Computer capacity trends and order-delivery lags, 1961--1967

This paper examines the growth of computational facilities in the U.S. from the end of 1961 to September of 1967, exploring the dynamics of the growth process and attempting to link it to specific market events. The dynamics of supply and demand for general purpose computational capability points to many problems for both producer and user. This paper considers one of these pertinent to the ordering policy and planning of the firm seeking to acquire EDP equipment for, say, systems conversion; the delivery lag, or average time between equipment orders and delivery. This lag is studied and estimated using two separate empirical models.