World's Smallest Electric Brain

Cover Feature Blecfronlcg___________ I 29 World's Smallest Electric Brain By EDMUND C. BERKELEY* and ROBERT A. JENSEN N THE COVER of this issue of R a d i o -E l e c t r o n i c s is a picture of the smallest exist E. C. Berkeley explains how Simon gets instructions from a piece of punched tape. O ing, complete electric brain. This midget electric brain is named Simon, in honor of Simple Simon of Mother Goose fame. He can be called Part i of a series of articles outlining electric or mechanical for he uses re lays; but not electronic, for he does not use a single electron tube. Neverthe principles and describing construction of less he illustrates in solid hardware the principles of all the giant artificial electric and electronic computing devices brains, electronic, electric, or mechan ical. He is perhaps the only electric 1950, expressed in part the purpose of remember 72 of them at one time. brain small enough to be understood Simon: it said, “ The world may admire There are now in use more than 20 completely by one man. a genius but it loves a moron.” The machines of the type known as the In Simon is about 24 inches long, 15 same may perhaps be true of the crew ternational Business Machines card- inches wide, and 6 inches high. He of men who want to know how electric programmed calculator, and more than weighs (not counting his power sup brains work, what they are all about, 80 of the type known as the Reeves ply) about 39 pounds. He runs on 24 and how to construct them. It may be electronic analogue, computer. volts d.c., drawing at most about 5 rather easier to understand the work amperes. And in number mentality, ing of a little moron of an electric Digital and analogue computers Simon at present compares with a child brain, that a student can easily feel su These artificial brains are of two of two years, for he knows only four perior to, than it is to understand the main types: digital and analogue. A numbers, 0, 1, 2, and 3. working of a giant electric brain, that digital machine expresses information Simon is slow. He performs each op a student can easily feel inferior to. by the positioning of devices in any one eration in about % second— unlike the Simon was designed and built to ex o f a small number of exact positions. electronic brain finished in 1949 called hibit in simple understandable form For example, a human hand with fin Binac, which adds at the rate of 3,500 the essential principles of any arti gers up or down may express 0, 1, 2, 3, additions per second. And yet Simon is ficial brain. He will be useful in lec a true mechanical brain, for he has the turing, educating, training, and enter two essential properties that define a taining—just as a spinning toy gyro mechanical brain: he can transfer in scope is both entertaining and instruc formation automatically from any one tive. For it is certainly true that the of his 16 registers to any other, and he demand for computer-trained electron Fig. 1—Diagram showing a register of can perform endlessly long sequences ics engineers, operators, maintenance Simon expressing the information “ 1,0” . of reasoning operations. men, mathematicians, etc., is steadily 4, 5; or a counter wheel can stop at What is the purpose of this little growing in the new field o f automatic any one of the spots 0 to 9; or a light idiot of an electric brain— or should computing machinery. can be on or off, 2 positions; or a relay he be looked on rather as a baby, with There are now more than a dozen may be energized or not energized; or capacity to grow? Why was it worth kinds or species of these giant artificial an electron tube may be conducting or while to build him? brains. Most are represented by just not. All these devices are digital. The piirpose of Simon one example, such as the rather old— An analogue machine, on the other but still spry—Harvard IBM auto hand, expresses information as the An editorial entitled “ Simple Simon” matic sequence-controlled calculator, measurement of a physical quantity, io the Wall Street Journal for May 22, finished in 1944. This machine handles such as distance moved, or amount of • Author: Giant Brains numbers of 23 decimal digits and can rotation, or electric potential, etc. The EXLIBRIS ccapitalia.net 30 Electronics measurement is analogous to a number combined with a factory, a calculating to another. How does this take place? in the computation. device that can accept several pieces Suppose we take some registers of But there is no easy way for an ana of information and manufacture new Simon (a little simplified) and see how logue machine: (1) to manipulate al information out of them. transfer does take place. Let us take phabetic information given in letters; For example, the calculating device two storage registers SI and S2 (S for (2) to express random numbers; (3) may have four receiving points or plat storage) from which we may read out to express any numbers with an ac forms. On two platforms, the computer information, and two more storage curacy of more than 5 or 6 decimal takes in two numbers such as 140 and registers S3 and S4, into which we digits; (4) to handle problems where 25. On the third platform the computer may read information. Each of these the solution requires different decisions takes in an order to subtract, multiply, registers has two relays to supply the and subroutines, depending on what or find which is bigger, etc. On the four possible pieces of information. happens in the course of the problem. fourth platform the computer delivers Suppose we desire to transfer informa All these things a digital machine can a result (for example, 115), the result tion from register S2 into register S3. do easily. Thus a digital machine can of combining 140 and 25 according to Looking at Fig. 2, we see 12 relays, do rather more than an analogue ma che order to subtract. of which eight are the relays for regis chine. In fact it begins to look as if the To calculate with this telegraph sys ters SI to S4. We also see five termi digital machine of the future has with tem, we must have some way of organ nals, T1 to T5, which energize the re in itself an unlimited capacity to think. izing traffic through it. That is the lays. The terminals are energized, This series of articles will deal mainly duty of the central traffic control. The that is, carry current, in the sequence with digital electric brains. most automatic way for sending of their numbers. information through the system is: How an electric brain works Let us consider time 1. A t this time (1). At any one time connect just the circuit running from T1 to ground How does an electric brain work? A two telegraph stations, such as “ Al passes through both the closed HOLD good mental picture of the working of bany” and “ Boston” ; contracts and the coils of (two out of) an electric brain is an isolated tele (2 ). Specify the direction of traffic, four relays Sl-b, Sl-a, S2-b, and S2-a. graph system, with a number of com such as “ from Albany to Boston.” Then By a previous operation, the two relays municating central stations and a traf as soon as the proper connections have Sl-b and S2-a were energized and are fic control. The messages that this tele been completed, send the signal “ go,” now held up by continuous current graph system handles are usually and the information at Albany will be from terminal T l. We see that infor pieces of information of standard transferred automatically to Boston. mation “ 1,0” is stored in register SI length, with a standard number of There are two ways to get the cen and that information “ 0,1” is stored digits. tral traffic control to function properly. in register S2. One is to have all the orders ready Let us pass to time 2, and look for ahead of time, and tell it to do just as terminal T2. At time 2 we see that the it is told. This is dictatorship. The s e l e c t - s e n d i n g -REGIs t e r relay is ener second way is to have some special gized, and consequently register S2 is wires of the telegraph system run into selected to send out its information. the central control', and let information Now let us pass to time 3, and look from time to time (though not all the for terminal T3. The s e l e c t - r e c e i v i n g - time) come from the system into the r e g i s t e r relay, whose pickup coil is central control—feedback. The central connected to T3, is not in this case en control then knows what is going on ergized. As a result, register S3 is se and can direct the following steps. lected to receive. This is democracy. This second tech Passing to time 4, we look for termi nique of course is a honey, even with nal T4. As current flows along the wire electric brains, and a good electric from T4, the entrance relay for regis brain does compute some— or even ter S3 is energized.

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