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On September 17th, 1998 the Ithaca Journal ran its first "Ask A Scientist!" article in which Professor Neil Ashcroft , who was then the director of CCMR, answered the question "What is Jupiter made of?" Since then, we have received over 1,000 questions from students and adults from all over the world. Select questions are answered weekly and published in the Ithaca Journal and on our web site. "Ask A Scientist!" reaches more than 21,000 Central New York residents through the Ithaca Journal and countless others around the world throught the "Ask a Scientist!" web site.

Across disciplines and across the state, from Nobel Prize winning scientist David Lee to notable science education advocate Bill Nye, researchers and scientists have been called on to respond to these questions. For more than seven years, kids - and a few adults - have been submitting their queries to find out the answer to life's everyday questions.

Previous Week's Question Published: 26 July, 2000 Next Week's Question
What makes modern computers smaller, faster
Question
Why are the small computers of today faster than the big IBM computers of the past?

Question
Over fifty years ago, the U.S. government funded the design and development of the nation's first digital computers to solve the complex mathematical equations related to code-breaking and the production of ballistic tubes.

These machines used vacuum tubes as their electronic brains; alas, such tubes have a tendency to overheat and burn out, plus they are rather large and bulky.

In the early 1950's, when the United States feared that the former Soviet Union would attack, the armed services invested heavily in a continental defense program, a vast radar screen that would detect approaching enemy aircraft.

Central to this program was the design of a new kind of computer, Whirlwind, a digital computer with a new kind of magnetic core memory and the ability to communicate over the telephone with distant radar stations.

This computer became a basis for IBM's successful commercial computer ventures; taxpayers- your parents and grandparents- paid for much of a private company's research. Whirlwind and its descendants were still quite large and slow; the next important change was the development of the transistor and the semi-conductor.

Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments each independently invented the integrated circuit, a way to connect multiple transistors on a single silicon wafer. The integrated circuit lay the foundation for contemporary micro-electronics, including the chips in your personal computer.

Initially, only the government could afford these new devices. In part, this was because only Uncle Sam's military needed these technologies and because the government could afford to wait as private industry learned how to produce these new devices.

Transistors and semiconductors were essential for the nation's ballistic missile and space program and these programs were so important to Uncle Sam that he would spend a great deal of money to make sure they were successful.

So, the answer is simple: our struggle against the Soviet Union gave us the computers and the Internet that are so essential to our commercial survival.

If you want to know more, I suggest reading Paul E. Ceruzzi's "The History of Modern Computing" (Cambridge, Mass, The MIT Press 1998).

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