| Sumario: | The AIEE-IRE Computer Conference met on December 10-12, 1951, at Philadelphia to discuss the characteristics and performance of working, large-scale, electronic digital computers. The conference was arranged by a joint committee appointed early in 1951 by the Committee on Computing Devices of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Electronic Computers Committee of the Institute of Radio Engineers. It was felt that the development of these machines had reached a point where useful engineering information could be drawn from the experience of the designers and users of these machines and that a published account of these machines, assembled in a report of this meeting, would be of permanent value in the development of engineering knowledge of this new field of activity. The joint committee invited the co-operation of the Association for Computing Machinery, and representatives of that organization joined in the planning of the meeting and participated in the conference. The extent of interest in the subject can be appreciated from the attendance at the conference, which totalled 877 members. Descriptions of ten large-scale electronic computers of varying design and performance were presented, giving a cross-section of the varying designs to date of both parallel and serial types of electronic computers using storage devices including mercury delay lines, magnetic drums, and cathode-ray tubes. Other papers discussed detailed operating and component experience on certain of these calculators, and the final session summarized the present state of computer development and indicated some of the future possibilities of the Transistor in computer design. At the luncheon meeting on the last day of the conference, an inspiring picture of the rapidly expanding use of large-scale computers in engineering design and analysis of our new airplanes, both commercial and military, gave the members of the conference a better understanding of the ultimate usefulness of their efforts, During the conference, inspection trips gave many of the participants an opportunity to view the UNIVAC and the Burroughs Computer, and to visit the computer activities of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania and of the Technitrol Engineering Company.
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