Hardware

“ The contractor shall furnish the manufacturer or dealer furnishing the hardware with details of woodwork or information that may be necessary in order to understand the requirements and to harmonize the hardware with the cabinetwork, and, where interferences are discovered, to have them adjusted before the hardware is delivered. ”

“ The hardware used in building construction may be classified as staple and finished. Staple hardware may be considered as including such materials as nails and spikes, bolts and screws, sash weights, and other materials of this character, while finished hardware may include such devices and appliances as locks and latches, hinges, door and window trimmings, and the various metallic fixtures used in equipping the different classes of buildings. To this last classification the term builders’ hardware is frequently applied.
Strictly speaking, glass cannot be considered as hardware ”

“ Just as important as the hardware—the computers and other machines—are the programs on those plastic disks. In fact, you should even think “software” before you do hardware, because your machine will be useless if it doesn’t do the tasks you want it to. And the programs supply these necessary instructions. More than thirty thousand programs for micros are on the market; so The Silicon Jungle can’t say which one is exactly right for you, but it can help you find out for yourself by showing how a software classic comes into existence. ”

“ And now we’re talking about heterogeneous hardware being manufactured at the bleeding edge of nowhere, changing chips on the real estate to accommodate whatever the market is making cheap this month, and all the rest. ”

“ New computer hardware, unadorned with such snares and delusions as an {operating system}, an {HLL}, or even assembler. Commonly used in the phrase `programming on the bare metal', which refers to the arduous work of {bit bashing} needed to create these basic tools for a new machine. Real bare-metal programming involves things like building boot proms and BIOS chips, implementing basic monitors used to test device drivers, and writing the assemblers that will be used to write the compiler back ends that will give the new machine a real development environment. ”

“ The hardware manufacturers consulted their records and on the basis of actual consumption in American industry discovered that a repair unit consisting of a machine shop, a horseshoeing shop, a blacksmith shop, and a woodworking shop, with 11 mechanics working in the unit, would consume 305 dozen files per year, the experience tables showing precisely the proportions of the various sizes of files in this consumption. ”

“ With these tiny components and new circuit modes a supercomputer could be built, stored with information, and programmed to solve what one of the participants called the most difficult problem the human being faces today—that of bargaining.
This computer has not yet been built; it won’t be for some time. But design and fabrication are moving in that direction on a number of fronts. One of these fronts is that of hardware, the components used in building up the computer circuitry. In a decade we moved from vacuum tubes to transistors to thin-film 252devices. ”

“ Photographs of these complicated machines can really show very little: panels, lights, switches, wires, and other kinds of hardware. What is important is the way the machine works inside. This cannot be shown by a photograph but may be shown by schematic drawings. In the same way, a photograph of a human being shows almost nothing about how he thinks.
UNDERSTANDING THIS BOOK
I have tried to write this book so that it could be understood. I have attempted to explain machinery for computing and reasoning without using technical words any more than necessary. ”

“ A fertile field for the analog computer from the start was that of industrial process control. Chemical plants, petroleum refineries, power generating stations, and some manufacturing processes lend themselves to control by analog computers. ”

“ A coded tape, generated by a computer, controls the milling machine, drill press, or shaper more accurately than the human machinist could. In effect, the computer studies a blueprint and punches out instructions on tape that tell the machine what it is to do, how much of it, and for how long. Huge shaping and contouring machines munch chunks of metal from blanks to form them into complex three-dimensional shapes. Remington Rand UNIVAC and IBM are among the companies producing computers for this purpose. ”

“ The work stands without a rival. It is a complete practical treatise on the art of American Tool Making and system of interchangeable manufacturing as carried on to-day in the United States. In it are described and illustrated all of the different types and classes of small tools, fixtures, devices, and special appliances which are in general use in all machine manufacturing and metal working establishments where economy, capacity, and interchangeability in the production of machined metal parts are imperative. ”

“ Thus there is the genesis of the paper-machine involved, and that of the multitudinous appliances and devices that preceded it, and are at present implied by it. Have we now got to the end of the matter? No; we have just glanced at one group of the antecedents. All this development of mechanical appliances—this growth of the iron-manufacture, this extensive use of machinery made from iron, this production of so many machines for making machines—has had for one of its causes the abundance of the raw materials, coal and iron ”

“ Parts forming at work stations, each controlled by a Small computer able to load and unload workpieces, make parts and employ adaptive control (in-process operation sensing and corrective feedback) , and incorporate diagnostic devices such as tool-wear and tool-breakage sensors. Materials handling by different computer-controlled devices such as lifts, warehouse stacking cranes, carts, conveyors, and industrial robots with or without sensors that handle (store, retrieve, find, acquire, transport, load, unload) parts, tools, fixtures, and other materials throughout the factory. ”

“ What kind of computational ability do you want your computer to have? Will it serve the computing needs you have identified for now and later?
Input and Output Devices. What kind of output do you need? What additional pieces of equipment or peripherals (such as separate screen, disk drive, modem, printer) will you need to buy to make this system do what you want it to?
Most agricultural programs require a printer. A dot matrix printer (which produces characters made of small dots) may be sufficient. Another option is a letter quality printer, which is more expensive. ”

“ A gear can have a finite number of teeth; when we deal with electrons flowing through a wire we leave the discrete and enter the continuous world. A tiny change in voltage or current, or magnetic flux, compounded several hundred times in a complex computer, can change the final result appreciably if the errors are cumulative, that is, if they are allowed to pile up. This is what happens in the analog computer using electrical and electronic components instead of precisely machined cams and gears. ”

“ Serial Operation—Digital computer operation in which all digits are handled serially.
Storage—Use of drums, tapes, cards, and so on to store data outside the computer proper.
The Computer’s Parts Looking at computers from a distance, we are vaguely aware that they are given problems in the form of coded instructions and that through some electronic metamorphosis this problem turns into an answer that is produced at the readout end of the machine. There is an engineering technique called the “black box” concept, in which we are concerned only with input to this box and its output. ”

“ On left is an array of 16 analog computers; at right is a large digital data-processing system.
The facility can perform scientific and business tasks simultaneously.
The dictionary also gives us a good clue to the digital computer: “Digital.—Of the fingers or digits.” A digital machine deals in digits, or discrete units, in its calculations. For instance, if we ask it to multiply 2 times 2, it answers that the product is exactly 4. A slide rule, which we have said is an analog device, might yield an answer of 3.98 or 4.02, depending on the quality of its workmanship and our eyesight. ”

“ Since most industries have been in existence for many years, 204far antedating aviation, electronics, and the modern computer, the general incorporation of such control has been difficult both because of the physical problem of altering existing machines and the mental phenomenon of inertia. Factory management understandably is slow to adopt a revolutionary technique, and most control systems now in use in industry are still analog in nature. However, where new plants are built from the ground up for computer control, the results are impressive. ”

“ There are some twenty-two thousand electron tubes in each one, you know, and so we devised a gadget that went down the aisles and replaced them one after another automatically. Now, the machine must have started from that crude affair and by using its cable-clamps, worked on another machine capable of more complex action. Sort of like a lobster fashioning a hammer out of a rock with its claws. Then the more complex machine must have rebuilt the repair-gadgets, making them even more facile—and so on until we have the completely capable machine. ”

“ These products encompass computers and computer equipment, semiconductors and integrated circuits, computer software products, telecommunications equipment, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and computer-based analytical instruments. ”

“ The 1962 domestic market for computers and associated equipment is estimated at just under $3 billion, with more than 150,000 people employed in manufacture, operation, and maintenance of the machines.
In the short time since the first electronic computer made its appearance, these thinking machines have made such fantastic strides in so many different directions that most of us are unaware how much our lives are already being affected by them. ”

“ The men who now fill our drafting rooms and tool rooms, and who devise and construct tools for the production of interchangeable metal parts, are his descendants. They have made possible the manufacture of the breech-loading gun, the typewriter, the cheap sewing machine, the cash register, the machine-made watch, the automobile, as well as a thousand and one other mechanical articles, machines, and devices which form an integral part of our twentieth-century civilization. ”

“ The assembly sector minicomputer,.on the other hand, directs the many microcomputers which control its various assembly robots, transport robots, and warehouse robots. The entire manufacturing system is thus controlled by a hierarchy of distributed computers, and can simultaneously manufacture subsets of groups of different products after fast, simple retraining exercises either Programmed by an "intelligent" central computer or remotely by human beings. ”

“ More than 1,000 variables are controlled, and 200 analog signals and 100 digital computer-generated signals are used in the process. The steel sheets are shot out of the rolls at some 45 miles an hour, or about 66 feet a second! A human supervisor would have a difficult job just watching the several hundred signals related to thickness, temperature, quality, and so on, much less trying to think what to do if he noticed something out of specifications. ”

“ I think I can power up the computer system, but it will take a lot of energy to do so. I used submicroscopic robotic probes to provide detailed maps of the computer in the power plant, and some of the wiring, machines, and selected other equipment inside this amazing facility. I've detailed men to take portable power packs down to the power plant and arrange them in sequence to give us enough power to jump-start the computer. ”

“ In the novelty shop, which does a million things, wires are cut and mechanically bent in hundreds of thousands of shapes, for clothes hangers, pail ear staples, daubers for bottles, meat skewers, hog rings, thread guards for textile machinery, basket fasteners, shackles for car seals, saddlery parts, Welsbach mantles, clips and links for bedsprings, wiring for toys of all descriptions—and so on and on and on. ”

“ Engineering specifications are put into the computer and the machine can then produce on request mechanical drawings as required by the engineer. Data stored in the memory is displayed on a Charactron tube. There is little resistance to this type of computer, since the engineer can say it is doing work below his level of 192ability! Of course, the draftsman may take a dim view of computers that can do mechanical drawing.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Engineer checks design information for first computer built from complete information furnished by another computer. ”

“ Fig. 7. refers to a machine fixed to the walls of the Provision-store, for raising the stores from the railways to the entrance-door, as pointed out in Plate XVI. a a a a a section of part of the walls of the Provision-store, in which a hole x x is perforated, and lined with a copper tube, for the passage of the purchase-chain; b is the pulley, with its case, over which it works; c c c is the frame of the machine; and d the handle, with its bevelled pinion. ”

“ Grudgingly at first, and accepting the computer only as an assiduous moron, engineers in other fields put it to work. Complex machine operations like gear-shaping were planned and carried out by computers that even punched out tapes for controlling the production 190tools. Optics designers switched from desk calculators to electronic computers. Mechanical engineers in jobs from ultrasonic vibrators to tractor design became users of computers. Mass spectrometry, heat-exchanger design, and waterworks design joined the jobs the computer could do. ”