New logical and systems concepts

Abstract

Before making any attempt to outline the course of future development in computer systems technology, it is well to review briefly the present state of the art and how it arrived at that state. The system designs of the first digital computers such as the Harvard Mark I, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (Eniac), and others were largely influenced by ideas presented 100 years earlier by Babbage. In general, the system was comprised of a set of decimal registers, each capable of transmitting numbers in parallel fashion to and from other registers. When a register received a number from another source it was capable of adding that number to any number already contained in that register. Computations were achieved by transmitting numbers back and forth among the various registers with, of course, suitable refinements to obtain the desired results.