Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

454 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
Capable of handling large amounts of statistical data with revolution-
ary speed, thoroughness, and efficiency, the new machines permitted, among
other things, the solution of equations hitherto, from the standpoint of time,
impossible to solve, and were to take the guesswork out of problems previously
undertaken by constructing costly experimental equipment, such as the wind
tunnels used in aerodynamic studies.
The computer project at the Bureau was first assigned to the machines
development section of the applied mathematics division. An increasing
amount of its component research, however, was carried out by another com-
puter section, that under Dr. Chester H. Page and Samuel Alexander in Dr.
Astin's electronics division. in the latter division, utilizing its research in
specialized electron tubes, high-speed memory organs, transference means,
input and output equipment (a system of electric typewriters and magnetic
recording devices derived from standard teletype machines), and transcribef
and converter elements, the first Bureau computer was built. A crucial
breakthrough was the substitution of the new germanium crystal diodes for
electron tubes in all switching and computing elements, with tubes used only
for power amplification.77
In 1947, a year after the Bureau began its research on computer
components, the Bureau of the Census and the Office of Naval Research, with
assistance from the Air Force, contracted with the Bureau for the construction
of two full-scale computers at an estimated cost of $300,000 each. Their
design was assigned to the Eckert and Mauchly Computer Corp., the Ray-
theon Manufacturing Co., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts
College. One was to be assembled in the electronics division in Washington,
the other at the Bureau's Institute for Numerical Analysis, recently organized
at the University of California at Los Angeles.78
Presiding over the computer project, Dr. Condon saw the Bureau as
"the centralized national computer facility" for the Government, the Wash-
ington unit serving the eastern half of the Nation, that at Los Angeles the
NBS Annual Report 1946, p. 202; Annual Report 1948, pp. 240, 256; Annual Report
1950, p. 81.
The germanitim or silicon crystal as transistor, first developed by Bardeen, Brattain,
and Shockley, physicists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in 1948, conducts electrical
current in much the same way as a vacuum tube. Unlike the tube, which boils off
electrons flow as directed by an electrical field, the transistor operates without
heating and there is nothing to burn out (Bernstein, The Analytical Engine, p. 68).
Negotiations began with memo, Director NBS for Director of the Census, Apr. 26, 1946,
sub: Design and construction of electronic tabulation equipment ("General Corre-
spondence Files of the Director, 1945—1955") ; NBS Annual Report 1947, p. 187; Hear-
ings * * * 1949, p. 523.