pabilities and costs, as well as various peripheral equipment such input means as consoles and card feeders; such output means as page printers, cathode-ray-tube displays, and graphing devices; and optional magnetic-tape and magnetic-disk file storage. These found wide use in business for such applications as accounting, payroll, inventory control, ordering supplies, and billing. Central processing units (CPUs) for such purposes did not need to be very fast arithmetically and were primarily used to access large amounts of records on file, keeping these up to date. Most computer systems were delivered for the more modest applications, such as in hospitals for keeping track of patient records, medications, and treatments given. They are also used in automated library systems, such as MEDLARS, the National Medical Library retrieval system, and in the Chemical Abstracts system, where computer records now on file cover nearly all known chemical compounds. Later AdvancesThe trend during the 1970s was, to some extent, away from extremely powerful, centralized computational centers and toward a broader range of applications for less-costly computer systems. Most continuous-process manufacturing, such as petroleum refining and electrical-power distribution systems, now use computers of relatively modest capability for controlling and regulating their activities. In the 1960s the programming of applications problems was an obstacle to the self-sufficiency of moderate-size on-site computer installations, but great advances in applications programming languages are removing these obstacles. Applications languages are now available for controlling a great range of manufacturing processes, for computer operation of machine tools, and for many other tasks.Moreover, a revolution in computer hardware came about that involved miniaturization of computer-logic circuitry and of component manufacture by large-scale integration, or LSI, techniques. In the ...
