Giant brains; or, Machines that think

by Edmund Callis Berkeley

AUXILIARY DEVICES

In order to use a mechanical brain, we have to give it and take from it language that it understands, machine language. A mechanical brain that can do 10,000 additions a second can very easily finish almost all its work at once. How can we, slow as we are, keep our friend, the giant brain, busy? We have found so far several answers to this question, none of them yet very good.

Devices for preparing input will be very important. For each brain, we shall need a great many of these devices. For, at best, we type at a rate, say, of 4 characters a second, selecting any one of some 38 keys, each of which is equivalent to about 6 units of information. This is about 800 units of information per second. The machine, however, is likely to be able to gulp information from its input mechanism at the amazing rate of 60,000 units of information per second, equal to 75 people typing with no mistakes and no resting. Fortunately, at least some of the time the machine will be busy computing!

For an input-preparation device, we may get something that can be fastened to an ordinary typewriter and that will produce magnetic tape agreeing with what is printed by the typewriter. Since the input information must be carefully verified, we shall need a second magnetic tape device such as exists for paper tape on the Bell Laboratories machine: the processor. The processor takes two hand-prepared tapes, compares them, reports any differences, and produces a third tape. The third tape copies the two original tapes if they agree, and it receives corrected information as furnished by a girl at a keyboard if the two original tapes disagree.

For information already on punch cards, we need an input device that will read punch cards and write on magnetic tape. Where information is on punched paper tape, we need a machine that will read punched paper tape and write on magnetic tape.

Problem data, tables of numbers, and routine instructions will go into the mechanical brain. They will all be prepared on regular input devices. The machine will accept information in the form in which it is most convenient for you and me to prepare it. Then, the machine will be instructed to change the information into the form with which it is most convenient for the machine to operate.

Many output devices will also be needed, since the machine will be able to produce information very swiftly. These output devices might be cabled to the machine. A kind of traffic control system would govern them. Each will have a magnetic tape that will be loaded up swiftly with information. Then the output device will unload its information more slowly, in any form that we may desire: printing, graphs, film, punch cards, or punched paper tape.

The machine is likely to be able to put out information on magnetic tape at the same high speed of 60,000 units of information per second or 10,000 characters per second. But the best printing speed of an electric typewriter is about 10 or 12 characters a second. Card-punching speed is about 130 characters a second. Punch-card tabulator speed can reach a maximum of about 200 characters a second. Thus we see that here, too, we may be snowed under with the information that the giant brain puts out, if we fail to ask the giant only for what we really want.