Giant brains; or, Machines that thinkBerkeley, Edmund Callis
Science
Giant brains; or, Machines that think
Berkeley, Edmund Callis
Computers -- Popular works
The time required in the machine for adding, subtracting, transferring,
or clearing numbers is ³/₁₀ of a second. This is the time of one
machine cycle or of reading one coding line. Multiplication takes at
the most 6 seconds, and an average of 4 seconds. Division takes at the
most 16 seconds, and an average of 11 seconds. Each, however, requires
only 3 lines of coding, or ⁹/₁₀ of a second’s attention from the
sequence mechanism; interposed operations fill the rest of the time.
To calculate a logarithm, an exponential, or a sine to the full number
of digits obtainable by means of the automatic subroutine takes at
the most 90, 66, and 60 seconds, respectively. To get three 24-digit
numbers from feeding a punch card takes ⅓ second. To punch a number
takes from ½ second up to 3 seconds. To print a number takes from 1½
seconds up to 7 seconds.
Cost and Value
The cost of the machine was somewhere near 3 or 4 hundred thousand
dollars, if we leave out some of the cost of research and development,
which would have been done whether or not this particular machine had
ever been built. A staff of 10 men, consisting of 4 mathematicians,
4 operators, and 2 maintenance men, are needed to keep the machine
running 24 hours a day. This might represent, if capitalized, another
1 or 2 hundred thousand dollars. If a capital value of $500,000 is
taken as equivalent to $50,000 a year, then the cost of the machine in
operation 24 hours a day is in the neighborhood of $150 a day or $6 an
hour.
The value of the machine, however, is very much greater. If 100 human
beings with desk calculators were set to work 8 hours a day at $1.50 an
hour, the cost would be $1200 a day, or 8 times as much. Yet it is very
doubtful that the work they could produce would equal that turned out
by the machine, either in quality or quantity, when the machine is well
suited to the problem.
Reliability
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