Some interesting articles from 1963 in Computers and Automation, concerning the growth in the deployment of computers as of 1961. The articles, from the September and October issues, distinguish the US, the UK, and Europe, notably the US usage seems 5 to 7 years ahead, although in all cases we see exponential increase.
The situation in the USA, based upon the census of John Diebold Associates shows the following figures:
Installed at the end of 1960: 4718 machines
Installed at the end of 1961: 7445 machinesConverted into a comparison between the number of machines and the working population exclusive, of agricultural and fishery workers in 1959 (63.2 million), it shows per 1,000,000 of this population in I960, 75 computers and in 1961, 118 computers.
Articles by W. K. de Bruijn, A. B. Frelink, and B. Scheepmaker of the Netherlands Automatic Information Processing Research Centre:
- The Development of the Computer Market in Europe (part 1)
- The Development of the Computer Market in Europe (part 2)
See also, in the same place, by R. H. Williams of Computer Consultants Limited
and, by Joseph L. F. De Kerf of Research Laboratories Gevaert Photo-Producten N.V.
- A Survey of New West-European Digital Computers (part 1)
- A Survey of New West-European Digital Computers (part 2)
“Persons” is actually a measure of the workforce, or of only the commercial and industrial workforce. From the September issue editorial introduction:
In this report, among other ideas, is the statistic or index: number of computers per million persons of the working population (with or without agricultural and fishery workers).
The index at the end of 1961 varies from about 18 in Austria, to about 36 in Germany, Belgium, and France, to about 68 in Switzerland, and 118 in the United States.
…
The future is a long time. Perhaps we had better talk about the next 30 years.In the next 30 years (a period 50 percent longer than the 20 years that have seen the existing development of computers) a great many important new developments can be confidently expected.
The power of computers is increasing. The cost of them is decreasing. The size of them is decreasing. The number of kinds of applications — over 600 now (see the list in the June Computer Directory issue of “Computers and Automation”) — is steadily increasing. The ways in which they can be used are becoming more and more understood and more and more convenient. The size of the computer field in factories, workers, etc. , is bounding upward. Packaged programs are multiplying.
All these factors will greatly increase the number of computers, certainly by a factor of 10, probably by a factor of 100, and perhaps by a factor of 1000.
We see breakdowns by region and country as well as by industry. Many manufacturers and models are named, which for me make for interesting lists.
Also noted is the number of staff needed to make use of a computer - not just the number of users, because things weren’t quite like that.
An investigation into the number of specialists busy with electronic information processing systems in use in institutions of the American government in 1960 reveals a total of some 4000 specialists for 237 computers. This means an average number of 16 specialists per system. The large(r) systems, however, need nearly 50 specialists each. A more, detailed analysis shows the following picture:
8% computer administrators
48% programmers (of all types)
16% computer systems operators
9% peripheral equipment operators
3% electronic technicians, and
16% systems analysts.
There’s a huge need for training, as there is no existing pool of skilled people
If we add to this number the personnel charged with the management of the computer center and those doing creative programming work, the total number of specialists needed by the end of 1970 will be about 210,000.
A larger number will, however, be required, because a considerable number of electronic information processing machines will be on order but not yet installed then. This number, estimated at approximately 3,500 necessitates the training of about 70,000 specialists to make the installation of these computers in the years after 1970 successful.
The magazine issues are on the Internet Archive which usually has pretty good OCR: I’m going to paste some images here and apologise for not giving a textual equivalent.
