Computer and the Mind of Man : The Control Revolution (1962)

in all living things there are many repetitive but very important operations that must be continuously at work if life is to be these operations are carried out by automatic self-regulating mechanisms our heart and lungs are IDE real examples of self-regulating biological machines they respond automatically to changes in the body's requirements in order to maintain an equilibrium today Science and Technology have made possible the incorporation on a broad scale of the principles of self-regulation or automatic control in non-biological man-made systems the electronic computer an information handling problem solving decisionmaking machine is the invention which makes automatic control possible in many situations and at speeds that far exceed human capability [Music] good morning everybody it's that time again 7:00 in case you haven't looked out the window it's raining the temperatures in the low 60s Thea man says he'll be showered so many of the actions in our daily lives depend upon mechanisms which automatically carry out the purposes we have built into them even these commonplace objects can be said to act on the basis of information and to make simple decisions like off or on stop or go up or down when one of these devices is set up so that it can recognize and act upon changes in its own environment and do so without benefit of human intervention we have a self-regulating control system an ordinary thermostat is an excellent primitive example of such a system once it has been instructed to maintain a certain temperature it will Reg regulate the amount of fuel to the heating unit in direct proportion to changes in the temperature of the room the situation is best described by the word interdependence the thermostat reading depends upon the temperature in the room the temperature depends upon the heating unit the heating unit depends upon the thermostat Engineers call this a closed loop control system such a control system should not be confused with mechanization in terms of an amplification of energy or muscle power we've had mechanical means of Performing tasks for a long time they represent extensions of our muscle power automatic control on the other hand represents essentially an extension of our nervous system and of our problem solving or decision making ability control is concerned with the information rather than the energy in a system and within the past 20 years the development of information machines or electronic computers has made possible the application of the principles of automatic control to an ever increasing range of industrial governmental and general business tasks one of the earliest non-scientific uses of the digital or number computer was in the recording storing and processing of vast quantities of numerical data such as that handled by the Social Security administ ministration in this room are the permanent records of over 130 million applications for a Social Security account it is here that the card you signed when you first applied for a social security card is filed within each year the forms from over 26 million employer and self-employment reports are received to store this vast quantity of information in its original form year after year would require as many warehouses as there are in many a city fortunately the information from these mountains of paper can be transferred to punched cards and then the computer translates this information into binary digits which are recorded on Magnetic Tape up to 100,000 records can be stored on a single reel of magnetic tape the original paper forms can then be destroyed rather than stored at the taxpayer's expense the computer can also be instructed to convert the information on the magnetic tapes into a form such that it can be recorded on microfilm once the records are on microfilm they are in an easily readable form so that the account for a particular Mr Smith can be searched out from among the more than a million other Smiths even when the account number is not known at first when there is a claim request for an account the relevant data must be extracted from the file for the individual one half of the tape files containing over 130 million records is searched each day by means of data synchronizers just imagine the time required to say nothing of the possibility of human clerical errors if this information had to be extracted from file cards an important adjunct to this incredible electronic data processing system is the communication of information from machine to machine within the network of Social Security offices in the United States and a branch office may require only about 1 minute of least wire time each day to have its queries answered by the computer this data processing system illustrates a surprising fact of Modern Life the fact that many of the recordkeeping tasks we take so much for granted would be impossible without the most versatile of man's inventions the electronic computer and modern data processing systems and in the modern business operation the computer makes the same kind of recordkeeping accuracy speed and economy possible this is a data processing system set up to compute utility bills [Music] once the information on the cards has been transferred to Magnetic Tape the actual computation time for each bill is approximately 13 of a second and this printer types out the bills to be mailed to customers at a speed of 85 per minute in this industrial plant the Wyman Gordon company of Wester Massachusetts a computer is used to keep track of and to integrate information on everything from inventory to payroll John McCarthy director of data processing describes this here at Wyman Gordon company a mediumsized company in heavy industry dealing primarily with the production of Space Age forgings we find this computer an invaluable tool in gathering assembling and disseminating the pertinent facts of our business we find that in an operation of this type there is no one job that is large enough within itself to require or to substantiate the use of a computer on its own it is with this thought in mind then that we viewed our operations on a total systems concept trying with every effort to integrate all of the fun functions of our operation a sales order for instance having been introduced into the system we must find the answers to several pertinent questions is stock available if stock is not available what is our procurement lead time our tools available to produce this part what is the current status of our shop load do we have openings space in our equipment facilities so that this product may be manufactured within the customers required due date so on Down the Line we must maintain in our Central Processing Unit an exact upto-date status of our Vital business statistics job cards our feedback from the shop and estimate cards our yard stick by which we measure our performance our types of feedback which affect all of the pertinent datas of our manufacturing operation now job tickets emanate out in the shop where the activity or the work is being performed the worker notifies the Central timekeeping department as to the number of men working on this operation the time we started on this operation what is the name of this operation what machine are we using and how many pieces are we working on this information is gathered in Central timekeeping and forwarded to this data processing center whereby this information is introduced into punched cards and processed so that we can get a comparison of estimated costs versus actual cost and so that we can be in a better position to price our product based on actual experience and in our particular operation we are dealing with a 2200 man payroll that includes both incentive wages and day work wages on this computer we are assembling Computing and writing payroll checks for these 2200 men in approximately 40 minutes if we were to compare this to the old fashion manual method of of producing the same result we could probably use terms of hundreds of hours in describing the differences in times to draw some conclusions for our experiences with this type of equipment in our experience has only been since December of 1960 incidentally this was the first computer of its type installed in industry in the country we might say that computers are not going to be installed in the future and are not being installed now for the prime purpose of reducing fixed clerical costs but rather they are being installed so that they can provide their managements a factual precise timely picture of our company operations so that remedies or decisions can be made in a prompt basis therefore our objective here is not necessarily to reduce these costs but to increase our profit picture by other means by reducing our inventory by shortening our manufacturing cycle and various other pertinent areas that prior to the Advent of a computer were perhaps not practical to analyze and they were seldom attempted it is at the numerical Machining Corporation in Cleveland Ohio that we may see a computer used to control a complex and delicate manufacturing process first a programmer working with a blueprint of the part to be manufactured must write out all of the necessary specifications for the part once this analysis has been completed a key punch operator will take the programmer's handwritten manuscript and translate into punched [Music] cards this information is then fed to the computer which acting in accordance with instructions stored in its memory computes the operations necessary for the part to be machined properly this output or set of directives from the computer is then transferred from punched cards to perforated paper tape this paper paper tape contains all of the necessary instructions for the milling machine next the paper tape is loaded on the Machine Tool director the device which controls the automatic Milling process in Conformity with the instructions prepared by the computer once the start button is pushed the machine following the instructions on the paper tape Begins by selecting the proper tool from the huge Machine Tool wheel a [Music] and once the proper tool has been selected and inserted the machine proceeds with the Milling operation entirely under automatic control use of a computer in this numerically controlled Machining system makes possible substantial saving in the preparation time for actual Machining and assures the greatest precision and accuracy through the elimination of possible human error it is in the petroleum industry that the principles of automatic control have received their widest industrial application in this Standard Oil Refinery at El Segundo California a computer control system can be used to achieve continuous and automatic process control following many hours of painstaking engineering and mathematical anal analysis on the part of human beings the computer is provided with a mathematical and logical statement of the problem including the many limitations in the refining process that cannot be exceeded acting in accordance with instructions as to what Optimum conditions should be maintained the computer reads the necessary measuring instruments and makes the required control decisions necessary to maintain the refining process at an Optimum this automatic or closed loop control system operates within the natural or realtime requirements of the refining process such continuous process control is not possible under manual methods the problem of control within a realtime situation may be even more dramatically illustrated by a traffic control and guidance system where the time may come when only a computer can handle the flow of information and make the proper logical decisions within the microsc time intervals necessary at such high speeds yet the principle that lies behind the guidance system and the simple thermostat is the same scientists and Engineers call it feedback as used in relation to control systems feedback is information about an environment that leads to a decision which affects the environment feedback loops are present in all forms of life whenever we feel that we may lose our balance and take corrective action we are illustrating an information feedback system when the corrective action is equal in amount or amplitude to the disturbance in the system and even oscillation results when the corrective action is slightly less than the disturbance or deviation the oscillation is dampened and tends to disappear however when the corre effective action is greater than the disturbance an increasing oscillation is caused which may result in the systems getting entirely out of hand control is a result of what is called negative feedback in other words the information that is fed back is the amount of deviation from the desired Norm or condition time delays the structure of the system itself and the amount of noise or Distortion in communication of the information makes oscillation an inherent part of all Control Systems an uncomfortable example of a control problem caused by time delay and feedback is when you're trying to adjust a shower to the exact temperature you desire at first it's either too hot or too cold and it usually takes a while for you to reduce the oscillations in the system but regardless of whether the problem is one of adjusting the temperature of a shower or making the decisions which control a giant industrial complex the basic relationship of interdependence and the circular flow of information leading to decision leading to action leading to new information and so on is the same although the use of computers in information processing and in automatic control systems in industry is fairly well known the use of computers to assist manag in making decisions is a relatively new field one term that is applied to studies of business operations is industrial Dynamics JW Forester professor of industrial management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks with Dr Richard Heming of the Bell Telephone Laboratories about industrial Dynamics the industrial system the economic system is a great deal more complicated than the kinds of systems where a customed to designing in aircraft in missiles in industrial Control Systems these have grown up empirically we found out how to act within such systems but we don't understand what really causes the way in which they behave some companies are very successful some are unsuccessful some of our great Industries are very unstable they have fluctuating employment levels they have unstable prices they have unstable production rates uh and these have in the past to a considerable extent been blamed on the outside on the market on other people it's only now that we're beginning to realize that these difficulties are very largely a natural result of the policies and practices within these organizations well business has been important to us for a very very long while why is it just now that we are beginning to study this subject instead of 50 or 100 years ago well bear in mind that I've already said that a company is a very complicated organism very complicated organization the things we needed to know the tools we needed to have have just now become available I think there are four of these that should be singled out as important first of all all and most important is the understanding that has been generated in the last 20 years the understanding of information feedback systems sometimes called Servo mechanisms the behavior of systems in which the information that one has leads to a decision that leads to action that is expected to affect the State of Affairs to affect the information on which the decisions are made made a circular flow of information decisions actions new information these systems have growth characteristics and stability characteristics that you cannot understand by looking at the parts separately they depend on the way the parts are put together secondly a great deal has been learned in the last 10 years about the process of decision making in connection with the work that has been done on Military systems the understanding of the nature of military tactics this is transferable into an understanding of the decision-making process in general understanding of the forces and the pressures within industry that lead to certain kinds of actions third in the last 10 to 20 years there has grown up an awareness of the importance of models of complicated systems these systems are too complex to analyze purely mathematically one must build a model and see how this model behaves and from this model one can draw conclusions about the character of the actual system and fourth connected with the third Point models digital computers have become available which serve to perform the vast amount of computation that one must be able to carry out if he is to use these mathematical models of complicated systems so we have four foundations all of them essential which have all developed within the last 20 years and some of them even within the last five although there is full acceptance of the scientific approach in product design and research we have lagged behind in applying the scientific method to problems of man man agement traditionally we tend to think of business management as an art rather than a science we ask Professor George danig of the University of California's School of industrial engineering for his comments regarding the application of the scientific method to business operations it is not only the application of the scientific method but actually the evolving of a new science to take care of these decision-making problems now when you speak of decision making do you mean to imply decision making by machine well when I say decision making of course I mean the kinds of decisions that people have been making since the beginning of time and only in the recent years has anyone uh allowed their judgment so to speak with regard to making decisions uh be made by a computer instead of by human beings the general belief is that uh decision- making is such a complicated art that no machine can do it and what these developments are saying is that uh a great deal of this Arc can be reduced to a science and that machines can help in that uh decision making the role of the manager as decision maker can be viewed abstractly as a process of converting information into decisions and instructions which in turn affect the environment which affects the information which leads to new decisions and so on once again we are confronted with the familiar pattern of information feedback in any business operation thousands of individual decisions may be required and each one of these decisions has its effect on the total system one of the objectives of the new science of industrial Dynamics is to free the manager from routine decision- making so that he may concentrate on the more General and strategic objectives in short his attention should be focused on the big not the little decisions the historical difficulty has been the translation of the broad objectives of the U System into the detailed decisions that had to be made to go along with it because there were no electronic computers and no scientific approach to these problems it was necessary for the managers in charge to translate their objectives into means for carrying out the objectives so for example if you were an air force uh General uh you would decide that the best way to win the war is to have many bombers if you were in the Navy it would be many battleships now once you've translated it into the means in this case uh either aircraft or uh battleships then again the second Echelon in the planning process would again translate the objectives of getting a lot of airplanes into the means by which you get the airplanes and each stage in the uh each estalon in the planning process uh did the same thing namely they translated the objectives into the means for carrying out the objectives what these present methods do is release the manager from making the uh decision as to how to carry out the objectives instead he can concentrate on the broad objectives themselves and then leave it to the machines to carry out the [Music] details make no mistake about who is in control of the control Revolution it is the man who uses the machine as a tool and when he can use the computer as a tool to control routine procedures attention can be directed toward the exceptions to the routine in short the manager's attention is needed only when a new decision is required and the great promise of the future use of computers as control and decision-making machines rests with our understanding of what these machines can do and our willingness to use them to serve the purposes of man [Music] [Music] this is NE National educational television