Abstract
Grady Booch, an IBM fellow, shares his views on the development of computation since his birth during World War II. Colossus, Eniac, and all the inventions and ideas cascaded from that era) and grew up during the Cold War. From LEO (Lyons Electronic Office, perhaps the first commercial computer) to the IBM 360 (the dominant machine of business in the '60s and '70s) to today's cloud (which has made entirely new business models possible), computing and industry have coevolved. We no longer require legions of human computers to balance our books or keep track of our accounts, for we have the means to achieve just-in-time accounting as well as global supply chains with instantaneous tracking. Computing has played a fundamental role in the advancement of the human spirit, not just in the domains of war and commerce but also in the arts, the sciences, society, and faith. In the arts, computing has transformed the entertainment industry. We can build models of reality and perform experiments on them, thereby leading us to a better understanding of the world.