These machines appear in just about every computer history time line I’ve ever seen. In 1911 the Hollerith Tabulating Machine company merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and the patents for these tabulators became the basis for their primary product line of punched card systems. You might know C-T-R better by it’s current name.

As an aside, one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve started scanning earlier and earlier magazines is that sometime in the late 1920’s somebody decided that paragraphs that ran the length of an entire page were not entirely helpful and writers started making them much shorter. Whoever is responsible for this change has my profound thanks.

If you’d like to see how the technology advanced, here are articles about the 1940 , 1950 and 1960 censuses.

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THE MECHANICAL WORK OF THE TWELFTH CENSUS.

BY EDWARD W. BYRN.

Now that the Census Bureau has been made a permanent branch of the government, it attains the dignity and importance which its merits deserve. A popular impression prevailing among a large number of people is that the main part of the work of the Census is the taking of it, that is to say, the gathering of the data. That nothing could be more erroneous is evidenced by the fact that by legislative enactment a single month only was allowed for the taking of the Twelfth Census, while two years were given within which to tabulate the data. The data collected can have no meaning or value to the legislator and the student of sociology and political economy until classified into categories which form a basis for comparisons and conclusions.

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I can’t tell you how excited I was when I found this magazine on eBay. I thought that the author was this Arthur Miller. An article about the personal privacy threats inherent in massive government databases, written by the author of the Crucible sounded amazing. It turns out that the author was actually this Arthur Miller, and I don’t think anyone could have done a better job.

This is the most amazingly prescient article I’ve ever read. When people write about the future they are usually wrong. When people write about the future of computers, they are usually even more wrong. This article got everything right. If you changed the tense and a few bits of jargon, then handed to me and told me it was written by the EFF, I’d believe it.

Just to give you an idea of how right he was on even the basic computer stuff, here’s the second paragraph of the article. Keep in mind that this is what desktop computers looked like in 1967.

“The modern computer is more than a sophisticated indexing or adding machine, or a miniaturized library; it is the keystone for a new communications medium whose capacities and implications we are only beginning to realize. In the foreseeable future, computer systems will be tied together by television, satellites, and lasers, and we will move large quantities of information over vast distances in imperceptible units of time.”

Forty-one years ago Arthur R. Miller laid out all of the privacy threats that we face now. The power that credit reporting databases have over us. The illegal government use of our financial and phone records. The attempt to build a master database tying all of these together. The fact that the government might consider you a threat if you so much as sent a Christmas card to someone the government has on a watch list. It’s all here. He basically predicted and laid out all of the arguments against the Total Information Awareness program and the current NSA programs that have been so much in the news.

It’s nice to know there were people who were so ahead of the curve in trying to protect our rights, and it’s a tragedy that more people didn’t listen. I think it speaks strongly to the need to pay attention to this stuff now, because this problem will only get worse.

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THE NATIONAL DATA CENTER AND PERSONAL PRIVACY

by ARTHUR R. MILLER

The computer age is not to be stayed, as anyone knows who has been billed for another citizen’s charge account or has wondered what has happened to his paid-up magazine subscription. The computer science is already so advanced that experts envisage a huge National Data Center to speed and simplify the collection of pertinent information about Americans. Properly run, it could be a boon. But any person who has seen an FBI file or been party to a U.S. government “security check” has reason to know how the abuse or misuse of dossiers of unevaluated information can threaten an individual’s rights. A professor of law at the University of Michigan here discusses the precautions necessary to protect citizens from “governmental snooping and bureaucratic spinelessness or perfidy.”

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New 1978 Electronic Games

A host of video and nonvideo electronic games, many using microprocessors, promises the public more stimulating fun for leisure time.

BY KRIS JENSEN

A COUPLE of years ago, an electronic video game consisted of a simple “black box” that, when connected to a TV receiver, produced little more than some version of video table tennis. In some cases today, that black box is virtually a personal computer. Now there are games whose color images try your gambling instincts at blackjack, your “destroy” capability against an enemy tank, your patience and fortitude through a maze while a “cat” attempts to devour you, your artistic talent with computer-drawn pictures, or your knowledge of math and history. And that is just the beginning in video games!

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If you’re interested in Automation we have a great Scientific American series from 1952.

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How Automation Will Affect Your Job

New skills, a shorter work week and more leisure time will be yours in 1975—thanks to machines with “brains”!

By Robert Bendiner

THE YEAR is 1975. For a man of 50 leaving a factory gate at five in the afternoon, you look remarkably fresh. Your light, comfortable-looking summer suit is pressed and spotless, your face and hands are free of grime, and your features show no sign of the strain that men once associated with the heat and noise of a big factory. There is an extra spring in your step as you walk toward the heliport, perhaps because this is Thursday. Your four-day work week is over, and ahead of you are three full days to call your own.

Are you a pampered relative of the owner, or perhaps the owner himself? Not at all. You are an ordinary factory hand—in charge of “preventive tool maintenance” for your section. You have been with the Peerless Auto Parts Company for 25 years, one of the lucky ones who were trained by management for the great changeover to automation that occurred in the mid-’60s.

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The Cybernated Generation

Purring like contented kittens, the most remarkable support crew ever assembled kept unceasing vigil last week as Gemini spun through space with its two passengers. At Cape Kennedy and at the space complex in Houston, at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and at 14 other sites from the Canary Islands to the South Indian Ocean, dozens of electronic computers guided, watched, advised and occasionally admonished the two astronauts. In fact, the Space Age’s first orbiting digital computer, a hatbox-sized model that can make 7,000 separate calculations a second; went along for the ride in Gemini. No space effort—American or Russian—had ever before made such extensive use of the computer, or depended more on it.

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“Mechanical Brain” Works Out Mathematical Engineering Problems

A DIFFERENTIAL analyzer, or “mechanical brain,” has been designed by Dr. Vannevar Bush, Dean of the School of Engineering of the Massachusetts School of Technology, which will relieve the engineer and scientist of the burden of making computations which are mechanical and repetitive.

The photo on the right shows the inventor watching his new calculating machine working out a mathematical problem. The charted curves on the input table represent part of the data of the problem in the form in which it is presented to the machine for solution.

Where a number of Computations must be made, this rapid mechanical device will save the user several minutes, and eliminate the many possibilities of errors which creep into lengthy or detailed computations which must be made by hand, with a slide rule, or with the aid of other mechanical machines.

Doubling Univac’s Speed!

The famous Univac of Remington Rand has widened even further its lead over other electronic business computing systems. Univac is still the only completely self-checked system… the only one which can read, write, and compute simultaneously without extra equipment. And now, the Univac II adds to these superior features the speed of a magnetic-core memory.

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Let’s see, I’m publishing an article about computers, what should I use for a picture? I know! People writing on a plotter with pencils. Nothing says welcome to the computer age better than pencils!

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ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS - what they are and what they do

AUTOMATION has given new importance to electronic computers. From automatic factories to magazine subscriptions, they are becoming a part of our daily life. More applications are constantly being found for computers large and small.

There are two different types of computers: the digital, which uses numbers or digits, and the analog, which uses a measure, such as voltage, current, or angle of rotation.

While large-scale digital computers have captured the headlines, both types are important. Many more analog than digital computers are now in use although both analog and digital techniques are used in some computers. There are, however, striking differences between the two types. Each has applications where it is best suited; each has good features as well as disadvantages.

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Seconds Split a Million Ways

Measuring the split flashes of time that are microseconds makes possible many modern miracles of science.

By Carl Dreher

IT TOOK you about one second, or 1,000,-000 microseconds, to read the title of this article. On that basis one microsecond may seem short enough to satisfy everyone, but to the modern electronics engineer it is a fairly long time. Describing a new electronic gadget, its inventor informs us that each dial division corresponds to 0.0132 microseconds; in other words, he is measuring down to a ten-thousandth of a millionth of a second.

That’s slicing it rather fine, but if it is worth a few dollars to you, you can buy a pulse generator that will deliver bursts of power adjustable down to 0.1 microsecond. You can order it from an advertisement-nothing special about it—plug it into a wall socket like an electric iron, and you’re a member of the microsecond-splitting fraternity yourself. It’s economical to operate, too—consumes only 40 watts.

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I found this article incredibly interesting. It seems like the computer technology of 1960 was just barely up to the task of processing the census data. Not to mention the sheer human scale of the census operation. Check out some of the stats from the article:

On April first, 160,000 of these politically appointed door-to-door canvassers—largely housewives, widows or part-time workers—will set out armed with 1,080,000 pencils, 260,000 pocket-type sharpeners, 2,850,000 scratch pads, infinite patience and considerable ingenuity

For comparison, here are articles about the 1940 and 1950 censuses (censi?).

Also here are some really nice ads for UNIVAC 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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NOSE COUNT, 1960

By Richard F. Dempewolff

THIS IS THE YEAR we count off again, take a look at ourselves to see how we’ve grown, where we’re heading and how we’re doing. Ever since 1790, when the Constitution authorized a “decennial enumeration of the population,” the Bureau of Census has had to brace itself each year ending with zero, and charge into the monumental task of inventorying American noses, one by one.

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Electric “Brain” Weighs Three Tons

Computing Machine Can Run Rings Around Einstein in Solving Mathematical Kinks of the Way that the Universe Operates

THE “Brain Trust” now runs a risk in the competition of the big, complex machine shown above, which was recently built in the school of electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, by C. W. A. workers with government funds. Now, it is said, the U. S. Army wants another like it, and would ask to take this over in case of war. The explanation is that it is a machine for solving the most complicated mathematical problems, and doing this in a hurry. In fact, it can solve problems too complicated for any living mathematician to work out—with an answer not always guaranteed mathemically exact, but at least good enough for practical purposes.

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BUSINESS AUTOMATION and MILITARY ELECTRONICS

The problem confronting many company managements today in deciding what course to follow in applying the new techniques of automation and data processing is similar to the problem faced in recent years by the leaders of our military organizations in arranging for efficient application of the same powerful tools of electronics to the art of war.

At Ramo-Wooldridge the difficult demands of major military systems responsibility have been met successfully by the placing of heavy dependence upon teams of unusually well-qualified, mature and experienced scientists, operational procedures experts, and engineers. These teams deal with the technical and non-technical portions of a project as inseparable and interrelated aspects of a single problem.

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