Printed in U.S.A. Epidemiology and the World Wide Web: Is There a 'Net Benefit?

In the early 1960s, practical epidemiology began to come under the influence of computing power. Before that time, epidemiologists had used ingenious devices such as the edge-punched card and hand-driven and even electrically driven calculating machines, all dependent on well known technology ingeniously applied. Regression analysis of study data was essen-tially unknown because the inversion of matrices beyond 3 x 3 by hand was far too time-consuming or well nigh impossible. Looking toward the future at that time, one would never have envisaged what in fact has taken place over the last 40 years. Large mainframes housed in dedicated buildings beckoned research workers to their halls so that "jobs" could be delivered to the technical staff as a roll o