Masculinity in “A View from the Bridge” Essay

Arthur Miller wrote this play in 1955. He has written many other plays including All My Sons, which was a success at Broadway. Miller was born in 1915, in New York City, but both his parent had emigrated to the US. This play revolves around emigration, so Miller has had a lot of personal experience. This play is based in the late 1940’s, just after the Second World War, when many people were emigrating to the US, looking for a better life. In the play, which is located in Brooklyn, which is a community full of dockworkers, we have a picture of Eddie, Beatrice and Catherine’s lives when Rodolfo and Marco illegally emigrate to the US from Italy. When Catherine (Eddie’s niece) falls in love with Rodolfo, Eddie loses his cool, and reports Marco and Rodolfo to immigration. The drama ends with the death of Eddie, as he tried to kill Marco; Marco turned the knife, and stabbed Eddie. There are three leading male characters in the play; Eddie, Rodolfo and Marco, and each of them play different roles and have different types of roles. The first of these men we meet is Eddie. The first impression of any character is very important, and the first impression we get of Eddie is that he is a real family person. He talks very complimentarily towards Catherine, â€Å"Beautiful! Turn, around, lemme see in the back. Oh if your mother was alive to see you now! She wouldn’t believe it.† This gives the reader the impression that he is a family person, who is close to his niece. Then when he hears that Beatrice (his wife) is cousins have arrived he tells her â€Å"Don’t worry about it B., there’s nothin’ to it. Couple of hours and they’ll be here.† This gives us the impression that he is also very caring towards B’s family, even though they come in illegally. This also enhances the impression that he is a family man. We are made to believe generally that he’s a good man, who values his family very high. When we hear that Catherine has got a job, she wanted to ask Eddie if it was all right with him if she took it. This shows us that he has a lot of status in the house. If he hadn’t any status, Catherine would have gone  behind his back, and wouldn’t have asked permission. Eddie then replied by saying â€Å"Sure she’s the best.† This shows us that he cares for his family and wants the best for his niece. A little later we hear from a lawyer called Alfieri. We are believed to trust him because of his wisdom, and position in the community. He is the voice of the community. He then tells his thoughts towards Eddie. â€Å"He was a good man as he had to be in a life that was hard and even.† The important word here is â€Å"was†, this shows us that Eddie’s personality is on the verge of changing. When we are introduced to Rodolfo and Marco, there is a huge difference between them, first there is their appearance. The impression that we get of Marco is that he’s a strong man, and is focused, because Miller describes him as â€Å"Square-built peasant of thirty-two, suspicious, tender and quiet voiced.† when he is first introduced. This gives us the impression that he is a very quiet person, but his awareness is very good, he is very alert of what’s around him. During the first scene where he’s introduced, when he talks it’s usually very short answers, e.g. â€Å"Thank you† and â€Å"Are you my cousin?† On the other hand, Rodolfo’s manliness is totally different to Eddie’s and Marco’s. Rodolfo is an extremely attractive young man, who is very sensitive. Where Eddie and Marco are much more macho than Rodolfo, unlike Eddie and Marco, Rodolfo sees sewing, cooking and singing as manly. We are made to believe that Rodolfo is quiet intelligent, because the language he uses is very flowery, â€Å"The horses in our town are skinnier than goats.† One of the most notable features that Rodolfo has is his â€Å"so blond† hair. Immediately Eddie goes on the defence, and say’s that is hair is like a â€Å"chorus girl or sump’m.† Then Eddie goes on to imply that he dyes his hair, which in Eddie’s eyes is unacceptable. Without ever saying it, Eddie’s implying that Rodolfo is gay. Another factor that goes against Rodolfo is that he is a very keen singer, and we hear his version of â€Å"Paper Doll†, and in Eddie’s eyes, only homosexuals sing. Due to the difference in physique between both characters, it was inevitable that they wouldn’t be able to work effectively. Marco is full of muscle, so he is adapted very well to work in a shipyard, but because of his slight physique, Rodolfo is not as well adapted. In my view, he would have been much better in the entertainment business, because he is a natural joke teller. However, Eddie tells Rodolfo that â€Å"But as long as you owe them money, they’ll get you plenty of work† that tells us that there are plenty of work in the docks, and Rodolfo is very clever and takes the work just to get some money in. This shows us that Rodolfo has a good brain, and is more concerned so he can get some money in to establish himself as an American. After coming home from work, Eddie goes on the attack, and undermines Rodolfo’s work rate, because he hasn’t taken at all to Rodolfo, He doesn’t see things like sewing, cooking and singing as manly. First of all he complains that â€Å"he sings.† Eddie is very embarrassed of this, because many of his friend e.g. Louis work there, and knowing that Eddie gives a roof to the â€Å"Canary† might under mind his street cred, because it’s like Rodolfo’s giving out â€Å"regular free shows†. Even at home Rodolfo sings, and this really goes under Eddie’s skin, as he says â€Å"if you came in the house and you didn’t †¦ know who was singin’, you wouldn’t be lookin for him you be lookin’ for her.† This shows us that Rodolfo isn’t shy about singing. He wants to make the most of his magical voice. Nevertheless, Eddie realises if someone was to come to the house, to ask, â€Å"who was singing?† he would be extremely embarrassed to say it was a man’s voice. This is extremely ironic, because most of the famous Italian singers are tenors. Although by now a man singing tenor is totally acceptable, back in the time that this play was written, people were less sophisticated, and in my opinion much more prepared to stereotype people. Although Eddie isn’t the biggest fan of Rodolfo, we learn at the end of the first act that Rodolfo is the kind of man that Beatrice and Catherine are looking for. When Marco says that â€Å"everybody gets fat† when Rodolfo’s cooking, Eddie tries to make this count against Rodolfo, but the girls see  through this. Catherine then goes on to glorify the fact that he could cook, and say’s that â€Å"all the big hotels (chefs) are men†. This shows that she thinks that there’s different ways to be a man, either through cooking or dancing. Straight afterwards, in my opinion Eddie feels very vulnerable because two men have arrived, and he’s afraid he would be toppled as king of the castle. So Eddie goes out to win some honour back, and tries to humiliate Rodolfo and Marco. His first target was Rodolfo. He went for one of Rodolfo’s weaknesses, in his opinion his manliness; he isn’t strong enough in Eddie’s view so he decides to teach Rodolfo how to box. Eddie encouraged Rodolfo to â€Å"put sump’m behind it, you can’t hurt me.† and â€Å"Come on show me! What’re you gonna be? Show me!† In my view, Eddie is trying to show that he’s a better and stronger man than Rodolfo; he wants to prove to Beatrice and Catherine, that Rodolfo isn’t the man they think he is. Just to rub the salt into the wound, Eddie â€Å"feints with his right and lands with his right.† Afterwards he asks Rodolfo â€Å"Did I hurt you?† In my opinion, Eddie is waiting for Rodolfo to reply â€Å"Yes†, so Catherine and Beatrice sees such a weak person he is, but Rodolfo replies â€Å"No, no.† This shows the toughness that belongs to Rodolfo that we haven’t seen before in the play. This shows the reader that Eddie hasn’t succeeded in humiliating Rodolfo, but rather he succeeded to humiliate himself. Just to make the situation worse for Eddie, Rodolfo and Catherine continue with their lives and go to dance, they didn’t dwindle on the situation. After seeing his younger brother being treated so horrid by Eddie, Marco decides to challenge Eddie’s masculinity, and bring him back down to earth with a bang. All Marco asked is â€Å"can you lift this chair?† It sounds like a pretty easy thing to do. When Eddie went down on his knees to pick it up, he fails. â€Å"He tries again, and again fails.† Then when Marco goes down to pick it up, he â€Å"raises the chair over his head.† He raised the chair as it was a weapon, and as a word of warning to Eddie. This shows us that Marco is looking after his close family, and wants to make sure that nobody gets the better of them. This lift was more of a warning to Eddie not to mess with Rodolfo, than anything else in my opinion. He did this as his felt  quite a strong responsibility towards Rodolfo. This is a clear sign that Marco is looking for justice, and he isn’t as quiet a character as Miller first portrays him. This is a clear similarity between Marco and Eddie, because both want to protect their families. Although Mike does portray him as a â€Å"regular bull†, that shows that Marco’s strength has been seen through out the community. Catherine is extremely important to the whole plot of the drama, because it’s because of her that the entire feud between Eddie and Rodolfo has erupted. At the beginning of the play we get the idea that Eddie’s extremely protective towards Catherine because he says â€Å"I promised your mother in her deathbed. I’m responsible for you.† At this point we get the idea that Eddie’s like any other caring uncle, but as the drama unfolds, we are made to think that Eddie’s is becoming overly attached to Catherine. When Eddie learns that Rodolfo has extremely strong feelings towards Catherine, he quickly tries to distance Catherine away from him, by saying that â€Å"He don’t respect you.† This is a cry of a desperate man, it’s as if he doesn’t want her to grow up, this is a very strong weakness of Eddies. We learn earlier on in the play that Eddie isn’t a good husband, because Beatrice asks, â€Å"When am I gonna be a wife again, Eddie?† I think that Eddie is confused with the state of his relationship with Catherine as she’s growing up, and because of this it’s stopping him from completing his duties with Beatrice. When Rodolfo sing or dances with Catherine, the song â€Å"Paper Doll† is often used e.g. When Rodolfo tells Catherine to â€Å"Dance† the phonograph â€Å"plays ‘Paper Doll’†. In my opinion this is a very clever use of song because it describes the nature of Rodolfo, he like a news paper. First of all Rodolfo isn’t extremely strong, nor is paper. One of the similarities between Marco and Eddie’s that they’re both very strong. Also you can read Rodolfo’s thoughts by looking at his face, just as if you’re reading a newspaper. One of the differences between Eddie and Marco is that Marco cares for his wife. In my opinion, to be a good man you must look after your wife. Where Eddie forgets to do his duties in bed, Marco sends some of the money he has  won back to his family in Italy, so they can have a better life. As I’ve said, both men want to look after their families, but both do this is different ways. Marco is prepared to leave his family to earn money, whereas Eddie hangs on to his family too tight in my opinion. One of the turning points is the drama, is when Eddie goes around kissing everybody. When Eddie sees Rodolfo and Catherine together, Eddie â€Å"suddenly, draws her to him, and as she strives to free herself he kisses her on the lips.† This is Eddie getting what he wants, that is Catherine, because we know that Eddie doesn’t want Beatrice. Although Eddie gets Catherine in a very brutal way, it shows his dominance in the house. Not just content with this, â€Å"Eddie pins (Rodolfo’s) arms, laughing, and suddenly kisses him.† This is a rather odd gesture, because many times during the play Eddie describes Rodolfo as â€Å"The guy ain’t right.† He uses it many times either because he feels that this is true, or even because he is trying to convince himself that this is right. This kiss doesn’t follow with Eddie’s behaviour during the rest of the play, because by kissing him, he brings himself down to the same masculinity as gays. During the end we learn a lot about the characters real thoughts and feelings, and what sort of men they really are. There is a lot of discussion during the play, asking is Rodolfo just looking after himself, by wanting to marry an American. This is thrown more into doubt when Catherine asks him telling him â€Å"Suppose I wanted to live in Italy. At first he tries to push away the idea by replying â€Å"Forever?† At this point you start to believe that he’s a selfish little Italian that just wants to be an American. But then he goes on and says that â€Å"there’s nothing†¦I would be a criminal stealing your face†. This tells us that he’s as caring as Marco, he only wants the best for Catherine, and that all of Eddie’s doubts seem wrong. As the plot unfolds, Eddie’s masculinity seems to grow weaker and weaker. He has finally cracked when he â€Å"wants to report something†. Illegal immigrants. Two of them.† This shows us that Eddie has finally gone for  the big one. He isn’t enough of a man to throw Rodolpho and Marco on to the street; he phones to get others to do his dirty work. This is a sign of a coward. Although he thinks it’s the right thing to do, because he is protecting Catherine. After two officials catch the illegal immigrants, â€Å"Marco suddenly breaks from the group and dashes into the room and faces Eddie†. This shows us that Marco is a growing threat during this play. He’s becoming more and more important as the plot unfolds. By standing up to Eddie it shows that he’s ready to match him. But instead of attacking him verbally or physically, he â€Å"spits into Eddie’s face†. This is the point where Eddie loses all his dignity and manliness. The Italian community in Brooklyn is extremely close together, and they watch out for each other, and having one of their own betraying them is a sin, so Eddie will be looked down at now by the rest of the community. Not even Louis, one of Eddie’s close friends turn around to look at him when Eddie shouts, â€Å"Louis! Louis!† Even Catherine his own niece says that â€Å"he bites people when they sleep!† This shows us now that nobody will ever be able to trust him again, not even his own family. Just to rub the salt into the wound, Marco shouts, â€Å"That one! He killed my children! That one stole the food from my children!† This shows that the relationship between Eddie and Marco has hit an all time low. This also throws away the scraps of dignity that Eddie had left. It also enhances the fact that Marco is a loving father, who’s desperate to help his family back in Italy. In the very last scene, we start by seeing Catherine one again stealing his manliness away from him, by saying that â€Å"he’s a rat! He belongs in the sewers!† This shows us by now, not even his closest family can bear to be close to him after the unforgivable sin that he’s done. Only one character keeps faith in Eddie, and that’s Beatrice. She ironically stands by him all the time. But when Eddie sees Marco, he loses his mind, and starts to attack him verbally and physically. Eddie is blind to the fact that he is wrong, he isn’t enough of a man to face up to the fact, so he Marco to tell the people  that â€Å"what a liar you are!† This shows that Eddie is confident that he can have one successful blow at Marco, but he is wrong. Marco attacks back by calling Eddie an â€Å"†Animal! You go on your knees to me!†!† And he does this twice. This is one of the worst insults that a man in that time could call another. It shows us that Eddie is below the level of dignity shown by human beings, and is down there in the dumps, and by going on his knees shows that he’s at the same level as animals. Then both of them get ready to fight. Eddie at this point has nothing to lose, so he takes out a knife and at this point and â€Å"Louis (Eddie’s friend) halts and steps back from trying to stop the fight. This shows the power and status Eddie has just won by cheating. But in the end, Eddie had no chance of beating Marco, due to his strength. Marco managed to turn the blade around and stabbed Eddie. Eddie died, as a cheat, but he regains some dignity as he dies in Beatrice’s arms. This shows although all the horrid remarks and actions Eddie has made, Beatrice is there until the very end. Marco’s manliness during the play just grows and grows until this climax. Without a doubt, Miller has many different views on masculinity. You have Eddie and Marco, who are two extremely strong men, and you have Rodolfo, who is extremely keen on more feminine activates. In my opinion, there isn’t a lot of difference between these. All three are men in their different ways, but one thing in my view is a must is respect. And Eddie had lost it, all of it by the end. He used to be the king of the household before Marco and Rodolfo came along, and during that time, he was losing his respect due to the treatment he gave them, an example of this is when Eddie phoned the immigration office. In my opinion, Eddie knew he was losing respect from Beatrice because he demanded her â€Å"I want my respect, Beatrice.† This shows us that he worries what people think of him.

History of Digital Computer

The History of Digital Computers B. RANDELL Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne This account describes the history of the development of digital computers, from the work of Charles Babbage to the earliest electronic stored program computers, It has been prepared for Volume 3 of â€Å"l’Histoire Generale des Techniques,† and is in the main based on the introductory text written by the author for the book â€Å"The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers† (Springer Verlag, 1973). . Charles Babbage THE first electronic digital computers were completed in the late 1940’s. In most cases their developers were unaware that nearly all the important functional characteristics of these computers had been invented over a hundred years earlier by Charles Babbage. It was in 1821 that the English mathematician Charles Babbage became interested in the possibility of mechanising the computation and printing of mathematical tables.He successfully constructed a small machine, which he called a â€Å"difference engine,† capable of automatically generating successive values of simple algebraic functions by means of the method of finite differences. This encouraged him to plan a full-scale machine, and to seek financial backing from the British government. During the next 12 years both Babbage and the government poured considerable sums of money into the attempt at building his Difference Engine.However the project, which called for the construction of six interlinked adding mechanisms, each capable of adding two multiple-digit decimal numbers, together with an automatic printing mechanism, was considerably beyond the technological capabilities of the era – indeed it has been claimed that the efforts expended on the Difference Engine were more than justified simply by the improvements they generated in mechanical engineering equipment and practice.Although Babbage’s plans for a Difference Engine were somewha t premature, the basic scheme was vindicated when in 1843, inspired by their knowledge of his work, George and Edvard Scheutz successfully demonstrated a working prototype difference engine. A final version of this model was completed 10 years later, with financial assistance from the Swedish government. Several other difference engines ere constructed in the decades that followed, but such machines never achieved the importance of more conventional calculating machines, and when multi-register accounting machines became available in the 1920’s it was found that these could be used essentially as difference engines. However Babbage’s ideas soon progressed far beyond that of a special-purpose calculating machine – in fact almost as soon as he started work on his Difference Engine he became dissatisfied with its limitations.In particular he wished to avoid the need to have the highest order of difference constant, in order to be able to use the machine directly fo r transcendental as well as algebraic functions. In 1834 Babbage started active work on these matters, and on problems such as division and the need to speed up the part of the addition mechanism which dealt with the assimilation of carry digits. He developed several very ingenious methods of carry assimilation, but the time savings so obtainable would have been at the cost of a considerable amount of complex machinery.This led Babbage to realise the advantages of having a single centralised arithmetic mechanism, the â€Å"mill,† separate from the â€Å"figure axes,† i. e. , columns of discs which acted merely as storage locations rather than accumulators. Babbage’s first idea for controlling the sequencing of the various component mechanisms of the engine was to use â€Å"barrels,† i. e. , rotating pegged cylinders of the sort used in musical automata. He first planned to use a set of subsidiary barrels, with over-all control of the machine being specifi ed by a large central barrel with exchangeable pegs.However in June 1836 he took the major step of adopting a punched card mechanism, of the kind found in Jacquard looms, in place of the rather limited and cumbersome central barrel. He did so in the realisation that the â€Å"formulae† which specified the computation that the machine was to perform could therefore be of almost unbounded extent, and that it would be a simple matter to change from the use of one formula to another.Normally formula cards, each specifying an arithmetic operation to be performed, were to be read by the Jacquard mechanism in sequence, but Babbage also envisaged means whereby this sequence could be broken and then recommenced at an earlier or later card in the sequence. Moreover he allowed the choice of the next card which was to be used to be influenced by the partial results that the machine had obtained.These provisions allowed him to claim that computations of indefinite complexity could be perf ormed under the control of comparatively small sets of formula cards. Babbage talked at one time of having a store consisting of no less than 1000 figure axes, each capable of holding a signed 40-digit decimal number, and planned to provide for reading numbers from cards into the store, and for punching or printing the values of numbers held in the store.The movement of numbers between the mill and the store was to be controlled by a sequence of â€Å"variable cards,† each specifying which particular figure axis was involved. Therefore an arithmetic operation whose operands were to be obtained from the store and whose result was to be returned to the store would be specified by an operation card and several variable cards. He apparently intended these different kinds of control cards to be in separate sequences, read by separate Jacquard mechanisms.Thus in the space of perhaps 3 years Babbage had arrived at the concept of a general purpose digital computer consisting of a sto re, arithmetic unit, punched card input and output, and a card-controlled sequencing mechanism that provided iteration and conditional branching. Moreover although he continued to regard the machine, which he later came to call the Analytical Engine, as being principally for the construction of mathematical tables, he had a very clear grasp of the conceptual advances he had made.Basing his claim on the unbounded number of operation and variable cards that could be used to control the machine, the ease with which complicated conditional branches could be built from a sequence of simple ones, and the fact that automatic input and output, and multiple precision arithmetic, were provided, he stated that â€Å". . . it appears that the whole of the conditions which enable a finite machine to make calculations of unlimited extent are fulfilled in the Analytical Engine . . . . I have converted the infinity of space, which was required by the conditions of the problem, into the infinity of time. Because separate, but associated, sequences of cards were needed to control the Analytical Engine the concept of a program as we know it now does not appear very c1early in contemporary descriptions of the machine. However there is evidence that Babbage had realised the fact that the information punched on the cards which controlled the engine could itself have been manipulated by an automatic machine-for example he suggested the possibility of the Analytical Engine itself being used to assist in the preparation of lengthy sequences of control cards.Indeed in the description of the use of the Analytical Engine written by Lady Lovelace, in collaboration with Babbage, there are passages which would appear to indicate that it had been realised that an Analytical Engine was fully capable of manipulating symbolic as well as arithmetical quantities. Probably Babbage himself realised that the complete Analytical Engine was impractical to build, but he spent much of the rest of his l ife designing and redesigning mechanisms for the machine.The realisation of his dream had to await the development of a totally new technology, and an era when the considerable finances and facilities required for an automatic computer would be made available, the need at last being widely enough appreciated. He was a century ahead of his time, for as one of the pioneers of the modern electronic digital computer has written: â€Å"Babbage was moving in a world of logical design and system architecture, and was familiar with and had solutions for problems that were not to be discussed in the literature for another 100 years. †He died in 1871, leaving an immense collection of engineering drawings and documents, but merely a small portion of the Analytical Engine, consisting of an addition and a printing mechanism, whose assembly was completed by his son, Henry Babbage. This machine and Babbage’s engineering drawings are now in the Science Museum, London. 2. Babbageâ€⠄¢s direct successors Some years’ after Babbage’s death his son Henry Babbage recommenced work on the construction of a mechanical calculating machine, basing his efforts on the designs his father had made for the Mill of the Analytical Engine.This work was started in 1888 and carried on very intermittently. It was completed only in about 1910 when the Mill, which incorporated a printing mechanism, was demonstrated at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. By this date however the work of a little-known successor to Charles Babbage, an Irish accountant named Percy Ludgate, was already well advanced. Ludgate started work in 1903 at the age of 20 on an entirely novel scheme for performing arithmetic on decimal numbers.Decimal digits were to be represented by the lateral position of a sliding metal rod, rather than the angular position of a geared disc. The basic operation provided was multiplication, which used a complicated mechanism for calculating the two-digit products resulting from multiplying pairs of decimal digits. together. The scheme involved first transforming the digits into a form of logarithm, adding the logarithms together, and then converting the result back into a two-digit sum.This scheme is quite unlike any known to have been used in earlier mechanical calculators, or for that matter since, although there had been several calculating machines constructed that used built-in multiplication tables to obtain two-digit products – the earliest known of these was that invented by Bollee in 1887. It is in fact difficult to see any advantages to Ludgate’s logarithmic scheme, although his form of number representation is reminiscent of that used in various mechanical calculating devices in the following decades.So striking are the differences between Ludgate’s and Babbage’s ideas for mechanical arithmetic that there is no reason to dispute Ludgate’s statement that he did not learn of Babbageâ€℠¢s prior work until the later stages of his own. It seems likely that Babbage was the eventual inspiration for Ludgate to investigate the provision of a sequence control mechanism. Here he made an advance over the rather awkward system that Babbage had planned, involving separate sets of operation and variable cards.Instead his machine was to have been controlled by a single perforated paper tape, each row of which represented an instruction consisting of an operation code and four address fields. Control transfers simply involved moving the tape the appropriate number of rows forwards or backwards. Moreover he also envisaged the provision of what we would now call subroutines, represented by sequences of perforations around the circumference of special cylinders-one such cylinder was to be provided The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications 2 for division.The machine was also to be controllable from a keyboard, a byproduct of whose operation would be a perforated tape which could then be used to enable the sequence of manually controlled operations to be repeated automatically. Ludgate estimated that his Analytical Machine would be capable of multiplying two twenty-digit numbers in about 10 seconds, and that, in considerable contrast to Babbage’s Analytical Engine, it would be portable. However there is no evidence that he ever tried to construct the machine, which he apparently worked on alone, in his spare time.He died in 1922, and even if at this time his plans for the Analytical Machine still existed there is now no trace of them, and our knowledge of the machine depends almost entirely on the one description of it that he published. The next person who is known to have followed in the footsteps of Babbage and to have worked on the problems of designing an analytical engine was Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. Torres was born in the province of Santander in Spain in 1852.Although qualified as a civil engineer he devoted his career to scientific re search, and in particular to the design and construction of an astonishing variety of calculating devices and automata. He gained great renown, particularly in France and in Spain, where he became President of the Academy of Sciences of Madrid, and where following his death in 1936 an institute for scientific research was named after him. Torres first worked on analog calculating devices, including equation solvers and integrators.In the early 1900’s he built various radio-controlled devices, including a torpedo and a boat which, according to the number of pulses it received, could select between various rudder positions and speeds, and cause a flag to be run up and down a mast. In 1911 he made and successfully demonstrated the first of two chess-playing automata for the end game of king and rook against king. The machine was fully automatic, with electrical sensing of the positions of the pieces on the board and a mechanical arm to move its own pieces. The second machine was built in 1922, and used magnets underneath the board to move the pieces. ) In all this work, he was deliberately exploiting the new facilities that electromechanical techniques offered, and challenging accepted ideas as to the limitations of machines. He picked on Babbage’s Analytical Engine as an important and interesting technical challenge, and in 1914 published a paper incorporating detailed schematic designs for a suitable set of electro-mechanical components.These included devices for storing, comparing and multiplying numbers, and were accompanied by a discussion of what is now called floating point number representation. He demonstrated the use of the devices in a design for a special-purpose program-controlled calculator. The program was to be represented by areas of conductive material placed on the surface of a rotating drum, and incorporated a means for specifying conditional branching. Torres clearly never intended to construct a machine to his design, but 6 yea rs later he built, and successfully demonstrated, a typewriter-controlled calculating machine primarily to demonstrate that an electromechanical analytical engine was completely feasible. He in fact never did build an analytical engine, although he designed, and in many cases built, various other digital devices including two more calculating machines, an automatic weighing machine, and a machine for playing a game somewhat like the game of Nim. However there seems little reason to doubt that, should the need have been sufficiently pressing, Torres would indeed have built a complete analytical engine.In the event, it was not until the 1939-1945 war that the desirability of largescale fully automatic calculating machines became so clear that the necessary environment was created for Babbage’s concept to become a reality. Before this occurred there is known to have been at least one further effort at designing an analytical engine. This was by a Frenchman, Louis Couffignal, who was motivated mainly by a desire to reduce the incidence of errors in numerical computations.He was familiar with the work of Babbage and Torres y Quevedo but, in contrast to their designs, proposed to use binary number representation. The binary digits of stored numbers were to be represented by the lateral position of a set of parallel bars controlled by electro-magnets. The various arithmetic operations were to be performed by relay networks, the whole machine being controlled by perforated tapes. Couffignal apparently had every intention of building this machine, in association with the Logabax Company, but presumably because of the war never did so.However after the war he was in charge of an electronic computer project for the Institut Blaise Pascal, the design study and construction of the machine being in the hands of the Logabax Company. With Couffignal’s pre-war plans, the line of direct succession to Babbage’s Analytical Engine seems to have come to an end. Most of the wartime computer projects were apparently carried out in ignorance of the extent to which many of the problems that had to be dealt with had been tackled by Babbage over a century earlier. However in some cases there is clear evidence that nowledge of Babbage’s work was an influence on the wartime pioneers, in particular Howard Aiken, originator of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, and William Phillips, an early proponent of binary calculation, and various other influential people, including Vannevar Bush and L. J. Comrie, were also well aware of his dream. 3. The contribution of the punched card industry An initially quite separate thread of activity leading to the development of the modern computer originated with the invention of the punched card tabulating system.The capabilities of Herman Hollerith’s equipment, first used on a large scale for the 1890 US National Census, were soon extended considerably. The original equipment allowed cards to hold binary information representing the answers to a Census questionnaire. These cards could be tabulated, one by one, using a machine which sensed the presence of holes in the card electrically and could be wired to count the number of cards processed in which particular holes or combinations of holes had been punched. A device could be attached to such a tabulator which assisted the manual sorting of cards into a number of separate sequences.Within 10 years automatic card handling mechanisms, which greatly increased the speed of machine operation, and addition units, which enabled card tabulators to sum decimal numbers punched on cards, had been provided. The system soon came into widespread use in the accounting departments of various commercial organisations, as well as being used for statistical tabulations in many countries of the world. After the 1900 US Census relations between Hollerith and the Census Bureau deteriorated, and the Bureau began to manufacture its own equ ipment for use in the 1910 Census.The person in charge of this work was James Powers who circumvented Hollerith’s patents by producing a mechanical card reading apparatus. He retained the patent rights to his inventions and formed his own company which eventually merged with Remington Rand in 1927. In 1911 Hollerith sold his own company, the Tabulating Machine Company, which he had formed in 1896, and it was shortly afterwards merged with two other companies to form the Computing-TabulatingRecording Company. This company which was under the direction of Thomas J.Watson from 1914 became the International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. During the 1920’s and 1930’s punched card systems developed steadily, aided no doubt by the stimulus of competition, not only in the USA but also in Britain, where the Hollerith and Powers-based systems continued to be marketed under the names of their original inventors, while in France a third manufacturer, Compagnie Machi nes Bull, was also active. Unfortunately the people involved in this work did not in general publish technical papers and their work has received little public recognition.Thus full appreciation of the contribution of IBM development engineers, such as J. W. Bryce, one of the most prolific inventors of his era, will probably have to await an analysis of the patent literature. One inventor whose work has, however, been documented is Gustav Tauschek, a self-taught Viennese engineer, with more than 200 patents in the computing field to his credit. While working for Rheinische Metallund Maschinenfabrik he designed and built a punched card electromechanical accounting machine.His other patents, many of which were filed whilst he was under contract to IBM during the 1930’s, also included a â€Å"reading-writing-calculating machine† which used photocells to compare printed input characters with templates held on photographic film, a number storage device using magnetised stee l plates, and an electromechanical accounting machine designed for use in small banks capable of storing the records of up to 10 000 accounts. By the 1930’s printing tabulators were available which worked at approximately 100 cards per minute, and there were sorters which worked at 400 cards per minute.The machines were controlled by fairly intricate plugboards, but arithmetic and logical computations involving sequences of operations of any great complexity were carried out by repeated processing of sets of cards, under the direction of operators. Various attempts were made to supplement the functional capabilities of punched card systems by linking together otherwise independent machines. One such system, the Synchro-Madas machine, incorporated a typewriter/accounting machine, an automatic calculating machine and an automatic card punch.These were linked together so that a single action by the operator sitting at the typewriter/accounting machine would control several opera tions on the different machines. One other system involving a set of inter-linked card machines, although very different in concept and scale from the Synchro-Madas machine, is worth mentioning. This is the Remote-control Accounting system which was experimented with in a Pittsburgh department store, also in the mid-1930’s. The system involved 250 terminals connected by telephone lines to 20 Powers card punch/tabulators and 15 on-line typewriters.The terminals transmitted data from punched merchandise tags which were used to produce punched sales record cards, later used for customer billing. The typewriter terminals were used for credit authorisation purposes. The intended peak transaction rate was 9000 per hour. Even during the 1920’s punched card systems were used not only for accounting and the compilation of statistics, but also for complex statistical calculations. However the first important scientific application of punched card systems was made by L.J. Comrie in 1929. Comrie was Superintendent of HM Nautical Almanac Office until 1936, and then founded the Scientific Computing Service. He made a speciality of putting commercial computing machinery to scientific use, and introduced Hollerith equipment to the Nautical Almanac Office. His calculations of the future positions of the Moon, which involved the punching of half a million cards, stimulated many other scientists to exploit the possibilities of punched card systems. One such scientist was Wallace J.Eckert, an astronomer at Columbia University, which already had been donated machines for a Statistical Laboratory by IBM in 1929, including the â€Å"Statistical Calculator,† a specially developed tabulator which was the forerunner of the IBM Type 600 series of multiplying punches, and of the mechanisms used in the Harvard Mark I machine. With assistance from IBM in 1934 Eckert set up a scientific computing laboratory in the Columbia Astronomy Department, a laboratory which was la ter to become the Thomas J.Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau. In order to facilitate the use of his punched card equipment Eckert developed a centralised control mechanism, linked to a numerical tabulator, a summary punch and a multiplying punch, so that a short cycle of different operations could be performed at high speed. The control mechanism which was based on a stepping switch enabled many calculations, even some solutions 4 The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications of differential equations, to be performed completely automatically.The potential of a system of inter-connected punched card machines, controlled by a fully general-purpose sequencing mechanism, and the essential similarity of such a system to Babbage’s plans for an Analytical Engine, were discussed in an article published by Vannevar Bush in 1936. Bush was at this time already renowned for his work on the first differential analyser, and during the war held the influential position of Director o f the US Office of Scientific Research and Development.In fact an attempt was made to build such a system of inter-connected punched card machines at the Institut fur Praktische Mathematik of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt, in Germany during the war. The plans called for the inter-connection of a standard Hollerith multiplier and tabulators, and specially constructed divider and function generators, using a punched tape sequence control mechanism. Work was abandoned on the project following a destructive air raid in September 1944. However, by this stage, in the United States much more ambitious efforts were being made to apply the expertise of punched card equipment designers.The efforts originated in 1937 with a proposal by Howard Aiken of Harvard University that a large-scale scientific calculator be constructed by inter-connecting a set of punched card machines via a master control panel. This would be plugged so as to govern the transmission of numerical operands and the sequencing of arithmetic operations. Through Dr. Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory, Aiken became acquainted with Wallace Eckert’s punched card installation at Columbia University.These contacts helped Aiken to persuade IBM to undertake the task of developing and building a machine to his basic design. For IBM, J. W. Bryce assigned C. D. Lake, F. E. Hamilton and B. M. Durfee to the task. Aiken later acknowledged these three engineers as co-inventors of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, or Harvard Mark I as it became known. The machine was built at the IBM development laboratories at Endicott and was demonstrated there in January 1943 before being shipped to Harvard, where it became operational in May 1944.In August of that year IBM, in the person of Thomas J. Watson, donated the machine to Harvard where it was used initially for classified work for the US Navy. The design of the Harvard Mark I followed the original proposals by Aiken fairly close ly, but it was built using a large number of the major components used in the various types of punched card machines then manufactured, rather than from a set of complete machines themselves. It incorporated 72 â€Å"storage counters† each of which served as both a storage location, and as a complete adding and subtracting machine.Each counter consisted of 24 electromechanical counter wheels and could store a signed 23digit decimal number. A special multiply/divide unit, and units for obtaining the value of previously computed functions held on perforated tape, and for performing interpolation, were provided together with input/output equipment such as card readers and punches, and typewriters. The various mechanisms and counter wheels were all driven and synchronised by a single gearconnected mechanical system extending along nearly the entire length of the calculator.A main sequence control mechanism incorporating a punched tape reader governed the operation of the machine. Each horizontal row on the tape had space for three groups of eight holes, known as the A, B and C groups. Together these specified a single instruction of the form â€Å"Take the number out of unit A, deliver it to unit B, and start operation C. † Somewhat surprisingly, in view of Aiken’s knowledge of Babbage’s work and writings, no provision was made originally for conditional branching.As it was, such provision was only made later when a subsidiary sequence control mechanism was built at Harvard and incorporated into the machine. The Harvard Mark I was a massive machine over 50 feet long, built on a lavish scale. Being largely mechanical its speed was somewhat limited – for example multiplication took 6 seconds – but it continued in active use at Harvard until 1959. It has an important place in the history of computers although the long-held belief that it was the world’s first operational programcontrolled computer was proved to be fals e, once the details of Zuse’s wartime work in Germany became known.It marked a major step by IBM towards full involvement in the design of general-purpose computers and, with ENIAC and the Bell Telephone Laboratories Series, represents the starting point of American computer developments. After completion of the Mark I, Aiken and IBM pursued independent paths. Aiken, still distrustful of the reliability of electronic components, moved to electromagnetic relays for the construction of the Harvard Mark II, another paper-tape-sequenced calculator.This machine had an internal store which could hold about 100 dccimal floating point numbers. One of the most interesting aspects of the machine was that it could be operated either as a single computer or as two separate ones. The complete system incorporated four of each type of input/output device, namely sequence tape readers, data tape readers and punches, numerical function tape readers and output printers. It also had multiple ar ithmetic facilities, including two adders and four multipliers (taking 0. 7 second) which could all be used simultaneously.Detailed design of the machine, which was intended for the US Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, began at Harvard early in 1945, and the machine was completed in 1947. Afterwards Aiken and his colleagues went on to design the Mark III, an electronic computer with magnetic drum storage, completed in 1950, and the Mark IV, which incorporated 200 magnetic core shift registers, completed in 1952. The designers of IBM’s next machine, the Pluggable Sequence Relay Calculator, included two of the Harvard Mark I’s design team, namely C. D. Lake and B. M.Durfee, but the machine in fact had more in common with IBM’s earlier calculating punches than with the Mark I; like the punches it was controlled using plugboard-specified sequencing, rather than by a sequence control tape of essentially unlimited length. Its relay construction resulted in its basic operation speed being considerably faster than the Mark I, although it lacked the Mark I’s ease and flexibility of programming, demanding instead the kind of detailed design of parallel subsequencing that one sees nowadays at the microprogramming level of some computers.Great stress was raid by the designers on the efficient use of punched card input/output, and it was claimed that in many cases, where other machines’ internal storage capacity proved inadequate, the IBM relay calculators could outperform even the contemporary electronic computers. Several machines were built, the first of which was delivered in December 1944 to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, and two were installed at the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory that IBM had set up at Columbia University under the directorship of Wallace Eckert.The Relay Calculator was followed by the giant IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator, a machine which was very much in the tradition of the Mark I. Wal lace Eckert was responsible for the logical organisation of the machine, with Frank Hamilton being the chief engineer on the project. The design was a compromise between Eckert’s wish, for performance reasons, to use electronic components to the full, and Hamilton’s preference for electro-mechanical relays, on grounds of reliability. As a result vacuum tubes were used for the arithmetic unit, the control circuitry, and the 8 word high-speed store, relays being used elsewhere.In addition to the 8 word store there was a 150 word random access electro-magnetic store and storage for 20000 numbers in the form of punched tapes. Numbers would be read from the electro-magnetic store, or in sequence from the punched tape store, at the speed of the multiplier, i. e. , every 20 milliseconds. The design was started in 1945, and the machine was built in great secrecy at Endicott, before being moved to New York City, where it was publicly unveiled at an elaborate dedication ceremony in January 1948. The most important aspect of the SSEC, credited to R. R.Seeber, was that it could perform arithmetic on, and then execute, stored instructions – it was almost certainly the first operational machine with these capabilities. This led to IBM obtaining some very important patents, but the machine as a whole was soon regarded as somewhat anachronistic and was dismantled in 1952. It had however provided IBM with some valuable experience – for example, Hamilton and some of his engineering colleagues went on to design the highly successful IBM 650, and many of the SSEC programmers later became members of the IBM 701 programming group.Finally, mention should be made of one other machine manufactured by IBM which can be classed as a precursor to the modern electronic digital computer. This was the Card Programmed Calculator, a machine which along with its predecessors now tends to be overshadowed by the SSEC. Like the Pluggable Sequence Relay Calculator, the C PC can trace its origins to the IBM 600 series of multiplying punches. In 1946 IBM announced the Type 603, the first production electronic calculator. The IBM 603, which incorporated 300 valves, was developed from an experimental multiplier designed at Endicott under the direction of R.L. Palmer in 1942. One hundred machines were sold, and then IBM replaced it with the Type 604, a plugboardcontrolled electronic calculator, which provided conditional branching but, lacking backward jumps, no means of constructing program loops. Deliveries of the 604, which incorporated over 1400 valves, started in 1948 and within the next 10 years over 5000 were installed. In 1948 a 604 was coupled to a type 402 accounting machine by Northrop Aircraft Company, in order to provide the 604 with increased capacity and with printing facilities. This idea was taken up by IBM, and formed the basis of the CPC.Nearly 700 CPC’s were built, and this machine played a vital role in providing computing pow er to many installations in the USA until stored program electronic computers became commercially available on a reasonable scale. In the years that followed the introduction of the CPC, IBM continued to develop its range of electronic calculators and, starting in 1952 with the IBM 701, an electronic computer in the tradition of von Neumann’s IAS machine, took its first steps towards achieving its present dominant position amongst electronic computer manufacturers. . Konrad Zuse Konrad Zuse started to work on the development of mechanical aids to calculation as early as 1934, at the age of 24. He was studying civil engineering at the Technische Hochschule, Berlin-Charlottenburg, and sought some means of relief from the tedious calculations that had to be performed. His first idea had been to design special forms to facilitate ordinary manual calculation, but then he decided to try to mechanise the operation.Continuing to use the special layouts that he had designed for his fo rms, he investigated representing numerical data by means of perforations, and the use of a hand-held sensing device which could communicate the data over an electrical cable to an automatic calculating machine. The idea then arose of using a mechanical register rather than perforated cards, and, realising that the layout was irrelevant, Zuse started to develop a general purpose mechanical store, whose locations were addressed numerically.By 1936 he had the basic design of a floating point binary computer, controlled by a program tape consisting of a sequence of instructions, each of which specified an operation code, two operand addresses and a result address. Thus, apparently quite independently of earlier work by Babbage and his successors on analytical engines, Zuse had very quickly reached the point of having a design for a general-purpose program-controlled computer, although the idea of conditional branching was lacking.More importantly, even though the various basic The Inst itute of Mathematics and its Applications 6 ideas that his design incorporated had, it now turns out, been thought of earlier (i. e. , binary mechanical arithmetic (Leibniz), program control (Babbage), instruction formats with numerical storage addresses (Ludgate) and floating point number representations (Torres y Quevedo)), Zuse’s great achievement was to turn these ideas into reality. Zuse had considerable trouble finding sponsors willing to finance the building of his machine.Despite his financial difficulties his first machine, the Z1, which was of entirely mechanical construction was completed in 1938, but it proved unreliable in operation. He then started to construct a second, fixed-point binary, machine which incorporated the 16 word mechanical binary store of the Z1, but was otherwise built from second-hand telephone relays. Although the Z2 computer was completed it was inadequate for any practical use. However by this time a colleague, Helmut Schreyer, was already working with Zuse on the problem of producing an electronic version of the Z1.This led to the construction of a small 10 place binary arithmetic unit, with approximately 100 valves, but proposals that Schreyer and Zuse made to the German government for a 1500 valve electronic computer were rejected and the work was discontinued in 1942. Earlier, in 1939, Zuse was called up for military service, but managed to get released after about a year, and for the first time received significant government backing for his plans. This enabled him to build the Z3 computer, a binary machine with a 64 word store, all built out of telephone relays.This computer, since it was operational in 1941, is believed to have been the world’s first general-purpose program-controlled computer. It incorporated units for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root, using a floating point number representation with a sign bit, a 7-bit exponent and a 14-bit mantissa. Input was via a manu al keyboard and output via a set of lights, in each case with automatic binary/decimal conversion, and the machine was controlled by a perforated tape carrying single address instructions, i. . , instructions specifying one operand, and an operation. In addition to his series of general-purpose computers, Zuse built two special-purpose computers, both used for calculations concerning aircraft wing profiles. The first of these was in use for 2 years at the Henschel Aircraft Works, before being destroyed through war damage. Both computers had fixed programs, wired on to rotary switches, and performed calculations involving addition, subtraction and multiplication by constant factors.Soon after completion of the Z3, the design of an improved version, the Z4, was started. This was mainly electro-mechanical but incorporated a purely mechanical binary store similar to that which had been used for the Zl and Z2 machines. The partially completed Z4 was the only one of Zuse’s machines to survive the war – indeed it eventually was completed and gave years of successful service at the Technische Hochschule, Zurich. The Z4 was inspected shortly after the war by R. C. Lyndon, whose report on the machine for the US Office f Naval Research was published in 1947. At this stage the Z4 had only manual input and output, and no means of conditional branching, although it was planned to add four tape readers and two tape punches, and facilities for repeating programs and for choosing between alternate subprograms. The machine was housed in the cellar of a farmhouse in the little village of Hopferau in Bavaria, and was not fully operational, but the mechanical store and various arithmetic operations and their automatic sequencing were successfully demonstrated to Lyndon.His report, although it gives a fairly full description of the Z4 (with the exception of the mechanical store, which he was not allowed to examine in detail), made virtually no mention of Zuse’s earlier work. Indeed it was many years before any other English language accounts of Zuse’s work were published, and Zuse’s rightful place in the chronology of computer development became at all widely appreciated. 5. Bell Telephone Laboratories The potentialities of telephone equipment for the construction of digital calculation devices were not realised for many years.The first automatic telephone exchange, which used the step-by-step or Strowger switch, was installed in 1892. As early as 1906 Molina devised a system for translating the pulses representing the dialled decimal digits into a more convenient number system. Exchanges based mainly on the use of electromechanical relays started to come into use at the turn of the century, the earliest successful centralised automatic exchanges dating from about 1914. However, from the late 1920’s various different calculating devices were developed using telephone equipment.Perhaps the most spectacular of these was the automatic totalisator. Totalisator, or â€Å"pari-mutuel,† betting became legal on British race courses in July 1929. Development of fully automatic totalisators consisting of ticket-issuing machines situated in various parts of the race course, a central calculating apparatus, and display boards which indicated the number and total value of bets made on each horse, and on the race as a whole, was already well under way.There were several rival systems. The Hamilton Totalisator and the totalisator produced by the British Automatic Totalisator Company were fully electrical, both as regards the calculations performed and the operation of the display boards, whereas the Lightning Totalisator used electrical impulses from remote ticket machines only to release steel balls which fell through tubes and actuated a mechanical adding apparatus.In January 1930 the Racecourse Betting Control Board demonstrated at Thirsk Racecourse a new standard electric totalisator supplied by Bri tish Thompson Houston, built from Strowger switches. This machine which was transportable from racecourse to racecourse could accumulate bets on up to six horses at a maximum rate of 12 000 per minute. The machine had in fact been designed in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1928 but the first complete machine to be used in the USA was installed by the American Totalisator Company at Arlington Park nly in 1933. In succeeding years much more sophisticated totalisators, involving hundreds of remote ticket-issuing machines, were used at racecourses all over USA, and it was not until many years after the advent of the electronic computer that one was used as a replacement for the central calculating apparatus of the totalisator. One early little-known design for a calculating machine to be built from telephone relays was that of Bernard Weiner in Czechoslovakia in 1923.Weiner, in association with the Vitkovice Iron Works, went on during the 1930’s to design a more powerful automatic calcu lator. He did not survive the war, and nothing is known about the results of this work. Other early work was done by Nicoladze who in 1928 designed a multiplier based on the principle of Genaille’s rods. (These were a non-mechanical aid to multiplication which enabled a person to read off the product of a multidigit number by a single digit number. Four years later Hamann described not only various different styles of relay-based multiplier, but also a device for solving sets of simultaneous linear equations, and shortly afterwards Weygandt demonstrated a prototype determinant evaluator, capable of dealing with 3 x 3 determinants. Undoubtedly in the years that followed many other digital calculating devices were developed based on telephone relay equipment, particularly during the war for such military applications as ballistics calculations and cryptanalysis – indeed, as mentioned earlier, some of Zuse’s machines made extensive use of telephone relays.It is per haps a little surprising that it was not until 1937 that Bell Telephone Laboratories investigated the design of calculating devices, although from about 1925 the possibility of using relay circuit techniques for such purposes was well accepted there. However, in 1937 George Stibitz started to experiment with relays, and drew up circuit designs for addition, multiplication and division. At first he concentrated on binary arithmetic, together with automatic decimal-binary and binarydecimal conversion, but later turned his attention to a binary-coded decimal number representation.The project became an official one when, prompted by T. C. Fry, Stibitz started to design a calculator capable of multiplying and dividing complex numbers, which was intended to fill a very practical need, namely to facilitate the solution of problems in the design of filter networks, and so started the very important Bell Telephone Laboratories Series of Relay Computers. In November 1938, S. B. Williams took over responsibility for the machine’s development and together with Stibitz refined the design of the calculator, whose construction was started in April and completed in October of 1939.The calculator, which became known as the â€Å"Complex Number Computer† (often shortened to â€Å"Complex Computer,† and as other calculators were built, the â€Å"Model I†), began routine operation in January 1940. Within a short time it was modified so as to provide facilities for the addition and subtraction of complex numbers, and was provided with a second, and then a third, teletype control, situated in remote locations. It remained in daily use at Bell Laboratories until 1949.The Complex Computer was publicly demonstrated for the first time in September 1940 by being operated in its New York City location from a teletypewriter installed in Hanover, New Hampshire, on the occasion of a meeting of the American Mathematical Society, a demonstration that both John Mauc hly and Norbert Wiener attended. During 1939 and 1940 Stibitz started work on the idea of automatic sequencing and on the use of error-detecting codes. These ideas were not pursued actively until, a year or so later, the onset of the war rovided a strong stimulus and the necessary financial climate. They then formed the basis of the second of the Bell Laboratories relay calculators, the â€Å"Relay Interpolator. † This was a special-purpose tape-controlled device, with selfchecking arithmetic, designed to solve fire control problems, and was built for the National Defense Research Council, to which Stibitz had been lent by Bell Laboratories. Although mainly used for interpolation it was also used for a few problems in harmonic analysis, calculation of roots of polynomials and solution of differential equations.It became operational in September 1943, and after the war it was handed over to the US Naval Research Laboratory, where it was in use until 1961. The Model III relay c alculator, the â€Å"Ballistic Computer,† work on which started in 1942, was a much more complete realisation of Stibitz’s early plans for an automatic computer, and although once again intended for fire control problems was much more versatile than the Model II. It was tape-controlled, and had a tenregister store, a built-in multiplier (designed by E. L.Vibbard), and devices for performing automatic look-up of tables held on perforated paper tape. Perhaps most impressive was the fact that the machine was 100 per cent. self-checked. The machine was completed in June 1944, and remained in use until 1958. The Model IV relay calculator was little different from the Model III, and the series culminated in the Model V, a truly general-purpose program-controlled computer, complete with convenient conditional branching facilities. (The final member of the series, Model VI, was essentially just a simplified version of the Model V. Two copies of the Model V were built, the firs t being delivered in 1946 to the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics at Langley Field, Virginia, and the second in 1947 to the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen, Maryland. With its multiple computing units, the Model V, which used floating point arithmetic, was what we would now call a multiprocessing system, and its â€Å"problem tapes† were the forerunners of the early simple batch-processing operating systems. Each of the two computing units comprising a complete system contained 15 storage registers.A single register could hold a floating point number consisting of a sign, a seven-decimal digit mantissa and a two-digit exponent. Decimal digits were stored in a bi-quinary form, using seven relays, and each register used a total of 62 relays. Each unit had independent provision for the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and for 8 The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications taking the square root of floating point numbers, and for printi ng or punching its results.In addition a large set of tape readers, intended for tapes of input data, tabulated functions and programs, and for the problem tapes which controlled the running of series of separate programs, were shared by the two computer units. These units normally functioned as independent computers, but for large problems would be arranged to work cooperatively. Although somewhat slow in execution, the Model V set new standards for reliability, versatility and ease of switching from one task to another, and in so doing must surely have had an important influence on the designers of the earliest round of general-purpose electronic computers.In later years, quite a number of relay calculators were constructed, in both the USA and Europe, even after the first stored program electronic computers became operational, but the importance of their role in the history of computers hardly matches that of the Bell Laboratories Model V and its contemporaries. 6. The advent of electronic computers The earliest known electronic digital circuit, a â€Å"trigger relay,† which involved a pair of valves in a circuit with two stable states and was an early form of flip-flop, was described by Eccles and Jordan in 1919.The next development that we know of was the use by WynnWilliams at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, of thyratrons in counting circuits including, in 1932, a â€Å"scale-of-two† (binary) counter. By the end of the decade quite a few papers had been published on electronic counters intended for counting impulses from GeigerMuller tubes used in nuclear physics experiments. WynnWilliams’ work had a direct influence on the ideas of William Phillips, who apparently in 1935 attempted to patent a binary electronic computing machine.He built a mechanical model, which still exists, of the intended electronic multiplication unit but no other details are presently known of his planned machine. The first known attempt to build an elect ronic digital calculating machine was begun by John V. Atanasoff in the mid-1930’s at Iowa State College where there had been an active interest in statistical applications using punched card equipment since the early 1920’s. As an applied mathematician Atanasoff had many problems requiring generalisations of existing methods of approximating solutions of linear operational equations.He first explored the use of analog techniques and with Lynn Hannum, one of his graduate students, developed the â€Å"Laplaciometer,† a device for solving Laplace’s equation in two dimensions with various boundary conditions. By 1935 the realisation of the sharp limitations of analog computing forced Atanasoff to digital methods. The disadvantages of mechanical techniques and his knowledge of electronics and of the work of Eccles and Jordan then led him to consider an electronic approach.He soon found that in these circumstances a base two number system would have great adva ntages. In 19361937 Atanasoff abandoned the Eccles-Jordan approach and conceived a system employing memory and logic circuits, whose details were worked out in 1938. He received a grant from Iowa State in 1939, and was joined by Clifford E. Berry. With Berry’s assistance a prototype computing element was built and operating by the autumn of that year. They then undertook the design and construction of a large machine intended for the solution of up to 30 simultaneous linear equations.At the heart of the machine there was a pair of rotating cylinders around the surface of which a set of small electrical condensers was placed. Each condenser could, by the direction of its charge, represent a binary digit; although the charge would leak away slowly, it was arranged that as the cylinders rotated the charge on each condenser was detected and reinforced at 1 second time intervals so that information could be stored for as long as required.The condensers were arranged so as to provi de two sets of 30 binary words, each consisting of 50 bits, the condensers corresponding to a single word being arranged in a plane perpendicular to the axis of the cylinders. The results of intermediate steps of a computation were to be punched in binary form on cards, for later re-input to the machine. In order that card punching and reading should be fast enough to keep pace with the computation, special devices were designed that made and detected holes in cards by means of electrical sparks.Ordinary input and output was to be via conventional punched cards, with the machine providing automatic binary/decimal conversions. The machine, with binary addition, subtraction and shifting as its basic arithmetic facilities, was designed to solve sets of simultaneous linear equations by the method of successive elimination of unknowns. The electronic part of the computer was operational but the binary card reader was still unreliable when in 1942 Atanasoff and Bcrry left Iowa State for w artime jobs, so that the machine was abandoned, never having seen actual use.In the late 1930’s and early 1940’s several groups started to investigate the use of digital electronic circuits as replacements for mechanical or electro-mechanical calculating devices, including several of the American business machine manufacturers such as IBM, whose work was described briefly above. The earliest known efforts at applying electronics to a general-purpose program-controlled computer were those undertaken by Schreyer and Zuse, also mentioned earlier.The next development which should be mentioned is the still classified series of electronic cryptanalytic machines that were designed and built in Britain during the war. The machines that are of particular interest, with respect to the development of electronic computers are the Colossi, the first of which was operational in late 1943, while by the end of the war ten had been installed. Each Colossus incorporated approximately 20 00 valves, and processed a punched data tape that was read at a speed of 5000 characters per second.Preset patterns that were to be compared against the input data were generated from stored component patterns. These components were stored in ring registers made of thyratrons and could be manually set by plug-in pins. The Colossi were developed by a team led by M. H. A. Newman. Alan Turing, who had been one of the main people involved in the design of an electro-mechanical predecessor to the Colossi, was apparently not directly associated with the new design, but with others provided the requirements that the machines were to satisfy.The comparative lack of technical details about the design of these machines makes it unreasonable to attempt more than a preliminary, and somewhat hesitant, assessment of the Colossi with respect to the modern digital computer. It would appear that the arithmetical, as opposed to logical, capabilities were minimal, involving only counting rather than g eneral addition or other operations. They did, however, have a certain amount of electronic storage. Although fully automatic, even to the extent of producing printed output, they were very much special-purpose machines, but ithin their field of specialisation the facilities provided by plug-boards and banks of switches afforded a considerable degree of flexibility; in fact several of the people involved in the project have since characterised the machines as being â€Å"program-controlled. † Their importance as cryptanalytic machines, which must have been immense, can only be inferred from the number of machines that were made and the honours bestowed on various members of the team after the end of the war; however, their importance with respect to the development of computers was twofold.They demonstrated the practicality of largescale electronic digital equipment, just as ENIAC did, on an even grander scale, approximately 2 years later. Furthermore, they were also a major source of the designers of some of the first post-war British computers, namely the Manchester machine, the MOSAIC, and the ACE at the National Physical Laboratory. Fascinating though they are, none of the efforts described so far comes near to matching the importance of the work at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, which led to the design of first the ENIAC and then the EDVAC computers.By 1942 the Moore School had, because of pressures of war, become closely associated with the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the US Army Ordnance Department, and the Moore School’s differential analyser was being used to supplement the work of the one at the Ballistic Research Laboratory on the production of ballistic tables. (The two analysers were identical and had been patterned on the original differential analyser invented by Vannevar Bush in 1930. ) One of the people who had worked with the analyser was John Mauchly, then an assistant professor at the Moore School.Mauchly was by this time well aware of what could be done with desk calculating machines and punched card equipment, although he was apparently unaware of the work Aiken was then doing on what became the Harvard Mark I, or of Babbage’s efforts 100 years earlier. He did however know of the work of Stibitz and had visited Iowa State in June 1941 in order to see Atanasoff’s special-purpose computer. Another person who worked on the Moore School differential analyser, and in fact made important improvements to it by replacing its mechanical amplifiers by partially electronic devices, was J. Presper Eckert, a research associate at the School.Eckert had met Mauchly in 1941, and it was their discussions about the possibility of surmounting the reliability problems of complex electronic devices that laid the groundwork for a memorandum that Mauchly wrote in August 1942. This proposed that an electronic digital computer be constructed for the purpose of solving numerical difference equations of the sort encountered in ballistics problems. Also at the Moore School, acting as a liaison officer for Colonel Paul N. Gillon of the office of the Chief of Ordnance, was Herman H. Goldstine, who before the war had been assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan.In early 1943 Goldstine and Gillon became interested in the possibility of using an electronic calculating machine for the preparation of firing and bombing tables. By this time Mauchly’s 1942 memorandum had been mislaid, and it had to be recreated from his secretary’s notes. The second version of the memorandum, together with more detailed plans drawn up by Mauchly and Eckert, was included in a report dated April 1943 which formed the basis for a contract between the University of Pennsylvania and the US Government to develop an electronic computer.A large team was assembled at the Moore School in order to design and build the computer under the supervisi on of J. G. Brainerd, with Eckert as chief engineer and Mauchly as principal consultant. As the project progressed its aims broadened, so that the ENIAC, as it became known, turned out to be much more a general-purpose device than had been originally contemplated, and although programs were represented by plugged interconnecting wires, it provided full conditional branching facilities.It was an incredibly ambitious machine incorporating over 19 000 valves and consuming approximately 200 kilowatts of electric power! (The number of valves largely resulted from the use of them for high speed storage, and the choice of number representation, which can best be described as â€Å"unary-coded decimal. â€Å") The ENIAC incorporated 20 10-digit accumulators, which could be used for addition and subtraction, and for the temporary storage of numbers, a multiplier and a combination divider and square rooter.Addition took 200 microseconds, and multiplication of two 10-digit numbers approximat ely 3 milliseconds. Storage was provided for approximately 300 numerical constants in function tables, which could be set up by manual switches prior to commencing a computation. Input and output was via punched cards, using standard IBM devices. Early in its career the method of programming the machine was modified so that the program was represented by settings of the function tables without the need for changing the interconnecting cables.

Analysing Constructivism In International Relations Theory Politics Essay

Analysing Constructivism In International Relations Theory Politics Essay With its opposite position to mainstream International Relations (IR) theorists’, rationalist or positivist (neo-realism and neo-liberalism), explanations to international politics, constructivism could be perceived as the development of group of critical theories that contested the way in which IR should search for knowledge in 1980s, the period Yosuf Lapid (1989) describes as â€Å"the Third Debate†. Although scholars who subsume to constructivist idea acknowledged this point, they argue that constructivist ideas toward IR are not exactly the same with its predecessor. The like such as Ted Hof (1998) and Christian Reus-Smit (2001) point out that constructivism is focus on the way in decoding the international social phenomenon through empirical analysis as well as normative approach. It also emphasize on the role of identity in determining agent’s behaviour and the mutually constituted between agents and structures. These concepts are not fit in to the mindset of critical theories, which tend to employ different aspects of social exchanges as a unit of study in trying to understand the nature of international politics. Having asserted that constructivism is neither rationalism nor critical theories, this essay aims to explore the uniqueness of the particular theory and its prominence in IR in the globalization stage, where the explanatory power of, the dominant, realism seems to be less tenable. This essay is divided into three parts: firstly, exploring premised concept of constructivism; secondly, giving empirical observation regarding the North-South relations through constructivist view; lastly, wrap up the study and assess the promise of the theory as one of the key approaches in the field of IR. What is constructivism? The rise of constructivism after the end of the Cold War not only contest the limited account of rationalism, both neo-realism and neo-liberalism, in explaining the changing order in global politics but also, at the s ame time, put forward critical theories beyond its territory by subsuming to the normative and empirical analysis. Rationalists, both neo-realists and neo-liberalists, share the same premise toward the structure of IR and how states response to it. As a result of Lakotos’ theory construction model and microeconomic theory, they have a common view that states are self-interested and rational agent within the anarchic international system, states perceive IR as a venue for maximizing their interests, thus, the way states act is subject to the power they get from the distribution of material power within the system, this also lead to hierarchy in IR (Reus-Smit, 2001). On the other hand, critical theories which might not pay much attention on the structure of IR, they are more interested in meta-theoretical debate which rationalism. They oppose the epistemology and ontology that are postulated by rationalism, which lead to their rejection of using normative or universalist approa ch in studying the discipline. This part of essay is going to differentiate premise ideas of constructivism with the other two branches of thought. Ted Hof (1998) highlights that the key premised concept of constructivism is an intersubjective set of meanings, a shared meaning in a society, which can be in a form of social norms or social practices. According to Hof (ibid), intersubjective set of meanings plays a vital role in formulating, another important focus of constructivism, state’s identity. Social norms are the foundations that influence state’s behaviour and that behaviour creates interactions with others who, through the reproduction process, will recognize this behaviour as state’s identity. Whereas realism emphasizes on distribution of material capabilities in the anarchic system of IR, constructivism views that normative structures are of importance as well as material capabilities. As having asserted by Reus-Smit (2001), normative structures are t he thought to shape the social identity of political actor. The norms that determine actors’ identity can go in parallel between International practices and internal elements. Having focused on how normative structures shape actor’s identity, constructivism provides an account for the development of interests as well as actor’s perception toward others. According to Alexander Wendt, the prominent constructivist scholar, â€Å"identity is the basis of interests† (1992: quoted in Reus-Smit, ibid), constructivist scholars hold that by having examined the connection between identity and interests, it is possible to provide room for understanding why each actor sometimes views the same situation differently.

The Importance of Authenticity in Current Popular Music Essay

The Importance of Authenticity in Current Popular Music - Essay Example This "The Importance of â€Å"Authenticity† in Current Popular Music" essay outlines how authenticity reflected in the songs and analyze three different songs. Michael Jackson was popular, but with popularity came the price of fame, so to speak. â€Å"They always had Mike in a scope.† In the official video of Better On the Other Side , six musical artists plus the group Boyz II Men offer a tribute to the King of Pop Michael Jackson, who unfortunately passed away in the summer of 2009. Michael Jackson was always involved in some sort of scandal or drama. There were a few times he was accused of behaving with impropriety. However, besides that, Michael Jackson was very involved in charity and many types of philanthropic ventures. He worked tirelessly for AIDS research and funding, as well as other charitable causes. Better On the Other Side is a tribute by at least 9 or 10 well-known artists in hip-hop and rap who idolized the pop icon of Michael Jackson and the widely-publicized details about how he rose to fame, first starting out in the group The Jackson 5, and later developing a musical career for himself which he carved out separately from his famous siblings—including Janet Jackson. Better On the Other Side is a special tribute song because, in a way, it documents Michael Jackson’s fame as well as some of his difficulties in being one of the best. Although it never mentions his multiple surgeries on his nose and how he had burns from an accident in filming a soda commercial, Michael Jackson had his problems. The song also expresses sadness in terms of how he died, saying that this was a song that would make the angels cry. Currently, Michael Jackson’s personal physician is on trial for manslaughter. This song by The Game featuring several other artists is one way that the music industry â€Å"kept it real†Ã¢â‚¬â€by performing a tribute to a real-life incident (Michael Jackson’s death) which affected so many fans of his. III. Mariah Carey’s Song â€Å"Obsessed† Mariah Carey takes on a stalker in the song â€Å"Obsessed.† She says, â€Å"All up in the blogs sayin’ we met in a bar/When I don’t even kn ow who you are.†3 One can see in her official video for Obsessed4 that she thinks the stalker is â€Å"delusional.† Mariah Carey had a real-life situation where a stalker was actually following her and so forth. She had to take some legal actions with regard to this stalker. Stalkers are a common problem in Hollywood, because usually famous people are looked at with such high

Evidence Based Youth Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Evidence Based Youth Policy - Essay Example The necessity for systematic investigation on youth issues headed to an array of activities within the Council of Europe. The "Recommendation 92 (7)" of the Committee of Ministers specifies three broad objectives for youth policy. The White Paper of Commission "A new impetus for European youth" deals elaborately about the priorities of youths and proposes following objectives: For timely, sustainable and efficient policy making, it is necessary to formulate a qualitative, relevant and coherent knowledge in the youth area in Europe and anticipate future requirement through dialogue, exchange and networks; Identify - including at regional and local level - knowledge in priority field of the youth area namely, information, participation and voluntary activities and carry out measures to update, supplement and ease access to it; In next stage identify - including at regional and local level - knowledge in more important field of interest to the youth area, like health, employment, education and training, non-formal learning, fight against discrimination, and carry out measures to update, supplement and ease access to it; In 2003 European Commission and Council of Europe agreed to increase co-operation for evolving a better and common knowledge basis in the youth area by gathering research knowledge and networking in order to enhance educational practice and European youth policy. On the basis of the above guidelines Malta formulated a National Youth Policy in 2004. It incorporated various aspects of young people field such as social, personal, spiritual and political development of youth within a holistic perspective. In other words, the youth policy is meant to encourage an integrated manner, youth's social, economic and cultural positions, like access to advice and information, education, employment, health, housing and leisure. The final goal of this National Youth Policy is to promote youth participation in society and to train them for a dynamic form of citizenship. The State (Republic of Malta) recognises the role of the National Youth Council (an autonomous body representing youth organisations), Youth Studies Programme (University of Malta), Youth Centres, Non-Governmental Organisations and other youth groups. This national youth policy sets a broad parameter within which young people work should be accomplished. In general, the term 'evidence based youth policy' refers to a practice that has been adopted after evaluating it with rigorous scientific techniques, particularly experimental studies utilising random assignment and is applicable on young people between the ages of 14 - 30. However, Malta's National Youth Policy also recognises various stages of youth, from pre-adolescence to adulthood. The term 'disadvantaged youths' means those young people who faces discrimination due to their socio-economic, religious, health or educational backgrounds. This policy has a holistic approach of youth aspirations and development but here we shall focus to State's policy in the field of health. Health The State follows a holistic perspective of health which does not only incorporate therapy and cure but also primary health care, promotion and prevention. It contains the broader spectrum of mental, physical and

Question answering Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Question answering - Essay Example However, at one point, all lies come to light and for Enron that moment was when they filed for bankruptcy. The aspect of the company filing for bankruptcy was one of the worst happenings in the history of the United States. Before the company filed for bankruptcy, the last bankruptcy case reported, which was known as the largest in the history of the United States was the 1987 Texaco Bankruptcy case. Texaco filed for bankruptcy with an asset level that was as high as $35.9 billion. There were several causes that were assumed to have caused this shift. Primarily, one of the key issues identified by the case as the cause of the flaws was the inappropriate accounting principles. Primarily, the accounting principles the company used were either flawed or / and unethically done. Some of the issues encountered in the handling of the case are the fact that they went unnoticed for a number of years. One would ask, how can these happen and go undetected for years. Well, in most cases, such issues can easily be identified by anyone who analyzes the various financial reports. However, this was not the case for Enron Corporation. One of the key reasons that these mistakes went unnoticed by the management was the financial structuring of the organization. Enron had a risk management platform which they used a third party to insure themselves from loss. However, the downside is that Enron owned the largest shares in these third party institutions (LJM1 and LJM2). As such, by the time the organization was going broke, their insurer was also going broke. However, this was not an accident. The structuring of the organization was purposely created this way, by a former executive vice president and financial and a few interested stakeholders. This way, the few interested stakeholders would financially benefit themselves at the risk of the shareholders of Enron. Any financial issue that counters an organization somehow roots itself

Article review about the core proffesssional values of nursing Research Paper

Article review about the core proffesssional values of nursing - Research Paper Example In addition, in order to increase the output of new nurses into healthcare, many universities have been creating streamlined accelerated programs with greater emphasis being placed on technical skills and nursing sciences. This is creating a difficult time for new nursing students to have cultural integration into the workforce. In order to make this transition more effective, the Hunter- Bellevue School of Nursing, Hunter College of City University of New York explored and provided additional integration of CPNVs, Core Professional Nursing Values, in order to help integrate social attitudes and cultural values into the workforce. Altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity and social justice were focused on. Main Concepts In many regards, altruism is required to be the key motivational source not only for just nurses, but for anyone pursing a career in the healthcare market. It is the care for others without regard for themselves which makes a great healthcare practitioner; however , with greater economic instability, greed and financial security have replaced this respect to altruism in nursing. In the program, instructors focused on introspection and reflection with students in order for students to understand what was the essence of their driving force. It was also noted that students that received additional academic help and counseling were more eager to help others.

Ethical Issues in HRM Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Ethical Issues in HRM Strategy - Essay Example There are certain ethical issues that may accost the ratification of expert knowledge of other organizational HRM strategies with the new client. Particularly, the proposition that the client organization downsizes some of its staff to avoid redundancy and as part of closing the performance gap readily brings ethical concerns. This may mean that there are many who are going to forfeit their source of livelihood, their input in and experience with the client organization notwithstanding. Similarly, the signing of performance contracts may also underscore the ethical concern above since an employee’s security of tenure will be pegged on his performance. Conversely, persuading a part of the staff to embrace workshop and training programs may be an ethical challenge, given that some in this section may be older, both in terms of age and tenure in the client organization. At the same time, workshop drives and training programs may eat into employees’ private and family lives if study travels are involved (OHiggins & Kelleher, 2005). One of the best approaches to customizing HRM strategy to business strategies is the incorporation of HRM strategies into the business organization’s mission statement, objectives and strategy. By doing this, the business organization’s synergy will be extended and channeled towards the fulfillment of the client organization’s mission statement and long-term objectives. At the same time, the modus operandi that the business organization will be using is one that will be in tandem with HRM strategies. Some of these strategies that an organization may incorporate into its performance strategies may include the signing of performance contracts, introducing and observing workshop drives and training programs, and using behavioral techniques which portend the introduction of rewards (for diligent and committed employees) and

Human Resource Management at Nokia Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Human Resource Management at Nokia - Case Study Example Same was the case with Nokia, it had to determine a particular line of business to choose and divest the rest. He declared the strategic intent of Nokia as "focused, grouped, telecom-oriented and value-added." One of the key reasons for the success was the remarkable team work of five main figures of the organization, under the dynamic leadership of Ollila. As the time passed and the group progressed, a number of other strategic changes also took place; such as, the injection of US capital in the organization, the global expansion, the product-specific strategies. Setting own standards (WAP), Nokia Venture Organization, fact-based management etc. Happiness comes never alone; it does bring some undesirable consequences as well, either in the long run or in the short run. Same is the case with Nokia; there are a number of facts which are influencing the current problems. Some of the problems faced by the Nokia group, along with their background facts are as follows. Currently, the growth rate for Nokia is 25-35 percent. Nokia was looking as a prospect of one hundred thousand employees round the world. This desire was deeply rooted in the history of the performance of Nokia. Nokia wanted to be the market leader at worldwide level. It was not possible by limiting its operations only in the Finland only. As a result, implementing the word global of the strategic intent, it started to expand beyond the borders of Finland. At that time, this strategy had a positive impact. It was so, on the basis of the fact that this expansion brought the presence of Nokia in new markets, thus it resulted in increase in sales and consequently, increase in the market share. This increase in market share was well reflected in the performance of Nokia in the initial years of 1990's. However, now further expansion would have proved to be costly in many regards. It would have been costly not only in monetary terms, but in terms of other aspects as well. The main cost in that regard would be the diseconomies of scale in terms of management resources. The more the company was expanding; it was loosing the central values, which were the reason of success in the past. Moreover, the unity of organizational culture was being lost. Lowering Prices Another challenge faced by the Nokia group now was the pressure of market forces to lower the prices. Initially, when the technology was new, the competitors were few, the prices for the mobile phones were high. Thus, it was possible to have high margins. But now all the mobile phone companies were being squeezed from the two sides. On one hand, the global price war is being in the process forcing the mobile phone companies to lower the prices. On the other hand, the more fierce competition is to attract the fresh talent. All the companies, especially the mobile phone companies require the talented young blood to work for their company and make strategies to respond to the dynamic environment. Thus, all the companies are offering the higher salaries and other financial incentives to attract those dynamic managers. As a result of this tug of war, the companies are on one hand pressurized to lower the prices, while on the other hand, they are bound to offer high salaries to retain thei r knowledge asset (human resource), this has become a real challenge for Nokia as well in current