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<br />Section 1.02. The Influence of the Electronic Computer <br /> <br />While methods presented in this volume lend themselves to both <br />manual and automatic calculations, it does not necessarily follow that <br />the two approaches are equally suitable for calculating water surface <br />profiles. The influence of the computer has completely revolutionized <br />the engineer's ability to understand and predict the behavior of flow- <br />ing water. It frees the engineer from the time-consuming computations <br />and permits him to focus on solving the problem. <br />These advantages. however. are not obtained without cost. Train- <br />ing is required to learn how to apply computerized techniques. The <br />considerable expense involved in developing a computer program requires <br />that it have a widespread application over a long period of time. The <br />capability of computers changes so rapidly it is impossible to develop <br />procedures that keep abreast of the computer improvements. For this <br />reason, computer programs are constantly modified to accommodate new <br />capabilities. Benefits obtained usually far exceed the costs. <br />Early applications of the computer simply duplicated the manual <br />methods previously used. In recent years. attempts have been. made to <br />utilize computer capability more fully with primary consideration being <br />given to improVing the quality of results, expanding the capability to <br />analyze problems and reducing computation cost. This volume presents <br />techniques which are based upon manual methods but which attempt to <br />minimize the computation time required when computers are utilized. <br />For example, a technique of successive approximations for converging <br />assumed and computed water surface elevations in two or three itera- <br /> <br />1.03 <br />