I Became a Plutocrat in World War I: Starting with Saving France-Chapter 742: Storing Data

Professor Fursden, who had considerable experience with vacuum tubes, quickly understood Shire’s intention.

He looked at the circuit on the table and said thoughtfully:

"This is just a simple single-digit addition operation, and we’ve used dozens of vacuum tubes."

"If we face more complex calculations, we might need thousands or even tens of thousands of vacuum tubes."

"Such a large and fragile system, a single bug entering could cause a short circuit, leading to catastrophic damage to the machine."

(The picture above is the first practical computer ENIAC, which used a total of 17,458 vacuum tubes, 7,200 diodes, and more than 7,000 resistors and tens of thousands of capacitors. The computing speed is negligible by modern standards, completing 5,000 additions or 400 multiplications per second.)

Once again, Shire felt he hadn’t chosen the wrong people.

Shire might not have Turing nor Von Neumann.

But Shire possessed knowledge from the modern era, he knew the direction of research, understood the principles, and knew which path was certain to work, reducing many trial and error costs.

Additionally, he could gather talents, physicists, cryptography experts, chemists, etc.; on this basis, inventing the computer was not a difficult task.

Professor Fursden looked up at Shire: "But vacuum tubes aren’t cheap, General, each one costs at least 50 francs."

This was determined by the limited demand for vacuum tubes at the time.

Low market demand meant small production volumes, and manufacturers, unable to profit from low margins, had to increase the unit price to ensure survival.

"Rest assured," Shire replied promptly: "It depends on how many you need. My point is, I will provide the funding you need, everything, including the talent."

This wasn’t a small amount, but Shire knew it was worthwhile, it was the lifeblood of the future.

Professor Fursden and Lieutenant Pan Wan showed joyous expressions.

The preliminary success of the experiment gave them confidence, and now with Shire’s financial support, they saw hope.

For a scientist, nothing is more important than freely exploring within the field of knowledge.

After a moment of excitement, Pan Wan frowned again:

"But we seem unable to store the data."

"I mean, once the calculation results are produced, a power outage would cause all the data to disappear."

"Next time we calculate, we would have to re-enter the data and calculate again."

This is where Turing’s use of mechanical components excels, as it doesn’t require storage devices.

Because even when powered off, the "pointer" of mechanical components remains in its position and doesn’t reset, effectively storing the data.

The difference with vacuum tubes is that once powered off all data disappears.

And vacuum tubes of this period are very fragile, long-term power supply causes heating, burning, which makes using constant power to store data unfeasible.

Professor Fursden also frowned: "If each time we have to manually record and manually input, it would waste too much time and hinder data retrieval, this is a troublesome problem..."

Before he finished speaking, Shire provided the answer: "We can use punch tape."

"Punch tape?" Professor Fursden and Pan Wan were stunned, they had no concept of it.

Could problems be solved with tape?

"Yes, punch tape." Shire answered confidently: "Paper is insulated, gentlemen. We punch holes at the positions of ’1’ to allow electricity to pass through, and leave the positions of ’0’ unpunched, using this method to automatically complete data input."

Fursden and Pan Wan stared wide-eyed in surprise.

Before long, Professor Fursden seemed to understand:

"Upon output, the components with electric current control the machine to punch holes in the tape, thus completing data storage."

"My God, you’re a genius, General."

"To think of such a simple yet effective method, and more importantly, it’s very cheap."

Pan Wan agreed: "Yes, it’s just tape. I feel we can already create it. Unbelievable, we can progress so quickly."

While speaking, Pan Wan’s expression was somewhat awkward.

This was essentially Shire’s idea and initiative from the concept’s inception.

What he and Fursden did could easily be replaced by others.

Professor Fursden also had similar concerns, although he didn’t say it, he couldn’t help but think: could this research still be counted as theirs? Essentially it’s Shire’s.

"Don’t worry." Shire dispelled their concerns: "You know I have many things to do, and my time here is extremely limited. Future research work needs to be completed by you, thus the patent will certainly include your share."

This motivated the two to immerse themselves fully in the research, just like a company giving employees bonuses.

Shire wanted control, while Fursden and Pan Wan could only gain money.

Perhaps due to the excitement of taking the first step, the three didn’t eat dinner that day, working until after nine in the evening.

During this time, Shire proposed another data storage method: using batteries to keep the output terminals powered, it could even be portable and used to quickly input intermediary data into another program.

This is the memory of modern computers, while punch tape is the hard drive.

The principles are similar, but over time they have developed to be vastly different and incomparable.

...

By the time they left the laboratory, it was already late at night.

The factory area was different from Paris.

Paris, the City of Light, had fallen into darkness due to a lack of supplies, but the factory area, worried about espionage and intelligence gathering, remained lit throughout the night, with patrols by troops occasionally passing by.

As soon as Shire stepped out, Major Laurent rushed out of the guardroom: "General, there’s something, something I believe I must tell you."

Shire was puzzled, what could be urgent enough to make Laurent so worried? He had always confidently believed "everything is under control."

Major Laurent hesitated for a moment, then made up his mind: "General Gallieni just finished surgery, it’s possible he may be in a life-threatening situation."

"What?" Shire instantly felt a chill, glaring at Laurent: "When did this happen?"

"In the afternoon." Laurent replied: "General Gallieni didn’t want anyone to tell you, saying it was just a minor operation, but it seems that wasn’t the case..."

"Car?" Shire saw the parked car just as he spoke, and ran toward it while ordering: "Immediately go to Paris!"

Actually, no order was needed, Laurent was already running to the car, fetching the crank to start the engine.

As the car drove on the highway, Shire fell into deep self-reproach.

How could he forget this!

Gallieni had a failed surgery once and soon underwent another.

This was what angered Xia Fei to death.

Now, Xia Fei was gone, would history repeat itself?