Government and Computer Development

The computer has become ubiquitous in everyday American life. Not only do many Americans use computers in their jobs, millions have computers in their homes and schools, and there are computers in daily transactions ranging from the supermarket to the bank to the automobile. Business in particular relies on computers for the efficient and effective execution of its plans, and it is difficult to imagine daily life without e-mail or the Internet. Yet it took many decades for the computer to reach this level of acceptance, and innovation was initially limited to a few large companies and the government which, combined, had the resources required to develop the innovations that ultimately drove the development of the computer. This research considers the role of the government in moving the technology forward, and the role that the government might play in the future of computing innovation.

According to Moore's Law, the component capacity of silicon chips doubles approximately every two years. The "law" is named for Gordon Moore who put forth this idea in 1965. In the intervening years, it has been extrapolated to mean that computing power doubles approximately every two years. For many years, Moore's original meaning did, in fact, hold up. Given that his idea was based on the computer as it evolved in the 1950s, it is notable that his prediction of the rate of innovation was sound 40 years later. Today, Moore's

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ing trapped in an early computer, although Thomas Edison used the term far earlier. Without Army funding, ENIAC-and the many bugs that followed-would have taken far longer to develop (Goldstine, 1993). During the 1950s, the major computer companies received significant funding from the government. On average, IBM's research and development activities were half-funded by the government throughout the 1950s; government funding remained as high as 35 percent of the company's research and development through 1963. Bell Laboratories received support for 25 percent of its transistor research during the 1950s from the Department of Defense, as well. The Cold War, in fact, was responsible for much of the interest of the government in computer technology, both to combat the military threat of the Soviets and also to provide technology that could be used for espionage (Flamm, 1988). During the 1950s, government involvement in computers centered on military applications as evidenced by the government agencies involved: military research offices, such as the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; the National Bureau of Standards, which received three of the first UNIVAC computers-one f

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