--- 01DIGITAL COMPUTER TABLE OF CONTENTS COMPUTERS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Hughes Digital Computers for Airborne Control Systems The UNIVAC The ORACLE The FLAC Computer Research Corporation of California The RAND WHIRLWIND I Aberdeen Proving Ground Computers ElectroData Corporation formerly Consolidated Naval Proving Ground Calculators The Institute for Advanced Study Electronic Computer Project COMPUTER COMPONENTS 1 2 ý 4 Non-Magnetic Relay Teleducer The ENIAC The REACON NOTICE 1 DCN News T tem Approved by The Under Secretary of The Navy CLEARINGHOUSE •ri - i 1 i-c' Sif • 22 • prOWA c b bc- b-et Mt Qnt rezcne cnd pXlc 27 August 1951 - it' saic DI CLAIME - THIS DOCUENT IS BEST QUALiTY AVAILABLE TIE COPY FURNISHED TO DTIC CONTAINED A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF DO WHICH PACES 1 iPý--TOD UCJE LEGIBLY REPRODUCED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY NOT THIS DOCUMENT CONTAI1D BLANK PAGES THAT HAVE BEEN DELETED COMPUTERS HUGHES DIGITAL COMPUTERS FOR AIRBORNE CONTROL SYSTEMS Computer Characteristics The latest model Hughes airborne digital computer is a serial general purpose machine with a word length of 16 binary digits plus one sign digit and a digit repetition rate of 160 kc The computer code has 46 orders The orders include addition subtraction multiplication division and square rooting as well as various transfers sign checks etc The memory of the computer is a magnetic crum with a storage capacity of 2500 words The drum rotates at 8000 rpm and the density of magnetic recording is 100 binary digits per inch Input-output equipment for use with the airborne computer can handle up to 50 voltage inputs or outputs Shaft to digital conversion units are also used depending on the system requirements Operational Performance Models of an airborne digital computer have been flight-tested in a C-47 aircraft The computer has been used to automatically control the aircraft through an autopilot Automatic control of the C-47 aircraft by the digital computer was smooth and ccurate A successful autopilot coupler has been built which takes digital outputs from the computer and supplies heading-angle corrections to the autopilot Flight tests have included automatic dead reckoning during flight and programmed flight through a series of preselected points THE UNIVAC Franklin Life Insurance Company of Springfield Illinois will install a Remington Rand UNIVAC in the late Spring of 1954 Charles E Becker Franklin Life's president says We arc convinced that the insurance field in general will not be able to keep up with the continued demand for its services without introducing electronic data-processing equipment to handle the heavy volume of paperwork which future expansion will bring The physical problem of finding enough room for the employees and office equipment needed would be staggering in itself without giving thought to anything else We have been in process of converting our procedures to electronic requirements for some time now Four primary functions will go on the UNIVAC first premium billing and accounting valuation agents' commission calculating and accounting and dividend accounting Others will be added as we go along In premium billing and accounting the UNIVAC will maintain the master file select notices due and prepare them so that they will only have to be placed in a window envelope for mailing and handle the payments as they come in In valuation the system will take care of the computation of reserve liability All the computations and accounting volume in the other functions will also be ' ýdled automatically Current plans for all four of these functions based on present volume will be accomplished in daily operations totaling 10 to 12 hours five days a week-one-and-a-half shifts The UNIVAC staff will total 20 people for both shifts At present this work requires 1200 clerical hours of work every day THE ORACLE The ORACLE is noý basis since February 15 tv electric reader utilizhig be installed until summ stalled in its permanent location and has been on an operating I pt gnetic of a memory Ferranti will ae4 tz pemeans auxiliary photonot a - 6i rm y l D A photographic curve plotter is under development which will afford fast output information of either graphical or digital nature Other high-speed output equipment is under consideration Another project in progress is the design of an automatic checking facility of the odd-even type This feature will check reading from both the electrostatic and auxiliary memories THE FLAC By the end of January 1954 three magnetic wire units had been attached to the Florida Automatic Computer FLAC and placed in reliable operation Final debugging of the interconnections between the Computer proper and the rack containing four Raytheon high speed tape units was in progress FLAC's performance since placed in scheduled operation 1 September 1953 may be summarized as follows FLAC OPERATION LOG SUMMARY Useful Time Prob Running Eng Down Time Oct Nov Dec Jan 93 0% 7 0% 77 0% 23 0% 92 4% 7 6% 87 2% 12 8% 21 0% 49 5% 2 0% 20 5% 22 5% 45 7% 4 3% 4 5% 49 0% 36 4% 5 0% 2 0% 46 0% 38 8% 1 3% 1 1% 93 0% 77 0% 92 4% 87 2% Break Down of Useful Time Problem Running Code Check Good Eng Time Idle Time For Computer Check Scheduled Maintenance Elapsed Time for Month 142 1 hrs 156 0 hrs 153 5 hrs 231 2 hrs COMPUTER RESEARCH CORPORATION of CALIFORNIA The Applications Department of Computer Research Corporation has recently been expanded and is now in the process of making a number of diversified applications studies for the CRC 102-A General Purpose Computer The second CRC 102-A General Purpose Computer was shipped to Holloman Air Force Base on February 19 The number one machine is being kept in the Computing Center at Computer Research Corporation for use in the Applications Department The machine will be used to make case studies of the use of the CRC 102-A It will also be available for problem solution on a contract basis Six CRC 105 Decimal Digital Differential Analyzers are now in use by various government agencies and private companies Their average performance to date has exceeded 90% up time A CRC 127 Magnetic Tape Editing and Printing Unit and a CRC 126 Magnetic Tape Unit have been delivered to the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington for use with the CRC 107 GPC and the High Speed Printer delivered last August THE RAND The RAND computer JOHNNTAC started operating February 16 with a 256 word selectron memory 40 tubes and IBM card input and output A magnetic drum of about 12 000 word capacity is to be delivered in March from the W S Macdonald Company A 4096 word ferrite -3- 1atngnetic core 11eniory IN tiodor' coitnatruction eat Internationtal Toi'mclvr Corporation r or thils year mchoduled to be inntallod in pIlavo of the molectrIrna in Novonien It iu WHUILWPND I Allp I fllt ioflt Duriug the past three monthm tho following problems were Initiated by the Scientific and IEnginooring Computation SAEC Group in conjunction with vnrious departments at MIT for lolthtlon on Whirlwind 1 Title ProLemkin _Noj 154 Magnetic Susceptibility Evaluation 158 Relay Servo Response 159 Wator Use in a Hydroelectric Systt m 160 Similarity rransforntaticn of a Matrix 161 Response of Mass-Plastic Spring System to Transient Loading 162 Determination of Phase Shifts front Experimental Cross-Sections 163 Ferrite Phase Shifters in Rectangular Wave Guide 166 Construction and Testing of a Delta-Wing Flutter Model 167 Products of Batch Distillations with Holdup 168 Indicial Downwash Behind a Two-Dimensional Wing 169 Utilizing a General-Purpose Digital Computer in Switching Circuit Designing Work was also done on other problems described in previous issues The development of the comprehensive system of routines for the input conversion of suitably prepared punched paper tapes has continued These routines automatically provide a program with suitable programmed-arithmetic cycle-counting and output facilities The original system which has been used successfully for more than a year is now being revised to expand the facilities available Academic Program The following seminars on computing machine methods were held Dec 1 1953 'An Interpretive Program for Mathematical Equations Dr 3 H Laning Jr Instrumentation Lab MIT Dec 15 1953 A Mistake Diagnosis Routine for WWI D T Ross Servomechanisms Lab MIT Jan 12 1954 Some Aspects of the Numerical Integration of Ordinary Differential Equations Dr Per-Olav Lldwdin University of Uppsala Sweden -4 - 100 I 23 1054 Sw'vvv i Ciunurc taofly- Aa I Dlhi lgltal Co iputrs Dr i M Vvrzuh 1 hructor Slatistical Serv ices MIT A ser ies of seminis s on advance'd 0rogramm•lKg techniqueit has been organized and presented by mnembers of the Diglta l Computer Laboratory staff Theiw semina rs provide an extension of the lasit' ideas that are presented in thie special two-week Introductory programming cour'e offe'red to iersons who hlave b'een unable to take the more formal MIT courses but who deostre to n'ra rry out Ihe' sohitIon of approved protblems Phlns art being made for two Spe'l al Summer Programs on digital computers to be presented during the 1954 Summer Session One two-week program MIT subject 6 531 will describe the planning and coding needed in using tored-program general-purpose digital computers with special reference to business acpplications The otner program 6 532 will proide a one-week r'-rt'-t of lectures and discussions on automatic coding techninues for a group of experienced computer progrulnmef S ABE RDEEN PROVING GROUND COMPUTERS The ENIAC completed its eighth year as an operating machine in February 1954 A number of basic improvements during this period have enabled the ENIAC to remain efficient to operate Maintenance and administrative expenses cost $32 per available hour of machine time based on 1953 figures The EDVAC high speed tape reader has been installed The EDVAC IBM has been installed The EDVAC IBM input-output has been satisfactorily u ed but is not yet available for 24 hour operation The IBM-CPC has been retired The high speed machines now all have IBM input-output and can satisfactorily handle the former CPC programs An Ordnance Computer Newsletter to be published by the Ballistic Research Laboratories will appear quarterly beginning 15 April 1954 for the purpose of providing an interchange of computer information among the various Army Ordnance installations and their contractors To date about 50 Ordnance installations have requested to be put on the distribution list ELECTRODATA CORPORATION formerly Consolidated The Computer Division of Consolidated Engineering Corporation has become a whollyowned subsidiary of Consolidated with offices at 717 North Lake Avenue Pasadena and a production plant nearby The name of the new firm is ElectroData Corporation The prototype model of the Consolidated 30-201 Computer which continues in operation at the ElectroData plant will be brought up to date with new developments Data-processing systems delivered in late 1954 ElectroData 203 will have punched-card input-output and line-at-a-time printer output in addition to paper tape Flexowrtter and photoelectric paper tape reader Systems delivered earlier are engineered so that they can be modified for punched cards The ElectroData 204 at the beginning of 1955 will be delivered with in addition to the equipment mentioned above one master magnetic-tape unit containing equipment relating the tape medium to the computer and up to nine other tape units controlled by the computer Each magnetic-tape unit will have more than forty times the capacity of the magnetic drum in the computer The prototype model has solved differential equations inverted matrices and performed a variety of w -ta-reduction and statistical computation -5 - t4AVAL PlHOVINQ QIRQU1 CALACULATQR9 The Aiken Relay Calculator Mark II and the Mark Ill Electronic Colculator have been operated on a 24-hour per day schedulo six days a week T1he operating efficiency of the Mark 11 has averaged 91 ptS let and that of the Mark III has averaged 70 percent The Computer Research and Development Group has been engaged in projects designed to imlprove the reliability of the various components in the Calculators Considerable attention has been given to the magnetic tape input-output system and the output printing system for the Mark III Calculator Various tests have also been conducted on the magnetic drum recording symtem in ordor to determine optimum recording current Urgent ballistic comipttatluns of the Bureau of Ordnance still occupy a major portion of In addition to this some other types of computation have ben performed for contractors of the Bureau of Ordnance t0-' ovtilable time of the Calculators The Institute for Advanced Study machine was in full use during the period from December 1953 to date Operating experience with the Williams memory has been extremely good changes made during the relocation of the machine appear to have virtually eliminated slow parameter drifts The 2048 word magnetic drum auxiliary memory is now in full scale operation In addition a division spill indicator was added to the machtne to help control mathematical scaling errors The mathematical group has among other things made a qtite extensive investigation of the decay of a spherical blast wave moving into air The motion was investigated with a starting over-pressure of 99 atmospheres and continued to an over-pressure of about 02 atmospheres The calculations were checked by re-running the problem with a different spatial mesh The results of the calculations are now being analyzed and will be prepared for publication in the very near future The meteorology group continued investigations into mathematical models suitable for numerical prediction and preliminary tests were made with two multi-level non-linear models with encouraging results Forecasts were made with several existing models for the severe East Coast storm of November 5 1953 with very satisfactory predictions of the onset and motion of the storm center COMPUTER COMPONENTS NQN_ MAGNETIC RELAY Development of an electronic relay that promises to be as revolutionary to relay design as the transistor was to vacuum tubes has been announced by Mullenbach Electrical Manufacturing Co Los Angeles The new device called the 'Capaswitch is basically an ultra-sensitive non-magnetic D C relay with unusual current carrying capacity An entirely new operating principle is used to provide the mechanical energy to open and close the contacts Instead oi the conventional electromagnetic armature the Capaswitch uses a unique electrostrictive capacitive element 05 microfarad requiring only 5 milliwatt-seconds of operating power 150 DC volts to close the contacts and less than 1 milliwatt to hold them closed or in many cases only onehundredth of the power required to keep a conventional magnetic-coil relay closed I The electrostatic element may also be used to store minute amounts of energy from a low-energy source until enough has been accumulated to operate the relay To open the contacts the voltage is removed and the electrostatic element is discharged through other circuit elements or a resistor 6-- Thl w OW r ding power requirement permits even the small current from a photo tube to operate the rlay directly without thle use of an intermediate amplifier tube It also permits an extremely sensitive photo-multiplier-type radioactive radiation detector to be built whereby almost zero standby current would be consumed The input resistance of tile electrostatic element is approximately 100 megohms increasing tile value of the Capaswitch in other electronic applications Current capacity of the contacts Is sufficient to carry many direct loads without recourse to additional relay systems TELEDUCER Telecomputing Corporation's TELEDUCER converts analog positive or negative DC voltages into digital form with 0 1% accuracy throughout a continuously variable range from 0 010 to 1 00 volt 1999 counts full scale Three combinations of zero offset voltage are available for each sensitivity range 0 to ±0 1 volt and 0 05 to -0 05 volt The three-digit reading may be simultaneously transferred to a Telecomputing Program Unit for subsequent automatic recordlnr in ta - Tape Perforator typed lists and or punched cards ' Telecomputing Corporation's LINEAR CALIBRATOR is an analog multiplier which performs the linear operation ax± b upon deflections x measured with a Telecomputing record reader and presents the result on calibrated dials for transcription or automatic recording The controls enable a separate zero reference point scale mulqplication factor and sign to be applied to the tracings Telecomputing Corporation's CONTACT TELEREADER is a direct record reading device designed to facilitate measurements from oscillographic tracings The large illuminated viewing area will accommodate transparent or translucent records up to 18 inches in width Smooth synchronization of crosswires and calibrated dials for both axes give a uratc readings that can be easily transcribed or speedily and automatically recorded The Digitester Type 48A has also been developed by this Corporation This device measures resistance voltage and current with laboratory standard accuracy and supplies a direct-reading digital output Voltage Range is 01 to 1000 volts in six steps Current range from 01 milliamperes full scale to 1000 milliamperes in six steps Resistance range 10 ohms to 10 megohms in seven steps Digital Capacity is 999 Maximum Readout time is one second including reset cycle THE ENIAC A static magnetic memory has been designed by the Burroughs Corporation for use as high-speed internal memory for the ENIAC at the Ballistic Research Laboratories Aberdeen Maryland This memory has operated for 3900 hours in the six months since its installation in ENIAC and has stepped up the speed of this computer significantly Burroughs has also developed a new beam switching tube-essentially 10 pentode-like tubes in one envelope-permitting the forming switching or modulating of an electron beam in ten discrete positions Switching times are of the order of a fraction of a microsecond and may be accomplished either consecutively or in random manner These tubes are of long life low-wattaf-e characteristic and of simple mechanical structure THE REACON The REACON high-speed analog-to-digital converter processes analog signals into acceptable binary-digitized form This is recorded on a magnetic tape recorder which provides a permanent accurate record Information can be recorded at high speeds and reproduced at lower speeds for later computation or printing out Upon reproduction of the magnetic tape signals the readout circuitry converts it to a form acceptable to a computer IBM card punch or other device -7 - The REACON high-speed analog-to-digital converter operates with inputs from straingages thermocouples resistance thermometers or any device producing a low levcl DC voltage A digital output count is produced which is proportional to the input voltage The minimum input voltage change to change the output count by one unit is 30 microvolts A typical full scale input voltage is 3 millivolts for an output count of 99 thus having a resolution of 30 mtcrovolts Larger input voltages can be used i e 2 volts for an output count of 999 with a resolution of 2 millivolts If the input is a single channel of information the sampling rate can be varied up to 8000 pieces of information per second If the input is commutated so that a number of different voltages are sampled in sequence the basic sampling rate is 640 samples per second This commutation rate is limited by the speed at which the mercury relays used in the commutator will operate Thus the total period required to sample all inputs is the number of input channels times the reciprocai of the sampling rate for example a 64 channel REACON has a sampling period of one ten'th ol' a second The converter can be operated continuously at pre-selected intervals from ar r tervalometer or at intervals selected manually When operated continuously records will be taken as long as a pushbutton switch is operated when operated manually one set of channels will be recorded each time the pushbutton is operated NOTICE DCN NEWS ITEM Commencing with the January 1954 issue this Newsletter is being republished in the Proceedings of the Association of Computing Machinery These Proceedings may be obtained from the Association of Computing Machinery 2 East 63rd Street New York New York - 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