The marvel of the machine age, the electronic computer has been
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only since 1946. It can do simple computations—add, subtract, multiply and divide—
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lighting speed and perfect accuracy. It can multiply two 1-digit number in 1/1,1000 seconds, a problem that would
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an average person five minutes to do with pencil and paper. Some computers can work 500,000 times faster than
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.
Once it is given a "program"—that is, a
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set of instructions devised by a technician trained in computer language—a computer can gather
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information for many purposes. For example, it can
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bank accounts up to date and make out electric bills. If you are planning a trip by plane, the computer will find out
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route to take. Not only can the computer gather facts, it can also store them as fast as they are gathered and can
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whenever they are needed.
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gathering and storing information, the computer can also solve complicated problems that once took months for people to do.
For example,
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sixteen hours an electronic brain solved a difficult design problem. First, it was
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all the information necessary for designing a chemical plant. After running through 16,000 possible designs, it
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the plan for the plant that would produce the most chemical at the lowest cost. Then it issued a printed set of exact
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. Before it solved this problem, a team of engineers having the same information had worked for a year to produce only three designs,
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of which was as efficient as the computer"s.