Library of Congress catalog card number: 62-14564

F-S

Contents

1.Computers—The Machines We Think With[1]
2.The Computer’s Past[18]
3.How Computers Work[48]
4.Computer Cousins—Analog and Digital[72]
5.The Binary Boolean Bit[96]
6.The Electronic Brain[121]
7.Uncle Sam’s Computers[147]
8.The Computer in Business and Industry[171]
9.The Computer and Automation[201]
10.The Academic Computer[219]
11.The Road Ahead[251]

COMPUTERS—THE MACHINES WE THINK WITH

1: Computers—The Machines
We Think With

While you are reading this sentence, an electronic computer is performing 3 million mathematical operations! Before you read this page, another computer could translate it and several others into a foreign language. Electronic “brains” are taking over chores that include the calculation of everything from automobile parking fees to zero hour for space missile launchings.