Howard Aiken and the dawn of the computer age

Howard Aiken, one of the pioneers who introduced the computer age, earned his place in the historical record by several different sets of achievements. One was his design and completion of four giant calculators (or computers) at the dawn and during the first stages of the computer age, another his pioneering program in what we know today as computer science. He also was one of the very first explorers of the application of the new machines to business purposes - problems of the life insurance industry and computer billing in the utilities industries. He also contributed to the computer age in sponsoring new areas of application for computers, including machine translation of foreign languages, the use of the new machines in textual and historical analysis, and the application of computers to economics. He was much in demand as a speaker in America and in Europe, and he constantly urged the introduction of the computer into new areas of research and action. His contributions to the new age also include two symposiums he organized(in 1947 and 1949) to bring together those who were pioneering the designs and construction of new computers or planning new applications.