t DIGITAL COMPUTER YNEWSLETTER OF NAVAL IR MEA CIU Q Vol 7 No 4 • % • PRU YSICAL SCIEN CES SOFFICE NIVISION October 1955 Editor Albrecht 3 Neumann TABLE OF CONTENTS COMPUTERS U S A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Page No Aberdeen Proving Ground Computers IBM Data Processing Center The Institute for Advanced Study Electronic Computer Project Johnniac Rand Corporation Georgia Institute of Technology Rich Electronic Computer Project National Bureau of Standards Automatic Computer SEAC Naval Air Missile Test Center Point Mugu California Naval Air Test Center Patuxent River Maryland Naval Proving Ground Calculators Nuclear Development Associates Inc MIDAC University of Michigan ORACLE Oak Ridge National Laboratory PENNSTAC The Pennsylvania State University REMINGTON RAND Automatic Programming Whirlwind I 1 2 2 3' 3 4 4 5 5 -5 6 77 7 8 9 COMPUTERS OVERSEAS 1 2 Elliott Brothers London Limited DERA The Darmstadt Electronic Digital Computer D D _ COMPONENTS 1 IBM Input-Output Equipment 2 3 S4 4W 9 11 ' New Elecom 50 Input-Output Equipment Available Punched Card Reader Wang Laboratories Analog-Digital Converters • 9 MISC ELLANEOUS 1 Burroughs Research Center Expansion 2 Elecom 125 Programming Course 3 Electrodata Moves Into New Plant 4 New Head of Research Division Ferranti Electric Limited 5 Contributions Wanted For Digital Computer Newsletter Approved by The-Under Secretary of the Navy 16 August 1954 Best Available COPY Reproduced by the CLEARINGHOUSE for Fede ral Scientific Technical Information Springfield Va 22151 14 14 14 14 15 -- has been -pvd up r o t pNiSO relbas and sale i s P is lnb •• 1•y 1 7 QALIT AV - ILABLEA Id CY D J IJ T7 '3 THIS DOCV1 1NT CONTAINED FRO REPRODUCED BESTAVAILABLE COPY BANK P AGES THAT HAVE BEEK DELETED COMPUTERS U S A AI•vtt KKN PHOVINO kiRltINID COMPUTKItS 1110 nhino houri for the three highispeed tomputerm for The 61l1h4wlns 1s6141uh a 1hw the ths morage wook for thi 1wri'hd 0100 110 MAY 1ON5 to 010 0 It Austup 1056i tIIII VAC WD VAC KNIAC 1 1111 mprovonientia 04 0170 Val 3 Ku11netlnecing lervit'llut 3W 73 25 95 50 30 Total Knitlllol'Ilg 4 0 29 1611 53 11 1 Coeo Chot'king 18 5 14 53 0 33 1 Protiuction 51 51 72 14 5 38 Toital Chargoeabl 77 70 9d 07 5 70 0 10 3 31 1 48 24 70 20 06 3 06 31 02 32 27 3 54 13 14 21 95 98 g6 0 76 0 39 6 99 168 00 168 00 168 00 A KnginiI•r 1 Nyssie 11 chargeoble l'l 111 C Non-Chal'geable Time Due To 1 Matchine Caues 3 Non-Mahithne Causes Total Non-Chargeable D Idle Time K Standby Time GRAND TOTAL A synchronous magnetic drum for EDVAC was placed in operation in March 1955 The drum was designed and built by BRL personnel It has a total capacity of 4 608 words Transfor to and front the drum takes place at a pulse rate of one million per second at the actual transfer rAte exclusive of acces time is approximately 20 000 words per second The average access time is 15 milliseconds There is no fixed block length Any number of words from I to 384 may be transferred with one order The lt and 3rd address of EDVAC's four-address code determine the number of words to be transferred The second address specifies the location around the circumference and the fourth address specifies the channel Regular computing on ECVAC utilizing the drum has proved the reliability of the drum A magnetic drum storage system was added to the ORDVAC in July 1955 This system provides 10 032 words of auxiliary medium-acceas storage and it greatly increases the computing capability of ORDVAC Transfer of information is carried out in blocks of 48 words One operation may involve any 48 consecutive locations in the electrostatic storage and any one of 209 possible tracks on the drum The time required to carry out one drum transfer operation is about 80 milliseconds IBM DATA PROCESSING CEINTER International Business Machines Corporation has opened its new electronic data processing center on the main floor of the company's headquarters in New York City The center contains a complete lineup of high-speed digital computers and data processing equipment Included are -1 - thep IBM 7011 7011 and lf 050 ' olovirimb ilIdIA ru'Vots 11 nMAIhIlloo as oil am amnal lor uinodiu ii sed 010IV011 roIAti 'i'lnt OV 04 'Fitio voroampi ''nint o of niattahinom mnakeas ovaliahie tin ant houirly t'hargo baots the iat-A 1 tota fil 86't nt ifit' ma1natieflint tit 4 411pattipa which do not fleed full ti mo dtata proo logo fat'lltiotne of okwh vilpae'it and olwoen and Ito companlion whose own tooltitlt h are overlosded ror manjor tioninemas oppliwatiotim thort' toetho 7011 Which tosavoilable for rental ai t ha bsit hsotrly 'harit of $445' votr lorge sc'alp au'iotiflu' andI onginvorinhg c'alculations thore In a 701 It has beoon Aavilable on%an hoork elharge Iatia ol Al MIBM hondquartors In Now York for over two yenar andi operatingl around the clock has handled a variety tif vomplex Aassilloniento for businvasl tin dustry and sovernnment ForI either buuiness or scientifiv work on a smnaller scale the center han a 650 Magnetic Drum machine It is the first of Its type to be shown publicly by IBM in Now York City The 650 a card-input card-output mavtame will now alaso be avaliablo ats a tape-operatod machine with a printer output Also in the processing center are smaller accountIng mavhines such as the 604 Electronic Calcu ator-votAtng $15 ani hour-and other punch card equipment One of thoen machines In the t9M Data Transceiver which permits companie to make rapid use of the center' proces- ing facilities front romoto points Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pifttburgh in currently using the center's 701 via Transceiver to solve engineering design and development problems TrHE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY Electronic Computer Project Since higher speeds will be useful In a future computing machine design a program has been under way to evaluate possible speed increases tii the basic opera tions of which the various orders are composed Initially a parallel machine of the simplest type will be assumed leaving for later consideration those speed-ups which can be accomplished by using greater complexity e g matrix or semi-matrix multipliers- allowing more than one process to occur a given time Setc For convenience one may think of the basic machine operations as consisting of either serial information transfers or parallel itformation transfers The parallel transfersi are further divided Into those within the arithmetic unit and those between the arithmetic unit and the memiory Three basic operations are then distinguished 1 serial or carry ope %itions 2 parallel or shift operations and 3 memory access or cycle time A significant improvement in carry speed has been achieved partly by using fast gating circuitry but more importantly by using the average properties of carry sequences It has been shown that on the average the longest carry sequence resulting from the addition of two 40 digit num bers is only five stages In most present adders time is always allowed for a possible 40 stage carry A circuit has been developed here which provides a signal whenever actual carries are complete and therefore utilizea the above average time saving of 8 to 1 An eight stage experimental accumulator has been built embodying this carry circuit Measurements show an average carry time of 0 21 microsecond A majer revision of the input-output organ of the LAS machine has been planned This revision was In part dictated by the acquisition of a new drum of 12 000 word capacity Provision is being made for handling not only the new drum but also the existing BMU input-output an well an posuible future tape x'quipment The new organ consists of a common control and buffering register in one cabinet and the specialized drum 113M and possible tape controls in their own cabinets -2- JOHNNIAC Rand Corporation The JOHNNIAC computling system is essentially complete now except for tape units which are t o be added this winter At present the JOHNNIAC has pinchied cartd input punched card and ai 000 line-p•r-minute printer output 4 096 word core store and ak13 361 word magnetic drum It also ham a combined operator's and maintenance console In additton to onntrolling the opration of the machine the operator's section of the console has facilities for displaying and moidifying the i'ontelti of any register by means of a novel octal display kad keyboard nringolemni The maintenance sectioh of the console has provision for monitoring or changing the Mtato of tiny Itngge in the arithmetic and control sections in addition it houses manual marginal testing core stort tosting and supervisory control facilities Meian free tlim between error figures for the past two months of operation 327 hours nf operable tinie are stated below for the sections of the machine which are considered completed and debugged All units except the drum and console are listed Mean free time between errors in hours auction Arithmetic and Control AC and DC power supplies and Control Equipment Printer Punched Card Equipment Core Store 109 10 t0o 47 33 Tho mean free time figure for the core store is approximately 100 hours if the tube #5965 failurea described in the next paragraph are not counted The 4096 word core store is now in its fifth month of operation The mean free time between errors for operable time during the first four months was 37 hours During one month 128 hours there were no errors ascribable to the core store The low average mean free time figure 37 hours for the core store is due to the failure of 21 of sixty-five #5965 tubes from a particular manufactuver The failures were caused by insufficient heater coatUng which resulted in shorted he-iter loops which in turn resulted in a higher voltage gradient across the remainder of the heater After a few hundred hours the heaters became brittle enough to open under a aligt mechanical shock #5965 tubes from two other manufacturers are used in the store and have given satisfactory service The JOHNNIAC is presently operated on a two-shift per day basis The per cent computer operable time of scheduled computing time on single shift operation for the past two months has been 90% The per cent operable time of power on time has been 79% Operable time Is scheduled computing time minus uqeheduled maintenance time and problem rerun time due to machine errors Scheduled computing time is the period currently 7-1 2 hours per shift during which the machine is turned over to the users and is power on time minus scheduled maintenance and engineering change time GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Rich Electronic Computer Center Georgia Tech recently completed and occupied an addition to its Research Building which houses the Rich Electronic Computer Center a division of the Engineering Experiment Station Both an ERA 1101 computer and a CRC 102D computer were installed during August Machine time is now available for sponsors Under the direction of Dr E K Ritter who came to Georgia Tech from the directorship of the Computation and Ballistics Department of the U S Naval Proving Ground at DWhlgren Virginia an experienced staff has been organized to conduct a thi ee-phase program 1 Education in all phases of high-speed digital computation 2 Research in the field of electronic digital computers and 3 Service to industry business and government The technical staff of the Rich Electronic Computer Section includes Dr W F Atchison W A Bezaire J T Collins BarbarA J Daniels Dr B M Drucker R E Eskew W W Jackson E W Manseau T R Morel Dr I E Perlin C P Reed Jr G E Sprague -3- NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS AUTOMATIC COMPUTER SEAC During the period April I through June 20 SNAC was used for 51 tuaks in progress In the Applied Mathematics Division Schedules computation time was distributed as follows Total scheduled time available for computation Gross operating Ui e Productive operation 837 hours Code checking 183 hours Time lost during or following malfunction 1 333 hours 1 000 hours - 333 hours Contilftblo k e has been made nf an Iinterpretive system for handling numbers in floating decimal point representation called Base 00 It includes single nstructions fnr porformir - ths arithmetic operatione log x 4x binary-to-decimal conversion decimal-to-binary conversion sin x coe x xn ex movement of a block of numbers and comparisons A technical memorandum describing the operation and use of this system ha- been prepared On an experimental basis the following subroutines and supervisory routines have also been included in the Base 00 system 1 a supervisory routine for accelerating the rate of convergence of certain iterative processes 2 a supervisory routine for quadratic interpolation 3 a general purpose routine for generating iterative loops The n code words which are to be repeated with suitable modifications are preceded by a single word whose first three addresses are n m and p This word indicates that the n succeedifn words instructions are to be repeated either m times or until tho number in cell p is less than the number in cell m The addresses in each instruction being repeated can be modified each time the instruction Is repeated and the specifications for these modifications are carried by each instruction Itself An an example a table of values yi - exi I I - l l m can be computed from tables of xi and zi using the Iterative loop generator and o-dy three computer instructions NAVAL AIR MISSILE TEST CENTER Point Mugu California A contract has been awarded to Computer Control Companyi Inc for the derign and development of Input and Output terminal equipment for the RAYDAC computer at the U S Naval Air Missile Test Center Completion date is scheduled for December 1957 The equipment will provide for directly connected IBM card Input in decimal binary and alphanumeric form High speed paper tape and electronic inputs from special coded sources will also be available RAYDAC will be able to directly load 8 words into core storage for output line printing or card punching Printing will be decimal or alphanumeric with very flexible format control Punching will be decimal binary or alphanumeric Alternatively the line printer or punch can be connected to an auxiliary magnetic tape for larger amounts of output Checking features comparable to the powerful checking used in RAYDAC will be incorporated in the new facilities Mr Robert W Brooks has recently been elected President of Computer Control Company Inc Mr Kenneth M Rehler Vice President will represent the company in West Coast operations Dr Louis Fein has resigned from the company An IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Calculator was installed 29 April 1955 and has been in operation since that date Initial project of subroutine setup and programming of standard jobs has been completed Current effort is being applied to a three address interpretative routine and completion of matrix harmonic analysis and polynomial solution rouUnes -4 - NAVAL AIR TEST STATION Patuxent River Maryland The Naval Air Test Center expects to receive delivery early in November 1955 of a Datatron electronic digital computer Receipt of this equipment will provide the nucleus of a digital computing facility for the Naval Air Test Center The facility will operate under the direction of Mr R A Sweet of Armament Test for the Naval Air Test Center The facility will use perforated paper tape am the input medium which will be read into the computer via an ElectroData high speed photo-electric purforated tape reader The equipment will be used in the processing of expurimental test data obtained by the various divisions of the Naval Air I eat Center in valuating new naval aircraft and their armament control systems It is planned to add magnetic tape auxiliary storage and input-output facilities to the installation early in 1956 The installation of this equipment will be the first phase of a longer term plan to mechanize as completely as possible the data reduction processes at the Naval Air Test Center The over-all plan envisioned includes magnetic tape recording of tCe raw data using airborne recording equipment This data will then be edited and digitized in ground based facilities and recorded on a second magnetic tape in a form compatible with the magnetic tape inputs of the Electro-Data computer NAVAL PROVING GROUND CALCULATORS The Naval Ordnance Research Calculator NORC has been in productive operation at the Naval Proving Ground since early July 1955 During July 117 hours of scheduled calculator time were used to compute or check programs for some thirteen different problems Checking of subroutines and further refinemert and checking of the NORC compiler was also carried out Two-shift operation of NORC was initiated on 1 August 1955 and training of maintenance and operating personnel is being performed toward an objective of three-shift operations The schedules for the Aiken Relay Calculator ARC and the Aiken Dahlgren Electronic Calculator ADEC have been changed to 8 and 12 hours per day respectively NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENTf ASSOCIATES INC Automatic Inventory Control System Nuclear Development Associates Inc White Plains N Y have custom designed an automatic inventory control system for the Otis Elevator Company The system although primarily designed for inventory control is also capable of performing other office routines such as automatic purchase order preparation andpayroll computation Information regarding withdrawals from inventory receipts and purchase orders placed is typed into the system during the normal working day In this particular case seven input typewriters are provided although this number is determined by the work load only and is not limited by the system itself During the night the system then digests this information and automatically types out all required information ready for further use at the start of the next working day This information Includes a list of all Inventory items which must be re-ordered and the quantity to be ordered a list of all items which are on shortage the manufacturing orders affected by these shortages and the purchase orders outstanding for these items Thus pu chasing expediting and production scheduling are greatly simplified The system determines when and how much to re-order by calculating the most economical quantity of each item to be kept in inventory This calculation takes into account the base price and quantity discount schedule for each item its past usage over the lasL 15 months and the fluctuations in that usage the future business forecast the lead time of the item and the costs of maintaining inventory placing purchase orders and clearing up shortages Apart from its daily output the system also maintains a continuous up-to-date record of all items in inventory their usage amount on hand and on order open orders outstanding and other pertinent information 5 - L MIDAC University of Michigan Beginning July 1 1955 because of the necessity for keeping up with the computational load originsfir g in the Engineering Research Institute and from graduate students and staff members of the University of Michigan the MIDAC began operation on a 168-hour week During the month of July despite the availability of only two full-time engineers for maintenance of the computer the MIDAC operated productively for an average of 75% or 126 hours of each 168-hour week During August the percentage was 74% Major trouble continued to be from input-output with magnetic drum relay switching and acoustic-delay line storage following in order of difficulties encountered Very little down time could be traced to the packaged electronic circuitry in the central computer Because of performance of one problem requiring complete checking of all storage and input-output a complete log of all machine errors was otitained over periods ranging up to 24 hours of consecutive machine operation time The MAGIC I Michigan Automatic General Integrated Computation system o0 automatic coding a translater-compiler-assembler has been in use now for over six months while the EASIAC Easy Instruction Automatic Computer an automatic coding scheme of the translaterinterpreter type has been in use for over a year The MAGIC scheme provides for storage of commonly used subroutines on the MIDAC magnetic drum complete conversion and translation of external numbers and instructions in decimal and floating address form to internal binary and associated punch-out mistake diagnosis and post mortem routines called in automatically All newcomers to MIDAC coding are trained using this system and almost no use is made of the machine's original hexadecimal notation The EASIAC system is a completely decimal floating point number scheme with seven B-lines floating address instructions standard square root trigonometric exponential and logarithmic functions as operations and complete mistake analysis built in Although it operates relatively slowly nevertheless it has been used successfully in instructing students in all University classes before moving on to the more complicated MAGIC notation Work continues on the MIDAC subroutine library which includes all standard functions and task routines for all matrix operations fixed and floating point integration of ordinary differential equations determination of eigenvalues a complex number interpretive routine automatic rollback procedures and numerous programs coded by students or staff members on research problems Recent additions to the machine include a parity check on all words entering or leaving high-speed acoustic delay-line storage an automatic memory sum of all information transferred to and from secondary drum storage and modification of a standard Ferranti papertape reader to use photodiodes located just below the sensing holes A new drum combined with increased packing density of information is to be added to the computer in October with a resulting increase in secondary storage of over 25 000 words Four University courses now make use of the computer's facilities for educational purposes Methods in High-Speed Computation I Computer Programming Methods in High-Speed Computatton II Numerical Analysis Digital Computer Technology and Digital Computers for Air Force Officers Over 85 students actually solved problems using one of the two coding systems mentioned above on the MIDAC In addition computations on MIDAC were integral parts of three Ph D theses during the past school year From August 1 through 12 160 persons attended the University's third annual Special Summer Conference in Digital Computers and Data Processors The sessions were divided in three headings Engineering and Logical Design Business Data Handling and Scientific and Engineering Computation Students had available for programming instruction sessions on the MAGIC and EASIAC systems and on the IBM-650 Bendix G-15 and UNIVAC 120 computers all of which were available for actual operation Seventeen representatives of computing and data-processing groups around the country operating such machines as ILLIAC and ORACLE Whirlwind I SEAC UNIVAC ERA-1103 IBM-701 IBM-702 IBM-650 ElectroData Datatron CRC- 102 Eltiott Brothers WREDAC and MIDAC gave a series of Reports from the Users to the group These reports taken by verbatim stenotypist transcription are being incorporated in an approximately 1000-page set of notes being edited by J W Carr and Norman Scott and including a description of all lectures given over the two-weeks' period Copies of the notes -6 - may be purchased from Special Summer Conferences College of Engineering University Michigan Ann Arbor Mich The following problems indicate the range and variety of uses of the MIDAC over the past six-months period Design of a Traveling-wave tube English-to-French Automatic Dictionary Simulation of Traffic Behavior at a Traffic-Light Intersection Transients in a Nuclear Reactor Ca culation of Light-Scattering from Spheroidal Particles Monte-Carlo Calculation of Semi-Conductor Energy-Levels Analysis of Logical Networks Pipe Stresses in a Steam-Generating Plant Multi-Component Distillation Column Analysis Predictions oz uycies m Economic Theory Development of a File System for Military Use Design of Lenses by Bending Calculation of Thermodynamic Tables for Freon Probit Analysis of Vision Experiments Mutation Rate Study for Atom-Bomb Victims Optical Reflection Coefficients of a Diffraction Grating Dispersion of Cosmic Rays in Atmosphere Composition of Sun's Interior ORACLE Oak Ridge National Laboratory Installation and testing of the magnetic tape memory for the Oracle was completed in June and the new unit is now being used operationally The unit contains four tape drives with the following characteristics Tape width 2 inches 42 channels Tape speed 47 inches per second Packing density- 100 pulses per inch Block length 128 words per block 40 binary bits per word Tape length 2 41 inches per block including dead space for start up and stop Of the 42 channels 40 are for information one channel for control and one channel is used for an odd-even parity check bit A full reel of 1 200 feet of tape will store approximately 800 000 Oracle words of 40 bits each Although words are packed 128 per block an arbitrary number of words may be written or read in either direction on the tape PENNSTAC The Pennsylvania State University Wiring of the PENNSTAC memory is complete and engineering activity is now concentrated on placing the memory in operating condition Wiring of the arithmetic and control units is still under way but is expected to be completed shortly Wiring of the console is also to be completed soon The design of the input-output equipment is in progress and preliminary tests of this equipment are being made The air conditioning equipment has arrived and is being installed Dr Donald Laird has begun to consider preparation of programs for PENNSTAC and will act an chief programmer for the machine Prof Carl Volz and Mr Channing Morrison are designing the input-output circuitry -7 - REMINGTON RAND Automatic programmin g The development of electronic dictionaries or automatic programming for Remington Rand Univac Systems turning months of problem preparation time into a matter of minutes is announced by Remington Rand's Electronic Computer Department Automatic programming tried and tested since 1950 eliminates communication with the computer in special code or language Use-s can use their own common language in terms of mathematicians' equations and symbols or ir plain everyday business English The automatic program in effect is a dictionary permitting the machine to translate succintly expressed programmers' wishes into routines of instructions -automatically swiftly and with complete accuracy It is not a piece of equipment but a new and powerful programming technique Two basic types of automatic programming have been developed and designed for the Univac interpretive routines and compiling routines or compilers Interpretive routines which translate a master program into computer code and at the same time perform the required operations are especially useful in mathematical and scientific work Commercial programs prepdration make use of the compiling routine which translates the master program into computer code and records the finished program for further Purposes The compilinkg routine decodes the master program selects standard sub-routines from its dictionary ' generates other sub-routines where necessary allocates memory space assembles all the sub-routines into a finished program and finally records the program on magnetic tape The program tape prepared by the compiler is then used in the processing of information The compiling routine is particularly adaptable to industry business and commerce Two automatic programs of the interpretive type-the Short-Order Code and the Analytical Differentiator-are available The Short-Order Code is in effect an engineering electronic dictionary and the Analytical Differentiator is a mathematical electronic dictionary The Short-Order Code actually is an interpretive routine designed for the solution of one-shot mathematical and engineering problems The Analytical Differentiator is an interpretive routine used for solving problems in higher mathematics The A-2 Compiler another electronic dictionary first released In 1952 is widely used in the solution of scientific and engineering problems Familiarity with the Univac Code is not required the programmer lists the operations he wants performed in what is known as pseudocode in which three letters or numbers may specify a routine of hundreds of Univac instructions The A-2 Compiler has been used to produce Univac programs for such diversified problems as the design of a nuclear reactor studies of bearing lubricant for industrial research institutes studies of equipment mortality for a large public utility involving complex mathematical analysis prepared in six minutes the characteristics and behavior of gases in a jet stream under about 1 900 sets of conditions prepared and ready in ten minutes Three other automatic programs of electronic dictionaries are currently in the final stages of development Generalized Programming Bior and B-zero the Data-Processing Compiler All three are designed to reduce further the time required for programming and increase the accuracy of overall data -process ing operations B-zero the Data-Processing Compiler is a general purpose compiler that does not require familiarity with the Univac in any way It will accept pseudo-codes ranging from mathematical notation for scientific problems to plain business English for commercial problems Insurance chemical steel and appliance manufacturing companies are current users of Remington Rand automatic programming The development of automatic programming - electronic dictionaries -makes the comnputer do the actual work of instructing itself eliminating the tedious and time-consuming programming work of analysis processing coding writing and checking programs of instructions for electronic computers -8- WHIRLWIND I Applications During April to June the F tentific and Engineering Computation Group in conjunction with various departpnents at MIT processed 74 problems for solution on Whirlwind I Tbes3 problems are described in the Project Whirlwind Summary Reports submitted to the Office of Naval Research and cover some 18 different fields of applications The results of 27 of the problems have been or will be included in academic theses Of these 19 represent doctorate theses 3 Engineering 7 master's and one bachelor's Thirty-three of the problems have originated from research projects sponsored at MIT by the Office of Naval Research Academic The Digital Computer Laboratory programming course was given once during this quarter The course includes the following topics relative addresses temporary storage floating addresses preset parameters programmed arithmetic cycle counters buffer storage automatic output post mortems and multipass conversion The text for the course is a programmer's manual written by staff members of the Scientific and Engineering Computation Group The 26 students enrolled during this quarter represented the following groups Department of Business and Engineering Administration School of Industrial Management Department of Nuclear Engineering Spectroscopy Laboratory Laboratory for Nuclear Science Naval Supersonics Laboratory Chemical Engineering Department Physics Department Solid State and Molecular Theory Group Aeronautical Engineering Department and Lincoln Laboratory COMPI PTERS OVERSEAS ELLIOT BROTHERS LONDON LIMITED ELLIOTT 402 ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTER The first production model of the Elliott 402 Electronic Digital Computer as described in the April 1955 edition of the Digital Computer Newsletter has now been running at the lI stitut Blaise-Pascal Paris for nearly six months On installation this computer completed one week's acceptance tests without a single fault Another production 402 has been running at Elliott's Research Laboratories at Borehamwood Hertfordshire for two months this raises the strength of Elliott's computing service to three computers the others being a laboratory-built 402 and an earlier machine Further 402 models are under construction Elliott are now supplying computers at the rate of one 402 or its equivalent per month ELLIOTT 403 ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTER This computer consist of an assembly of 22 cabinets containing 640 standardized plug-in units as used in the 402 incorporating 1 600 tubes a magnetic disc store of 16 384 34-digit words capacity a quick access store consisting of 512 words on magneto-st rictive nickel delay lines two magnetic tape units nialne-isolated stabilized power supplies and a built-in control console This machine was built to a customer's specification ELLIOTT 405 ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTER The Elliott 405 Unit-Construction Business Computing System wad announced at the May 1955 National Conference of the Office Management Association This system is primarily intended for business accounting and data-processing applications - 9 - TI couI iJisN ui it i1tSIh' unilt oyntNIWall C migh 0 1l whhlil 410 rite1111 othlir MillIs 111tiI thIl11l1 or Storago ' in hr vonnlvti pit the adillhttnal unito beinlt %shimonloitweol the no1d lit th tndidvht jaal user IFurther units tt ii It ailded 4s reiulroipntn dh lael 333 000 per mpootid D1ttil Kate Word Longth Word Tinto 34 dItils 31 ait'tlvp A S#4i t101 intireovutd Addition sublratilthn ete 1O 01inaoee'tds Multip•ication and divisittn indopendent of aslgn 3 3 miiseonisds SYSTEM CNTR% - 3 cabinets This is a self-tonti1ned basic computer including a polwor unilt Pontrol a d arithninoti functions and 128 words of quick access nickel delay-lint atorago Addtional power units may be required for large installationh CONTROL UNIT - Three alternative control units are available these are a a pmall unit abot typewriter aise containing only the essential operating controls b a console similar to that used in the 402 computer with oetensive monitoring and test facilities two cabinots c a console deqigned for the 405 but separated from the computer which has comprehensive lamp displays as well as operating and teot facilities INPUT UNITS - Teleprinter tape readers are available at a spoed of 150 teleprinter characters per second A Punched Card Reader I cabinet reads standard 65 or 80 column cards at a speed of 000 per minute The card feed is a single-shot operation directly under computer comtrol MEMORY UNITS Additional quick access nickel delay line storage uU to a maximum of 512 words is available Usually this 'inside storage' is part of another unit The magnetic drum storage unit as used in the 402 - 2 cabinets and the magnetic disc storage unit as used in 403 - 3 cabinets each include 128 words of nickel line storage Drum capacity is 32 tracks each containing 128 words Total 4 096 words Speed of rotation 4 600 r p m Disc capacity is 64 tracks each containing 256 words Total 16 384 words Speed of rotation 2 300 r p m ANCILLARY MEMORY UNITS - The Elliott Multi-chanmel Magnetic Film Unit 2 cabinets uses 35 mm film coated with magnetic oxide as memory device Each 1 000-ft reel of film contains 300 000 words Speed 30 per second Alternatively quarter inch magnetic tape may be used as memory device S cabinets Each 1 500-ft reel of tape contains 50 000 words Speed 100 per second Included in either of these units are 64 words of quick-access nickel line storage Additional slave units 1 cabinet for film 2 cabinets for tape may be added as required - 10 - 'r1apte twii 'a0t lor is KMlt'i r Mharlatevrm lwr seoieitd end impa printer 60 haraotera per line Ivpewriter where widt vrri'5lip fatec1ililes are roqured 1 tide oil ai1m 101i0n0r 00 t01aratiornewr line torsting at t speed 4f 150 ilne per almoted t4 31M oharatelrs per oecond Highal ped nlaginwlt' ie0o otpii at it inteiproled 1l4 teieprInter or typewrlters by mean sof imple tiubeoquontly onverslhm equipment ORDRIt COhI uik transfsr fioillilieS into out of and within the Ninget atross'l'Two order# per woritllm quic•k acess si ore Two sloroie lovallons may be used as r-lines for inwtitytngl intructloMs DWRA The DarmalaWd Klioirtilo DISgital Computer 'htim red ristl ws S0e114l dtilt by-digil opriktiott Magnetit drtin with pulse timing unit Main memory HtapId-acc m ferrite vore memory Docinial arithmetic mode One address Instructions Address modtifior Adrossonrochenwerk Special electronic Index registers with ferrite corom for automatic address modification and counting Input Punched cards or punched tape Output Line printer of a BULL tabulating machine typewriter punched cards or punched tape Components 1 400 tubes 6 000 diodes 150 relays Number representat ion Decimal number system E•ac- decimal is represented by 4 binaries excess-3 code Word One 13-place decimal number plus sigi represented by 0 - represented by 9 or two 7-place decimal orders half word Negative numbers are represented by nines' complement Fixed decimal point lies behind sign place Floating point operation by subroutines and auxiliary technical equipment for separate handling of mantissa and exponent Pulse frequency 200 kc All number pulses are handled in a single channel the lowest value at first - 11 - Memory Maunotho drum with verti•al Wnte 3 000 rpm 10 inch diameter 4 inches high Caparltyi 3 000 words or 0 000 half words 00 tracks 3 3 pulae pooitions mm S0 per inch Maximnum1 Atveo time 30 ms6c Memory •otmient an lw indioto d on CRT Pulae timing unit b trak high-prooLltion timing pul s gear wheel with 4 200 soft-magnetio teoth on non-magnetic ground matertal Precise @lots are milled in the nickel plated oiraumference of the titming ring Teeth and apse 001 wide Timing pule are recorded by 5 reading-heada and operate a decimal frequency divider The timing unit is fixed to the rotor of the magnetic drum Rapid-access memory Matrix with 5 000 ferrite cores Capaclty 100 words or 200 half words Arithmetic unit Logical and arithmeUc components- Networks with Ge-diodes and resitore flip-flops converters cathode followers pulsing units delay-lines with ferrite cores One track of the magnetic drum is used as accumulator For multiplication the arithmetic unit produces the quadruple values of multiplicand Md Partial products are combined by i Md and 1 4 Md Division is made by successive subtraction until sero Computing time Addition and subtraction 0 8 maec multiplication 12 - 16 msec division 35 - 125 meec No access time is required because numbers are stored in the ferrite code matrix memory Number transfer from the main memory magnetic drum to the rapid-access memory ferrite cores is programmed by compiling routines Control unit One address instructions are stored on the drum in spaces of 5 words One instructiont 7-place decimal numbers half word lit and 2nd decimal number indicates the operation according to the instruction list 3rd decimal number indicates the operation treated by the address modifier 4th till 7th decimal number indicates the address Address Modifier Adressenrechenwerk This special index register is a little arithmetic unit with Ge-diode-networks and ferrite core matrices It performs address modification parallel to the main computer proor in Subroutines Floating point operation-Computing with complex numbers--Computing with double accuracy-Computing with half accuracy-Elementary functions -2 - lubroutines for higher transcendental functions and for standard procedures of practical anKlysis differential equations simultaneous linear equations non-linear algebraic equations are being developed Lpnrand output DIRA is connected with a BULL punched card unit by two buffer tracks on the magnetic drum Parallel-serial conversion by networks Information of a punched card with 80 columns is transferred into DERA within 0 4 sec During this transfer DlRA continues computation The line printer of the tabulating machine prints 92 alphanumeric characters within 0 4 sec that means 230 charactere sec Punched card Input printing and card punching may be performed simultaneously Output in analog form is under development COMPONENTS IBM INPUT OUTPUT ZS UPMBNT H Jh Speed Printer IBM has announced the IBM 719 and 730 printers which prepare business documents at a rate of 1 000 lines a minute Characters are formed by the wire printer technique New Accessories for 650 Magnetic Drum Data Processing Machine Input and output for this machine has until now been by punched card Now the 650 is also available with tape input and output and with printer output The tapes are compatible with the 700-series machines Printed output for the 650 will be obtained by coupling it directly to a 407 accounting machine NEW ELECOM 50 INPUT-OUTPUT EQUIPMENT AVAIABLE Punched tape input-output facilities now are offered with the ELECOM 50 UnderwoodELECOM's drum memory electronic accounting machine Punched tape reading and punching speeds are twenty characters per second PUNCHED CARD READER A punched card reader suitable for use with 90-column 6-hole code punched cards has been developed at the Chemical Corps installation at Camp Detrick Frederick Maryland as a source of input for typewriter operation Present speed of the machine is 8 characters per second with 2 seconds per card required for clearance and card feeding The entire capacity of a six element code 63 characters or operations is obtainable from the card Output in the simplest case is in the form of a pulse on one or more of six wires corresponding to punched holes in one column of the card By use of an external translate unit or decoding tree the machine may be made to operate any serially operating electro-magnetically controlled data handling device within its speed range c mpabilities - 13 - WANG LABORATORUIS Analog-Digital Converters Wang Laboratories Cambridge Massachusetts announce a new complete line for converting shaft poeittiose to digital form The non ambiguous coded types provide resolution of 1 000 parts for 320 324 336 and 360 shaft rotation Models 3C 3B 3D and SA The 'incremental coded type provides various models between 100 increments and 1 000 increments per 3601 MISCELLANEOUS BURROUGHS RESEARCH CENTER EXPANSION The Burroughs Corporation's research and development program in electronics ulectromechanics and magnetics is expanding into two new million-dollar electronic experimentation buildings near the Corporation's two-year-old Research Center in Paoli Pennsylvania These new buildings which will provide 60 000 additional square feet of working space will bring the Company's total working space in the suburban Philadelphia area to 168 000 sepuare feet ELECOM 125 PROGRAMMING COURSE A course has been announced covering programming techniques for the Elecom Model 125 Electronic Computer and Elecom File Processor It will be given at the Electronic Computer Division plant in Long Island City Admission is by invitation and no fee is charged Dates for the next course are from 24 October to 4 November 1955 Early indication of interest in attending will be appreciated ELECTRODATA MOVES INTO NEW PLANT ElectroData Corporation manufacturer of DATATRON electronic computers has completed moving personnel and equipment into its new 40 000-square-foot plant in Pasadena's Hastings Ranch section just north of Consolidated Engineering Corporation parent affiliate at 400 Sierra Madre Villa The new building designed for threefold expansion on the same five-acre site brings together ElectroData'operations which formerly occupied four separate locations in Pasadena The niew plant houses administrative research and manufacturing facilities as well as international headquarters for marketing services The company maintains branch sales and service offices throughout the U S and Canada NEW HEAD OF RESEARCH DIVISION FERRANTI ELECTRIC LIMITED Dr A Porter previously head of the Research Division of Ferranti Electric Limited has returned to England to take over the Chair of Light Electrical Engineering at The Imperial College of Science and Technology His place as Head of the Research Division has been taken over by Mr M K Taylor who was previously Assistant Head of this Division - 14- CONTRIMUTIONS WANTED FOR DIGITAL COMPUTER NEtWSLB TTER The Office of Naval Research welcomes contributions to the Digital Computer NEWSLETTER The NEWSLETTER is published four times a year on the first of January April July and October and material should be in the hands of the editor at leat one month before the publication date in order to be included in that Issue Short technical articles on new machines on new developments In digital techniques and components on new types of problems solved and news items which may be of potential interest to government users are desired The NEWSLETTER is circulated to all interested military and government apencies and to contractors of the Federal Gwvernment In addition It is beih4 reprinted in the Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery Communications should be addressed to A J Neumann Editor Digital Computer Newsletter Code 427 Office of Naval Research Washington 25 D C - 15 - 8156eo