Conference on Advanced Computation Techniques
R. C. Archibald · Mathematics of Computation · 1946
TechniquesDuring the recent war there was tremendous development of certain types of computing devices.The big Harvard-IBM machine indicates the way in which a whole battery of IBM equipment can be brought under automatic electric control.Electronic devices have been constructed, or are under development, which promise astronomical speeds for numerical processes.At the Bell Laboratories there has been important development of automatic relay computing.Thus, with war's end these and other similar developments suggest that there will soon be available mechanical and electrical computing equipment which, in terms of speed and flexibility, will completely outdistance anything thought of before.With Ithis in mind the desirability of a Conference of those who, in this country and in England, have been recently directly and indirectly connected with the output of large computing machines became evident, and the National Research Council Committee on MathematicalTables and Other Aids to Computation took steps for its organization.Most of the responsibility of this organization was placed in the hands of the Committee's Subcommittee Z (On Calculating Machines and Mechanical Computation) which then1 had the following membership: