Chapter 1927 - Basic Theory

The reason for choosing "Cultural" over "Flying Fish" was that the project team had already spent considerable time on the Curta and accumulated some valuable experience. Compared to the keyboard-style "Flying Fish," imitating "Cultural" seemed somewhat easier.

The main components of the lever-style hand-cranked computer included left and right digit dials, actuator, carry mechanism, stepped drum, counter, shift mechanism, and check mechanism. The manufacturing difficulties still lay in the material strength of mechanisms like the carry, counter, and shift components. Sometimes the setting levers, teeth, and tooth plates wore excessively. Sometimes the torsion springs and compression spring sheets lacked sufficient elasticity. Sometimes the eleven-tooth gear tolerances were too large, leading to problems like number skipping, dragging, or half-numbers. The lifespan of individual components was only about ten thousand cycles. The solution could only be frequent oiling and parts replacement.

Fortunately, the volume and weight were actually smaller than the scaled-up Curta version, and the lifespan was more durable. After all, the mechanical structure was simpler—though not as exquisite, it had the advantage of simple durability. A few samples had been produced, but they were still undergoing repeated testing and improvement.

Most Elders had actually brought enough calculators, and the manual computing tasks of the Computing Center's Human Group rarely utilized hand-cranked computers. The demand for these devices wasn't originally very urgent. Relevant design, manufacturing, and testing personnel, including Elders, were frequently borrowed by other projects, so the overall efficiency of the project remained low.

However, the project received overt or covert support from the Steampunk Group led by the Governor as their spiritual leader, so it had remained in a "research and development" state—a famous fishing project in the mechanical industry sector.

However, with the expansion of occupied territories—especially as the future controlled area would expand to include Guangdong and Guangxi—local governments could no longer continue the "Central Government covers all" system used in Hainan and Taiwan. Various fiscal, tax, and statistical tasks had been performed by dispatched teams from the Administration Council. Whether in Hainan, Taiwan, or Jeju, the economic scale and population density were relatively low, calculation volumes weren't large, and basic statistics and analysis could be completed relying on very few modern devices.

But now, starting from Guangzhou Special Municipality, every locality needed to establish its own fiscal, tax, and statistical institutions, and the demand for calculation suddenly exploded. So the progress of the hand-cranked computer project suddenly accelerated.

Feng Nuo visited the hand-cranked computer imitation project once. He had to admit he really couldn't contribute much—basically, anyone who didn't understand benchwork was useless. Feng Shan, on the other hand, occasionally took students to the Human Computing Center to visit the few existing "miracles of Senate wisdom" and periodically gave practical lessons on hand-cranked computers to students of the electrical calculation training class at the vocational technical school.

It seemed he had to put effort into other aspects. Feng Nuo carefully considered where his professional advantage actually lay. He opened his notebook and started browsing old forum posts. After a while, the words "punched card" appeared in a corner of an article. Feng Nuo's eyes lit up. He faintly felt he had grasped a breakthrough point.

Next, he researched extensively and flipped through past issues of Nature and Science, gradually forming a preliminary plan in his mind.

Troops and horses have not moved; fodder and provisions go first. Having navigated the Senate for so long, Feng Nuo clearly understood the basic principle of preparing public opinion before taking action. He spent several nights using scissors, paste, and original writing to craft two articles. One was "From the 1890 US Census to the Rise of IBM—A Brief Discussion on the Historical Contribution of Mechanical Computers," and the other was "Three Basic Components of 'Analytical Computers' and the Origin of General Computer Architecture."

The first article naturally extolled the glorious history of mechanical computers, but the focus was to elevate the status of punched card computer systems while diminishing hand-cranked computers.

"...Undoubtedly, compared to manual information processing, the combination of cards plus mechanical processors is far more advanced, with very obvious advantages in numerical computation. As for complex work like file classification processing, mechanical computers can crush the most diligent administrators. In 1890, computers showed their power for the first time. That year's US census information was ultimately summarized and processed by a punched card programmable computer originating from Babbage, completing the entire task in six weeks. In contrast, the previous 1880 census took seven years to process all data, resulting in final data that was completely obsolete. This victory marked the arrival of the computer age. With the invention of internal combustion engines and electric motors and the progress of mechanical industry, mechanical computers covered even more fields.

"By the mid-20th century, IBM, established in 1911, was already producing mechanical computers on a scale of thousands per year to process billions of card records. Strengthened by relays, a new generation of computers using precision hydraulic components forming calculation units was about to hit the market, capable of performing hundreds of basic operations per second..."

First, invoke the Governor's authority to support his position. Of course, the part about mechanical computers quickly being surpassed by ENIAC would be conveniently omitted.

Next, Feng Nuo cited several examples of business tabulating machines operating in the US government and enterprises, finally writing:

"In our era, computer applications arguably divide into eight fields: scientific computing and data processing, industrial control and real-time control, office automation and management information systems, computer-aided design/manufacturing (CAD/CAM), internet and communications, multimedia, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Among them, the first three application fields gained broad recognition in government, enterprises, and academic institutions back in the mechanical age."

"The origin of computers was certainly for rapid and effective calculation. However, even in the mechanical computer era, scientific computing was merely a part of computer applications. What truly caused computers to flourish and become widely known was their important applications in data processing, industrial control, and office automation. This is what the Senate must carefully consider in computer industry planning.

"This is because, compared to business applications like data processing, scientific computing differs less in the method of processing than in the relationship between the quantity of data material to be processed and the quantity of operations to be performed on that data material.

"When computers are used in research fields like aerospace, mechanics, meteorology, and nuclear physics, they utilize relatively small amounts of data material, but to obtain answers, thousands upon thousands of operations need to be performed on these data. Relatively little data and massive calculation is typical scientific computing.

"In contrast, in commercial, industrial, and social applications, we often have massive data materials but only need to perform a relatively small number of operations, such as census and statistics, wage calculation and distribution. This is typical business-natured data processing.

"As for simple logarithmic or trigonometric function calculations, the slide rule is still a relatively good choice."

"Scientific computing might solve harder problems, but business data processing solves more problems. This is the difference between MATLAB and Excel. A few sets of MATLAB are sufficient, and our existing equipment can still be used for decades. Whereas the demand for Excel is endless, yet we cannot divide the data processing power of personal laptops into thousands of shares. Which is more urgent is self-evident."

This metaphor was effective. Most Elders could probably understand it. Feng Nuo was quite satisfied. He then wrote bluntly:

"Obviously, before the 1970s, mechanical computers not only completed massive calculation tasks for science and engineering but, more importantly, effectively supported social and commercial progress in business processing and office automation. They were a necessary prerequisite for the prosperous development of large and super-large enterprises. The needs appearing in data statistics and analysis, industrial control, and similar fields—such as 'stored program,' 'instruction controller,' 'input/output,' 'data representation,' 'data carrier,' 'logical operation'—are the key concepts that ultimately formed the general computer architecture and are the true origin of modern computers. Hand-cranked or electric mechanical calculators are merely the embryonic form of the arithmetic unit within this massive architecture."

"Ultimately, it was IBM, not some exquisite hand-cranked calculator manufacturer, that rose as the giant of computer manufacturing. This is undoubtedly the best footnote to this conclusion."

This article was naturally destined for Weekly Developments.

The second article was intended for Nature and Science, focusing on elucidating the various components of the punched card computer system. First, it had to echo the article in Weekly Developments. Second, it had to demonstrate his technical ability and professional background. Third, it had to imply that the mechanical design and manufacturing difficulty of punched card computers was actually less than that of hand-cranked calculators.

"Sets of machine equipment used to calculate large amounts of data material, formerly called 'analytical computers,' are widely used in government departments and large enterprises with data statistics and repetitive business processing needs. Their most obvious feature is the use of punched cards as data carriers. Every 'punched card computer' set includes several machines with different uses. By function, they can be divided into three main categories: Category 1 comprises machines truly used for grouping, summarizing, and calculating, generally called basic machines or main machines, such as sorters and tabulators (accounting machines). Category 2 comprises machines that prepare for all grouping, summarizing, calculating, and printing work, generally called auxiliary machines or accessory machines, including punches (keypunches), verifiers, etc. Category 3 also comprises auxiliary machines, but designed for certain specialized business applications and only used to complete specific additional operations during the machine summarization process, called special performance equipment, including reproducers, collators, interpreters, etc."

"Punched card computers rely on mechanical design and transmission as programs, relying on mechanical mechanisms and punched cards to temporarily register or permanently store information. Depending on the format of the punched card, they are also divided into different models. Although later punched card computers mostly adopted electromagnetic power and control mechanisms, they remained mechanical computers in essence, or 'electromechanical computers,' capable of being designed not only as fully mechanical structure schemes but also operating via human, animal, or even steam engine power."

(End of Chapter)