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Editor’s Note: Hit computer, 11 unheard of a generation ago, is * an indispensable tool today. It ■, affects the typical American’s life in countless ways — from the food he eats to the national defense system that protects him. And the prospects for the future are staggering. The following is the first article in a series of three that will explore how the computer works. Other parts of the series will examine how the computer is being used and what the future holds.
The computer today is veiled in mystery. Most people have never seen one, feeling it is an inscrutable “black box” whose inner workings can be understood only by the most highly trained.
Actually the computer is a relatively easy machine to understand.
It has three basic operational elements: input, processing and output. So, for example, does a washing machine.
For the washing machine, the input is dirty clothes and detergent, the processing is the washing cycle, the output is clean clothes.
Three Steps
For the computer, input is a program — the step-by-step description of the task to be done— and data.
Processing takes place when the computer uses the program to operate on the data to perform a multiplication, for example. Output is the solution to the problem.
The computer * programmer must “tell” the machine precisely where it can find information, how to arrange it, and what calculations to perform.
One powerful computer, the IBM System/360 Model 85, can multiply two 10 digit numbers at a rate of more than two million complete calculations a second — a task that would take a
mathematician using and pencil!
and paper about 38 years of non-1
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