Simply reporting the results of the day’s marketing in the newspapers is a monumental task. The Associated Press is installing a system based on an IBM 1620 computer, in which ticker information will also be given in the computer for sorting, comparison, tabulation, and storage. At the correct time, the machine will print out the format for publication in the press at the rate of 4,500 words a minute. With a memory of 20 million characters and a capacity for 600,000 logical decisions each minute, the computer keeps up with stock information practically as fast as it is received, and even a late ticker will not mean a missed newspaper deadline. Associated Press expects to be able to transmit the stock-market results to its papers within fifteen seconds after the ticker closes. Not just in the United States but in Japan as well, the computer is invading the stock market. The abacus is out, and now the exchange in Tokyo is using an advanced UNIVAC solid-state computer to process transactions.
Versatile Executive
It is this high-volume capacity, speed, and accuracy that makes the computer a welcome new employee in most business operations. An example is the Johnson’s Wax system linking its facilities for rapid management reaction to changing conditions. Headquarters is linked to twenty three warehouses and sales offices, and today’s work is based on yesterday’s inventory instead of last month’s.
Computers schedule hotel reservations, and handle accounts payable and receivable for the hotel industry. Auto-parking, now a $500 million a year business, leans ever more heavily on computers for ticket-issuing, car-counting, traffic direction, charge-figuring, and collection. The freeway too has its computers, though there have been minor setbacks like that on the New Jersey Turnpike where an automatic toll-card dispenser was mistaken by slow-thinking people for a collector and its working was jammed with coins and battered by abuse when no change was forthcoming! Man will take some educating as the machine finds wider employment.
The computer has been seen in the publishing business primarily as a tool for searching lists and printing addresses. Now it is beginning to take over more important duties such as typesetting. The new daily Arizona Journal is the first newspaper to make use of this technique.
From use in other businesses, the computer has grown to fostering a business of its own. An example is in the production of payroll checks by specialty firms, and safeguarding against bad checks with such services as Telecredit, a computer-run system that spots bad checks upon interrogation from its member stores.
In Waterbury, Connecticut, a computer helps home-buyers and realtors by listing all available homes in the area. Three reports are produced: a total listing, a listing by style, and a listing by price. Bell Telephone in New York uses a computer system to deliver its 9 million directories to subscribers in the city and suburbs. The rapid system permits changing of delivery orders even while the books are at the printers. A computer method of making sausage recipes is now available to all packers. Remington Rand developed this application at its UNIVAC Center on the campus of Southern Methodist University.
Communication
Communication is a vital part of all business, and the digital computer finds another application here. A technique known as adaptive control was recently presented at a symposium by scientists from IBM. Special-purpose computers integrated into communication networks would make possible the “time-sharing” of channels and cut costs per message sharply. Another digital computer, an inexpensive “decision threshold” device, is being pushed as a means of reducing errors in the transmission of messages. These logical uses of the computer were presaged in the 30’s when Shannon wrote his pioneering circuit-logic paper, and in the late 40’s with his work on information theory.
TV Station KNXT in Los Angeles uses a digital computer to control the complicated switching necessary during station breaks. This electronic juggling of live shows, commercials, and network programming is called TASCON, for Television Automatic Sequence Control. It can be programmed hours before use, and then needs only the push of the button instead of frantic manual switching that occasionally throws the human operator.