the greatest capacity reached a turning point with the completion of the LARC machine for Livermore Radiation Laboratories by the Sperry-Rand Corporation, and the Stretch computer by IBM. The LARC had a core memory of 98,000 words and multiplied in 10 microseconds. Stretch was provided with several ranks of memory having slower access for the ranks of greater capacity, the fastest access time being less than 1 microseconds and the total capacity in the vicinity of 100 million words. During this time the major computer manufacturers began to offer a range of computer capabilities, as well as various computer-related equipment (Jacobs, 1975). These included input means such as consoles and card feeders; output means such as page printers, cathode-ray-tube displays, and graphing devices; and optional magnetic-tape and magnetic-disk file storage. These found wide use in management for such applications as accounting, payroll, inventory control, ordering supplies, and billing. Central processing units for such purposes did not need to be very fast arithmetically and were primarily used to access large amounts of records on file. The greatest number of computer systems were delivered for the larger applications, such as in hospitals for keeping track of patient records, medications, and treatments given. They were also used in automated library systems and in database systems such as the Chemical Abstracts system, where computer records now on file cover nearly all known chemical compounds (Dolotta, 1985). The trend during the 1970s was, to some extent, away from extremely powerful, centralized computational centers and toward a broader range of applications for less-costly computer systems (Jacobs, 1975). Most continuous-process manufacturing, such as petroleum refining and electrical-power distribution systems, began using computers of relatively modest capability for controlling and regulating their activities. In the 1960s the programming of applications problems was an obstacle to the self-sufficiency of moderate-sized on-site computer installations, but great advances in applications programming languages removed these obstacles. Applications languages became available for controlling a great range of manufacturing processes, for computer operation of machine tools, and for many

Some topics in this essay:
Intel Corporation, MS-DOS IBM, IBM LARC, Von Neumann, History Computers, Semiconductor Corporation, Chemical Abstracts, Charles Babbage, War II, Calculator Chposky, dolotta 1985, jacobs 1975, beer 1966, computer industry, chposky 1988, apple computer, input output, computer systems, digital computer, electronic computer, electronic digital computer, world war ii,