Word: marked
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...part it is an excellent story. Apparently suggested by some of the author's own experience, it tells its tale of an accidental shooting and resulting death in China during the war with a flare for smart phraseology, and only occasionally lapses into what an English A instructor might mark with one of his handy labels such as jargon or fine-writing. The rest of the stories range from pretty good to pretty bad, and point up the need for "Radditudes" to jazz up its make-up, throw some color and life on its cover, try, something audacious...
...Calculators are not thinking machines," Professor Aiken constantly emphasizes to exuberant laymen who see in this development the end for need of human cerebration. Neither Mark I nor any of the prospective calculators will be able to accomplish problems that cannot be fully reasoned out in advance and capable of solution with homely paper and pencil. The revolution that the giant calculator has brought to mathematics is the conquest of time. Even Mark I, whose fundamental mechanisms are mechanical rotating counter wheels, can accelerate by 250 to 600 times the speed of ordinary calculation...
Denials of "thinking machines" notwithstanding, an observer of Mark I in its luxurious new setting cannot fail to be impressed with the uncanny gyrations of the monster. Making little more sound than an electric refrigerator, the machine literally swallows the problem in the form of a punched paper tape that moves inexorably into the sequence control mechanism, while but a few feet away an electromatie type writer pounds out row on row of lengthy numerical results. Three devices similar to the sequence mechanism can also be brought into play to introduce logarithmic tables, interpolating tables, or any other functions needed...
Today's meeting will mark the first gathering of all the experts in education, industry, and government who have been interested in the progress of large scale calculators. Two of the most trying problems that the experts will tackle are the storage of numbers in the machine for future reference in a problem and the elimination of the inaccuracies that develop from the constant interpolation of intermediate results. Professor Aiken is confident that the meeting of minds will eliminate duplication of effort and bring these problems much closer to final solution...
Relaxing slightly after the three strenuous fall months. when Mark I was disassembled in Cruft and reassembled in the new building, Professor Aiken and his staff sat down briefly on December 19 to take a long view of their work both past and present. A bare two and a half years had passed since Mark I had been dedicated and turned immediately to recondite wartime problems. yet this infant department was now in an optimistic boom of expansion that promised to put the University in the lead in an uncharted science...