Giant brains; or, Machines that think

by Edmund Callis Berkeley

Fig. 7. Button.

Fig. 8. Cam, with 5 lobes and contact.

A cam contact ([see Fig. 8]) is an automatic device for closing an electric circuit for just a short interval of time. When the lobes on the cam strike the contact, it closes and current flows. When the lobes have gone by, the spring pushes open the contact, and no current flows. Just as a two-position relay is the automatic equivalent of a two-position switch, and a ten-position relay is the automatic equivalent of a ten-position switch, so a cam contact is the automatic equivalent of a button.

All the cams in the machine have 20 pockets where small round metal lobes may or may not be inserted. Each cam makes a full turn once in ³/₁₀ of a second and is in time with all the others. Thus we can time all the electrical circuits in the machine in units of ³/₂₀₀ of a second.

NUMBERS

Numbers in the machine regularly consist of 23 decimal digits. The 24th numerical position at the left in any register contains only 0 for a positive number and only 9 for a negative number. Nines complements ([see Supplement 2]) are used for negative numbers. For example,-00284 is represented as 999715, supposing that we had 5-digit numbers instead of 23-digit numbers. The sum of two nines complements is automatically corrected so that it is still a correct nines complement. The device that accomplishes this is called end-around-carry ([see Supplement 2]). The decimal point is fixed for each problem; in other words, in any problem, the decimal point is consistently kept in one place, usually between the 15th and 16th decimal columns from the right.

HOW INFORMATION GOES
INTO THE MACHINE

Numerical information may go into the machine in any one of 3 ways: (1) by regular IBM punch cards, using standard IBM card feeds (panel 16); (2) by hand-set dial switches (panels 1, 2); and (3) by long loops of punched tape placed on the value tape feeds (panels 12 to 14). Three sets of 24 columns each punched on a regular IBM punch card can be used to send 3 numbers and their signs into the machine in one machine cycle. This is the fastest way for giving numbers to the machine, but the most limited; for the cards must be referred to in order and can be referred to automatically only once. Also, there is the risk that they may be out of order. A card may be passed through the machine without reading; this saves some sorting in preparing cards for the machine. Machines for preparing the cards are regular IBM key punches, and machines for sorting them after preparation are regular IBM card sorters.