Regardless of whether or not one is a pacifist, today is one properly dedicated to counting the cost of war and remembering those who paid in the dearest coinages: Life, limb, friendship, health, freedom, innocence, hunger, cold, homesickness, hopes for the future. A simple "thank you" seems laughable...until one considers how insulting it would be to say nothing at all.
And, in that general--no quasi-military pun intended--spirit, it would be worth recognizing the kick-start the military gave to computers and my own profession. Incomprehensible as it may seem, computers were not, in fact, developed with Farmville in mind. (I'm just as shocked as you.)
No, it seems that even in WWI, the notion of offloading ballistics computations to non-humans was considered worth pursuing. Why? Well, when artillery like the Big Bertha had a range of fifteen clicks (a.k.a. 9 miles and change)--meaning its operators couldn't necessarily see their targets--calculations mattered. Even at closer range, you had three options for hitting people who wanted to kill you:
- Dumb luck. (Not recommended.)
- Experience (Good luck surviving long enough to get it.)
- Working through calculations that took into account factors such as:
- Mass of the ordnance being fired
- Force of the charge behind it
- Recoil (a.k.a. our old friend Newton's Third Law)
- Wind/Air resistance
- The Quadratic Formula (Remember that from Junior High? Turns out, it had something to do with The Real World after all. Whoodathunkit?)
Oh, and did I mention that, while cranking through all that Algebra, your target could be on the move and--by the bye--you might be under fire yourself? Yeah. Kinda makes it tough to remember to carry that two, dun'it?
But in computer history--just like on The History Channel--it's WWII that gets all the glory. Enter ENIAC and its sucessors. That was the for Army (where its services were, most sensationally, conscripted for the Manhattan Project). Not to be outdone--in computing as in football--the Navy partnered with Harvard University and IBM to create the Mark I, for much the same purposes. And, of course, there's Bletchley Park's Colossus, ignominously burned in 1960. Because as much as weapons win battles, intelligence wins wars.
The Korean War didn't last long enough for IBM's 701 model to see much--if any--service, which can also be said for Big Blue's one-off NORC. However, by that time, businesses (and non-military government agencies), flush in the post-war boom of the 1950s, were already slavering for the breathless computing times such miracle-machines could give them.
As the final kick, let's not forget that the underpinnings of the internet itself originated with DARPA, intended to spread the risk of all-out attack by decentralizing the network.
And the rest, I'd say, is history. Save that Clio might just be the least glamorous of the Muses--valued only when she titillates...or provides those who attend to her with the smugness of precedent. So I would ask my gentle reader--as you receive a text or call, catch up on your peeps' Facebook statuses or tweets, become the Mayor of wherever, etc.--remember how that gadget at your fingertips got there. Thanks.
