As a result, an amazing number of parts can be packed into a tiny volume. So-called “molecular electronics” now seems to be a possibility, and designers of computers have a gleam in their eyes as they consider progress being made toward matching the “packaging density” of the brain. This human computer has an estimated 100 billion parts per cubic foot!
We have talked of reading and translating. Some new computers can also accept voice commands and speak themselves. Others furnish information in typed or printed form, punched cards, or a display on a tube or screen.
Like us, the computer can be frustrated by a task beyond its capabilities. A wrong command can set its parts clicking rapidly but in futile circles. Early computers, for example, could be panicked by the order to divide a number by zero. The solution to that problem of course is infinity, and the poor machine had a hard time trying to make such an answer good.
Aeronutronic Division, Ford Motor Co.
This printed-circuit card contains more than 300 BIAX memory elements. Multiples of such cards mounted in computers store large amounts of information.
There are other, quainter stories like that of the pioneer General Electric computer that simply could not function in the dark. All day long it hummed efficiently, but problems left with it overnight came out horribly botched for no reason that engineers could discover. At last it was found that a light had to be left burning with the scary machine! Neon bulbs in the computer were enough affected by light and darkness that the delicate electronic balance of the machine had been upset.
Among the computer’s unusual talents is the ability to compose music. Such music has been published and is of a quality to give rise to thoughtful speculation that perhaps great composers are simply good selectors of music. In other words, all the combinations of notes and meter exist: the composer just picks the right ones. No less an authority than Aaron Copland suggests that “we’ll get our new music by feeding information into an electronic computer.” Not content with merely writing music, some computers can even play a tune. At Christmas time, carols are rendered by computers specially programmed for the task. The result is not unlike a melody played on a pipe organ.
In an interesting switch of this musical ability on the part of the machine, Russian engineers check the reliability of their computers by having them memorize Mozart and Grieg. Each part of the complex machines is assigned a definite musical value, and when the composition is “played back” by the computer, the engineer can spot any defects existing in its circuitry. Such computer maintenance would seem to be an ideal field for the music lover.
In a playful mood, computers match pennies with visitors, explain their inner workings as they whiz through complex mathematics, and are even capable of what is called heuristic reasoning. This amounts to playing hunches to reach short-cut solutions to otherwise unsolvable problems. A Rand Corporation computer named JOHNNIAC demonstrated this recently. It was given some basic axioms and asked to prove some theorems. JOHNNIAC came up with the answers, and in one case produced a proof that was simpler than that given in the text. As one scientist puts it, “If computers don’t really think, they at least put on a pretty creditable imitation of the real thing.”
Computers are here to stay; this has been established beyond doubt. The only question remaining is how fast the predictions made by dreamers and science-fiction writers—and now by sober scientists—will come to be a reality. When we consider that in the few years since the 1953 crop of computers, their capacity and speed has been increased more than fiftyfold, and is expected to jump another thousandfold in two years, these dreams begin to sound more and more plausible.