Word: digitalizes
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...Physicist-Author Jeremy Bernstein, "like a roomful of ladies knitting." The noise came from the rapid opening and closing of thousands of little switches, and it represented an enormous information flow and extremely long calculations for the time. In less than five seconds, Mark I could multiply two 23-digit numbers, a record that lasted until ENIAC'S debut two years later. But how? In part, the answer lies in a beguilingly simple form of arithmetic: the binary system. Instead of the ten digits (0 through 9) of the familiar decimal system, the computer uses just the binary...
...decimal system, each digit of a number read from right to left is understood to be multiplied by a progressively higher power of 10. Thus the number 4,932 consists of 2 multiplied by 1, plus 3 multiplied by 10, plus 9 multiplied by 10 X 10, plus 4 multiplied by 10 x 10 X 10. In the binary system, each digit of a number, again read from right to left, is multiplied by a progressively higher power of 2. Thus the binary number 11010 equals 0 times 1, plus 1 times 2, plus 0 times 2X2, plus 1 times...
Working with long strings of Is and 0s would be cumbersome for humans-but it is a snap for a digital computer. Composed mostly of parts that are essentially on-off switches, the machines are perfectly suited for binary computation. When a switch is open, it corresponds to the binary digit 0; when it is closed, it stands for the digit 1. Indeed, the first modern digital computer completed by Bell Labs scientists in 1939 employed electromechanical switches called relays, which opened and closed like an old-fashioned Morse telegraph key. Vacuum tubes and transistors can also be used...
...wires in a rectangular grid made up of thousands of wires. Depending on the direction of current in the two wires that pass through its hole, each doughnut is magnetized in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. This represents either a 1 or a 0-a "bit" (for binary digit) of information. Because each core has a specific location in the precisely designed grid, it can be "addressed" almost instantly: information can be read from any doughnut by means of a third wire passing through each core. These fragile and expensive core memories are now being replaced by semiconductor memories...
...successor, G. William Miller, will find Burns' show quite as difficult to top. As chairman of the Reserve, Arthur Burns was final arbiter of the nation's money supply through eight of the most tumultuous years in economic history-years marred alternately, or sometimes simultaneously, by double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates and deep recession. Though some of his actions helped to aggravate the economic maladies of the 70s. he became just as revered as Martin-and he was a far more complex bundle of professional and personal contradictions...