Beschreibung:

APPEL, Richard W., et al. Electronic business machines: A new tool for management . Boston: n.p, June 1953. 4 o. Text diagrams. Original printed wrappers, cloth spine. Boxed. PROBABLY THE FIRST PUBLISHED INDEPENDENT REPORT WRITTEN BY PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE COMPUTER INDUSTRY ON THE APPLICATION OF ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS TO BUSINESS NEEDS. When this report was published no electronic digital computer had been delivered to an American corporation (the first UNIVAC I delivered to a private rather than governmental customer was serial number 8, delivered to General Electric in 1954). In England the Leo I adaptation of EDSAC had been operational at J. Lyons and Company since November 1951. The first large general-purpose computers such as the ENIAC and the EDVAC were originally developed for scientific and engineering applications; the report discusses the necessity of modifying both computers and business procedures to take advantage of the great computing power and speed offered by the new machines. Chapter VI, titled "Business machines in 1970," attempts to predict the future evolution of business machines "as they relate to manufacturing companies, department stores, insurance companies, banks and public utilities" (p. 37). Written by a group of seven Harvard Business School students, the report was prepared "in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the second-year course in Manufacturing at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration." From Gutenberg to the Internet 10.4; OOC 428.