ckily, Babbage’s creation flopped due to the lack of mechanical precision and the lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not operate efficiently because technology was t adequate to make the machine operate efficiently Computer interest dwindled for many years, and it wasn’t until the mid-1800’s that people became interested in them once again.Between 1850 and 1900, the mathematics and physics fields began advancing. The advancements involved extremely arduous calculations and formulas that took a great deal of time when done manually. In need of help, professionals were turning to the computer industry for assistance. The first major use for a computer in the U.S. was for the 1890 cenus (http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/ov/node8.html). The U.S. population was increasing so rapidly that officials had to find another way to calculate the numbers. With the combined expertise of Herman Hollerith and James Powers, a new punched-card system was designed that could automatically read information on cards without human involvement (http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/ov/node8.html). The computer helped the census bureau tremendously with tabulating the ever-growing U.S. population. The increasing need for computers was obvious, and commercial industries began recruiting experts to design machines that would facilitate similar operations. And, because the punch-cards worked so well at providing extensive means of input, output, and memory storage, they were continuously used for over 50 years. Then, around the 1930’s, engineers began improving them. The newly improved punch-card-business-machine systems were introduced in the late 1930’s. International Business Machines (IBM), and Remington-Rand were some of the larger corporations to develop these new, improved systems. Howard Hathaway Aiken, along with several IBM engineers constructed the Harvard Mark I. This was a huge automatic-digital comput...
