AN ENGINEER LOOKS AT ELECTRONIC COMPUTING

e [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] during this presentation I will talk about basic Computer Concepts a little about the history of computers as they affect engineering and some Concepts in man machine communication I will also demonstrate IBM's 1130 Computing system and talk about engineering applications as a college professor in 1962 and 63 I was continually being asked by my head of Department as to when I would be incorporating the computer in my courses in structures and mechanics Having learned something about computers in the mid1 1950s I had made a judgment that there was no place for the computer in these courses however to reaffirm my stand during the summer recess of 1963 I went to IBM to learn more about modern computers and programming the net result was that I became fascinated with a modern computer and its potential on the field of engineering and so I joined IBM in the 50s computers were very expensive and difficult to communicate with this has changed dramatically in the last decade a short story about two IBM computers will prove these points the 701 was a giant computer in the mid-50s it was a computer that was placed in just about every important laboratory in the United States it was also the computer that got our Aerospace and atomic energy programs going in February 1965 IBM announced the 1130 Computing system by IBM standards the 1130 is the smallest computer with we have ever marketed there are some striking similarities between a giant computer of a little more than a decade ago and what might be referred to as a baby computer of today there are many parameters that can be used for comparing computers one of these is the computer's memory by this we mean the amount of information that a computer can retain at any point in time if one is to look at the memory of the 701 and compare it with the memory of the 1130 one will find that for all practical purposes both computers have identical memories a second parameter that should be used for comparing is speed the speed at which the computer processes information there are many different speeds that may be talked about let's look at one it took the 101 12 micros 12 millions of a second to dip into its memory and get some information that could then be manipulated it takes the 1130 3.6 microc to accomplish the same thing so on the basis of this parameter alone it can be said that the 1130 is at least three times faster than the 701 the similarities stop at this point point the 701 was a giant in more ways than one it weighed 10 tons it required a tremendous amount of floor space the 1130 its size is negligible it is essentially the size of a desk two men can pick it up easily to operate the vacuum tube 701 we required 80 KVA power to operate the 1130 the required power is 2.2 KVA the reason is that the 1130 is truly a third generation computer completely transistorized it represents the ultimate in today's state-of-the-art in electronics to keep the 701 functioning require 20 tons of air conditioning none for the 1130 if the human being can be comfortable in a certain environment the 1130 will be comfortable now if one were interested in the 701 a little more than a decade ago IBM was very happy to furnish one for $20,000 per month we have been taking orders for the 11:30 since February of 1965 our prices begin in the neighborhood of $700 per month the computer is a calculator a device which can be used for doing arithmetic it can add subract multiply divide and it can be taught to evaluate square roots logarithms trigonometric functions and even to raise numbers to Powers the computer is more than a calculator however in that it possesses a memory it has the ability to remember information this information can be looked upon very simply as being either data or instructions we can look upon the computer's memory as being a long train of digital information these digits could be viewed as being decimal numbers and we can have many thousands of them stored in the computer's memory to the computer many of these digits represent instructions the remainder of them would represent data the instructions vary there are instructions for doing arithmetic instructions for adding subtracting multiplying and dividing there are transfer type of instructions that permit us to move information around within the computer computer's memory there are instructions that we refer to as read instructions for bring bringing information into the computer's memory and write instructions for getting information out of the computer's memory the computer also has the ability to make logical decisions this concept is a very simple one in a computer's language there is an instruction that gives it the ability to make comparisons we can tell a computer go into your memory and compare the number that exists at this location with the number that exists at this location in essence the computer does a subtraction between these two quantities the circuitry within the computer has the ability to determine upon making the comparison whether or not one number is bigger than the other smaller than the other or equal to it on the basis of this very simple concept is based all the logical decision-making capability of the computer and it is this concept that gives the computer its tremendous power to operate on problems so essentially our computer is a calculator with a memory that has the ability to follow instructions and finally from an engineering Viewpoint it also has the ability to check all of the operations it performs we can now take this discussion one step further we go beyond the computer and talk about a Computing system this can be looked upon as consisting of first the computer which really requires three distinct units the storage unit where the computer's main memory exists the arithmetic and logical unit where the basic circuitry exists for executing the arithmetic and logical decision-making instructions and a control unit where the circuitry exists for analyzing and executing instructions as well as for performing the overall actions of the computer in addition we must have input and output to our system this input could consist of either a keyboard a typewriter like device for getting information into the system or IBM cards or paper tape output for our system could be either on a console typewriter or on a printer where a complete line of information is outputed from the computer at one time rather than a character at a time as we get on a typewriter or IBM card or on paper tape or in a pictorial or graphical form by means of a plotter now let's get into a brief discussion of communications between man and machine earlier I had mentioned that one of the conceptions I had with reference to the first computers was the fact that these computers were difficult to communicate with we are now in a position for the engineer to communicate directly with the computer the vehicle for doing this is a programming language called Fortran Fortran stands for formula translation it is a language very much like algebra let me illustrate the use of the vortran language a very common problem in engineering is the three Reservoir problem where three reservoirs having different elevations are interconnected with a network of pipes the solution of this problem can be obtained by making use of Manning's equation Manning's equation is somewhat messy because of the fact that it has fractional exponents for some of the variables in the equation we can communicate this particular relationship to the computer in a very convenient fashion using the Fortran language this is the way we would present this equation to the computer instead of using the variable Q we could use the word flow we could say that flow is equal to a constant 3.1416 where this represents the quantity called Pi Pi must be multiplied by a diameter this must be raised to a second power to square it divided by the quantity 4 pi d^2 over 4 is the area of a circular pipe the aster represents to the computer multiplication the double Aster represents to the computer exponentiation the raising of a number to a power the slash represents to the computer division the area of a circle must then be multiplied by a constant 1318 this must be multiplied by a quantity C which stands for the coefficient of roughness of a pipe this will be multiplied by a hydraulic radius raised to the 63 power you will notice notice the use of the double Aster for exponentiation we must then multiply the slope raised to the power 54 by defining certain operators in a specific form in essence we end up with a Fortran expression very similar to the basic algebraic equation as an additional illustration of Fortran let's consider the problem of getting information into the computer's memory using Fortran all I need do is write the word read followed by two numbers followed by the information I would like to put into the computer's memory this statement really says to the computer read on one of the input devices and a two would refer to a specific device v50 would reference a specific ification that would be used in conjunction with the information going into the computer's memory I would be reading on a device According to some specification a specific value for a variable called C in this case and a specific variable called D the pipe diameter to get information from the computer's memory all I need do is to write the word write followed by a parentheses in which there are two numbers followed by information that I would like to get from the computer's memory in this case I would be saying write on a particular output device referenced by the number three according to a specification this would tell the computer the size or number of digits that I would be permitting this particular variable to have as it comes from the computer's memory we are saying write on an output device according to specifications the value in your memory for the variable called flow the complete Fortran program for solving the three Reservoir problem would consist of about 30 such Fortran statements these would include getting the data into the computer's memory the setting up of all the necessary equations for getting the problem solved the solution of these equations which involves the setting up of four simultaneous equations and their solution which utilize special iterative techniques checking the logic to make sure that the desired accuracy is obtained in the solution and also printing out the desired answers all of this takes about 30 30 for TR statements the point that should be made and that should be reiterated is that one can learn Fortran quickly as well as to use it and that with Fortran the engineer has a very fast convenient way of communicating with a computer my second conception then which was the difficulty in communicating with a machine at the present time is really a misconception let's look at the 11:30 Computing system and the manner in which it can be used with our particular Reservoir problem the program after having been written was punched into a deck of IBM cards along with the data to solve this problem this program is now being loaded into the computer's memory where instructions are stored by pressing the following buttons on the card reader and these buttons on the 1130 console the program is now being read into the computer's memory the cards are being read at the rate of 300 cards per minute at this point in time the program is in the computer's memory and their data cards are being read and being processed our printer is now printing out the results at the rate of 80 lines per minute it has taken the 1130 less than 2 seconds to solve our problem the 1130 has solved a set of four simultaneous equations 15 times Solutions of this problem take Engineers working with a desk calculator or slide rule about 45 minutes to perform all the calculations that are required in the 45 minute solution are being accomplished by R 1130 in less than 2 seconds there are several other comments that must be made about a computer solution for this problem certainly there's a time element involved in preparing the program a program of this type could be written in about the space of 1 hour however once the program has been written it can be reused as often as necessary with other sets of Data Solutions to particular sets of data therefore can be obtained in 2 seconds per set also the writing of the program would not be much more involved if I were to add several other reservoirs to the system on the other hand a manual solution would be much much more involved the applications or types of problems that can be solved by the computer are virtually Limitless in essence any problem that involves a numerical calculation can be programmed for a Computer Solution however this does not mean that all problems should be programmed for the computer there are some problems which very clearly should be solved by Machine the problems that involved significant amounts of time of calculations where an engineer would be tied up for long periods of time doing repetitive and tedious calculations there are other problems where the amount of numerical work is Trivial but where the amount of thinking is significant these problems very clearly should not be solved by the computer they can be better solved manually and for those problems that fit in between only with experience will an engineer be in the best position to ascertain whether a particular problem should be solved by way of a computer or manually no longer need we think in terms of solving just the routine repetitive problems but we can also be thinking in terms of solving problems which must be solved only once because of the ease that exists in Communications with the machine the onetime problem can now be looked upon to the computer for solution very realistically and practically there are other advantages however with computer programming such as the ability to make changes both changes in problem definition as well as changes in data both of these can be incorporated in Computer Solutions with tremendous ease thinking specifically in terms of applications and various engineering disciplines in civil engineering problems are being solved in the surveying area virtually all types of geometry problems are being solved by computers in the highway field problems with curves and Earthworks in the structures field both in analysis and design we find a large variety of computer programs and as was Illustrated earlier in the Hydraulics field in electrical engineering we can think in terms of programs that analyze electronic circuits problems that deal with electric load flow as well as problems that concern themselves with short circuit analysis in the mechanical engineering field we can think in terms of solving problems that concern themselves with machine design pipe stress analysis or problems concerning heat transfer heat balance or even gas network analysis in the chemical engineering field Computer Applications concern themselves with flash vaporization or calculations dealing with multicomponent distillation Towers these are just a few samples of some of the areas that Engineers have found for introducing computers into their work specifically IBM has much to offer the engineer in the way of computer programming we maintain a library of programs in a wide variety of fields these programs are available to any of our computer users specifically with reference to the 1130 Computing system IBM is very pleased to announce their making available to the engineering community the following programs first of all programs or sets of programs that have come to be known as SSP the scientific sub rutine package for the 11:30 included here are routines for permitting engineers to perform Advanced types of mathematical calculations problems dealing with Bessel functions Fier series matrices logarithms and polinomial we are also providing a package of programs in the statistics area a very interesting program is one that we refer to as csmp which stands for continuous systems modeling program very simply this particular program permits an engineer in a very simplified manner to solve differential equations more specifically it permits the engineer to simulate an analog computer on our digital computer you hear much these days about per and CPM techniques PCS project control system for the 1130 in erates the scheduling techniques including critical path and permits one very easily to do scheduling of any type project on the 1130 system kogo has been one of IBM's most popular programs for some time now it has existed on a number of our Computing systems and is available on the 11:30 kogo stands for coordinate geometry it has a very simplified form and permits the engineer to solve a variety of common geometry problems kogo takes the form of what we call a problem oriented language where one has to learn very little about the computer and has to be familiar only with a vocabulary that is specific to the problems to be solved kogo has a vocabulary in the order of something like 50 words and word combinations like area distance Azimuth and bearing for Structural Engineering IBM provides stress for the 1130 which means Structural Engineering Systems solver it permits a structural engineer to do a structural analysis of an indeterminate structure structures having up to 99 joints and 200 members may be analyzed both plain as well as three-dimensional structures can be solved with this program the numerical surface techniques and contour map plotting package is a most interesting one this program very simply permits one to manipulate surfaces given a series of random points to describe a surface this particular package of programs generates a description of the surface both mathematically and on a point BYO basis and if desired permits us to produce contour maps describing the surface we also have a program called the data presentation system this permits us to make effective use of the graphical plotter that can be attached to our system in the machine design area we have a program called mechanism design for Gears and springs all these programs give the engineer a better feeling for the support that IBM is placing behind the 1130 Computing system in my opinion there is no question that the electronic computer has found the place in the practice of engineering and that it is just a question of time before the computer will be as commonplace to the engineering field as the slide rule has been for [Applause] years oh [Music]