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National Geographic : 1970 Nov
Contents
seat, six-way power-adjustable seat; eight types of steering wheels .... The computer ar ranges for the right parts to reach the right assembly-line station at just the right moment. How many 1970 Oldsmobiles could con ceivably be made here, without any being exactly like the other? The programmer winces; not every option can go into every model. He takes eight hours to prepare a program, and 18 seconds of computer time. The answer is 61,758,733,548,151,070,414. What else lies ahead? A lot of computer ized paying of bills. Say you keep an account in the bank and make a purchase in a shoe store. The clerk takes your bank credit card, inserts it into an attachment on his Touch Tone telephone, and punches in the amount. The bank automatically de ducts that from your account, and credits it to the account of the store. Gas and electric meters will People-picture of megalopolis Fed a meal of geography and census figures, a computer prints out a diagram of the northeastern United States showing population densities as mountain peaks (identified in the inset sketch). The graph demonstrates how the computer can transform naked numbers into meaningful displays. KEY TO COMPUTER - DRAWN PICTURE NEW YORK 622
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