196704

196704 196704

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April, 1967

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right place at the right time, with:-,
modern communications and d2:;1
processing system, that's why nt,;
And they sell over 2600 differe
sizes and types of tires in the U.'
Canada and 66 other countries.
Here's how the system works:
each warehouse Bell System Te
type® machines use master ta~
to enter standard information
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customers and their purchasls,
while the variable sale informatit n
is typed in manually. The machines
make printed orders and by-product

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TI ~ resu It: I nformation flow is
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e':, ; 1e best possible service, every,,'1';':' e in the Kelly-Springfield marh_ i' g world.
; "i' more information, call your
l'~':;\l Telephone Business Office and
()~;I( for a talk with one of our Comrnu'.ications Consultants. And don't
Il';~;' :ate to call us early-because
if. :; way we can serve you best.
\' ,len you work with data communi:'""tions, work with the Bell System.

Introducing

the DATA 620-1
new systems computer
The DATA/620-1 integrated circuit computer is the newest
member of the DATA/620 family of system computers. DATA/620-1 fills the gap
between general purpose and special purpose computers. It belongs in a
system, and solves problems previously considered too difficult or
expensive for computer solution.
Designed for faster problem solution the DATA/620-1 has a bigger
instruction set, integrated circuit reliability, is
smaller, has one-half the components, and
costs less than any computer in its class.
DATA/620-1 comes complete with
software, field-proven and refined on
the DATA/620.
Extremely compact, the DATA/620-1
requires only 10" of 19" rack space.
It's available with memory modules from
1024 to 32,768 words of 16 or 18 bits,
and with a selection of control, arithmetic
and I/O facilities, including D.M.I.'s
unique Micro-Exec.
Price: $13,900 with 4096 words of 16 bit
memory, including ASR 33 teletype.
We are very proud of our new DATA/620-1, and
would like to tell you more in a fact filled brochure.
Please write for one.

DATA MACHINES
1590 Monrovia Avenue, Newport Beach, California
Tel. (714) 646-9371 TWX (910) 596-1358
Division of DECISION Control, Inc.

Designate No. lOon Reader Service Card

The Data 620-1 and the
Data/620 will be on
display at booths HS-HIO
at the SJCC. Stop' by and
discuss your digital
system requirements with
a Data Machines
applications engineer.

The 20-minute education break.
For busy people who need to know.
Maybe you have a programmer who needs to brush up
on COBOL, or a tab operator who needs to know
about the IBM 85 Collator. Or you may know a junior
executive who just wants to learn a little bit about data
processing. IBM has an easy way to teach them.
It's called programmed instruction - P.1. for short.
P.1. is an approach to self-study that guides a student through the required material at the student's
own pace, a step at a time. He can breeze through five
or ten pages whenever there's some time to spare-at
home or on the job.
Last year, some 100,000 students took IBM programmed instruction courses. And the results were
gratifying. Students learned faster- 27% faster on the
average-and scored higher than did those in conventional lecture-discussion classes.

Right now there are 29 P.1. courses available to IBM
customers covering punched card systems, computer
fundamentals and computer programming. More are
being developed.
But programmed instruction won't replace your
local IBM Education Center. Some subjects are just too
complex or too specialized to be taught by P. I. So we'll
continue to operate our school system-providing a
comprehensive curriculum for everyone from key
punch operators to board chairmen.
Either way-sending the student to school or the
school to the student-IBM education helps you and
your people learn how to get the most productive
work from your IBM system.
IBM Education: it's there when you need it. Just like
the rest of IBM's services.

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S[nHo'l alUJ~Oll'il'ls'tCaIOJfn

Mirror by Computer
The front cover shows a famous Japanese woodblock print, as reproduced by a plotter guided by
a digital computer.
For more in/ormation, see page 60.

APRIL, 1967 Vol. 16, No.4

Special Feature,'
13

c&a problem corner
by Walter Penney, C.D.P.

calendar of coming events

across the editor's desk
Computing and Data Processing Newsletter

computer census

books and other publications

new patents

Performance Comparisons of Computing and Data Processing
Systems
16

REAL-TIME PROCESSING POWER: A STANDARDIZED EVALUATION, by J. Burt Totaro
How to obtain valid measurements of the power of a computer to. do real-time processing.

.22

COMPUTER PERFORMANCE PROJECTED THROUGH SIMULATION, by Fred C. Ihrer
A specific evaluation technique predicts the performance of various hardware and software
designs in terms of cost and response_

RECOVERY FROM ERROR, by Jan B. Hext
The emphasis should be on the prevention of error, as hardware becomes more complicated
and more reliable. But software failures seem destined to survive longer.

LANGUAGE ENGINEERING, from Hughes Aircraft Company
To date no one has assembled a complete, integrated, automatic machine that listens and
speaks. But as such devices become more and more needed, advances in making and pro_
gramming them should culminate in a satisfactory, working system.

by Raymond R. Skolnick

ad~ertising index

editm'ial
Time Sharing, Batch Processing, and Direct Access

editor and publisher

market report

Edmund C. Berkeley

The top 100 computer users (among industrial firms) with over $2 billion worth of computers
workinq in 1966 - and who they are

assistant editors
Moses M. Berlin, Charlene J. Hofer, Linda
Ladd Lovett, Neil D. MacDonald

world report -

market research director
Patrick J. McGovern

capital report,
The Defense Department seeks bids for a management information system; the National Data
Center controversy continues; in an experiment, computer systems successfully match unemployed workers with jobs.

contributing editors
John Bennett, Andrew D. Booth, Dick H.
Brandon, John W. Carr, III, Ned Chapin,
Alston S. Householder, Peter Kugel, Rod E.
Packer

advisory committee

Great Britain,

Kosygin praises British computers; sales to East Europe rise; British universities purchase U.S_made machines; British European Airways to purchase integrated management system.

multi-access forum
8

Time-Sharing: A View from New Zealand, by B. A. M. Moon
Perhaps the benefits of time-sharing may be available without time-sharing.

Library Service for Blind Computer Programmers Seeks Type-Composing Tapes

Addresses of Computer Organizations

Modern Indian Story: Electronic Firms Locate on Reservations
Aid from the Department of the Interior and an abundant, easily-trained labor supply leads to
industrial growth on Indian reservations.

Cybernetics in the U.S.S.R., by Robert W. Brainard and William D. Hitt
Computers in Soviet law, medicine, education, public health, and economics may result in
fundamental changes in Soviet economic theory and practice.

William J. McMillan, 815 Washington St.,
Newtonville, Mass. 02160, 617 DE 2-5453

Computers Checking All United States Taxpayers for First Time, by Norman Teich
The Internal Revenue Ser.vice's nationwide computer system.

advertising representatives

IFIP Admits Hungary as 26th Member Country

NEW YORK 10018, Bernard Lane,
37 West 39 St., 212-BRyant 9-7281
CHICAGO 60611, Cole, Mason and Deming,
737 N. Michigan Ave., 312-SU 7-6558

"Individual Privacy and Central Computerized Files" -

"Bootstrapping a Career in the Computer Field" -

ECPI Program Write-Ups Available

LOS ANGELES 90005, Wentworth F. Green,
300 S. Kenmore Ave., 213-DUnkirk 7-8135
ELSEWHERE, The Publisher,
815 Washington St., 617-DEcatur 2-5453
Newtonville, Mus, 02160

Jovial Bulletin Established -

Revived "Annual Review in Automatic Programming" -

Correction

Articles for "Computers and Automation" and how to write them

T. E. Cheatham, Jr., James J. Cryan, Richard
W, Hamming, Alston S. Householder, Victor
Paschkis

art director
Ray W, Hass

fulfilment manager

Comments

*0 ON YOUR ADDRESS IMPRINT MEANS
THAT YOUR SUBSCRIPTION INCLUDES
THE COMPUTER DIRECTORY. *N MEANS
THAT YOUR PRESENT SUBSCRIPTION DOES
NOT INCLUDE THE COMPUTER DIRECTORY. SEE NOTICE ON PAGE 20.

Papers Sought
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FOR THE CHANGE TO BE MADE.

COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION, FOR APRil, 1967

c&a
EDITORIAL

Time Sharing l Batch Processing l and Direct Access

In this issue in Multi-Access Forum we publish an important and interesting letter from B. A. M. Moon, Director of
the Computer Centre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch,
New Zealand. Among other questions that he raises are:
1. If immediate man-machine interaction in scientific
and technical research and design problems is so· important, why has there not been more of it in the past?
2. If small computers are going to be needed at the
terminals of large time-shared machines anyway, would not
the greatest economy in many cases be simply to dispose
of the central machine and leave each user in intimate
contact with his own smaller computer?
3. Can we get the benefits of time sharing without
time sharing?
These questions have points of resemblance to the following questions:
"Are apples or oranges better"?
(Answer: It depends on many factors.)
"Is it better to have a pain in your head or a pain in
your foot?"
(Answer: The answer depends on two factors essentially: if the pains are equally intense and equally
serious, certainly the foot pain is preferable.)
"Is it better to have the right equipment or the wrong
equipment to do a job?"
(Answer: Of course, the right equipment is better though in this case, the issue has been avoided by inserting answer-begging words in the question.)
Most of the answer to Question 1 is that as long as computers were very expensive, it cost too much to give the persons working on problems in design and research direct access
to computers. However, as c;osts have gone down - due to
both time sharing and the arrival of small computersdirect access (man-machine interaction) became economically
feasible and was immediately desirable, because of latent but
ineffective demand.
The answer to Question 2 is clear. If most of time sharing
reaches the point where a small computer is needed in the
console, then clearly we should get rid of the big computer,
the intricate software for control, and the long communication lines for access, and we should in nearly all cases settle
either for single-console access to a single computer, or for
two or three nearby consoles, short communication lines, and
simple supervising software in the computer.
I am convinced that the answer to Question 3 .is:
In a great number of places, we can get the benefits of
time sharing without time sharing; the pendulum of that
fashion has swung too far.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

In fact, we could rename much of "time sharing" as "direct
access" and have the substance of it. We should translate a
great many of the arguments for time sharing into arguments
for direct access.
Nevertheless we should remember that:
• Batch processing is almost certainly the right procedure for a great many jobs, such as production runs of
large computations according to established needs and
fully reliable programs.
• Time sharing of a powerful computer and a large file
of information, centrally located, and with long communication lines, is vitally necessary for some problems - probably not many - such as the airlines reservations problem.
• Direct access is a desirable, and economically feasible,
facility for the programmer who is troubleshooting a
program, the engineer who is experimenting with different ways of solving a problem, and some other
people.
In fact, we can foresee not a cleavage between time sharing, batch processing, and direct access to single computers,
but a mingling. The time is coming when normally the big
computer will have a load of batch processing jobs for background, and direct access in the foreground, not only for the
operator, but for one, two, three, or even a dozen input lines
from various nearby consoles and small computers. The resi.dent software supervisor in the big computer will find this
hardly any more trouble than to meet the requirements of
twenty input lines from magnetic tape units or similar
peripheral input/output devices.
There is a phrase I like to remember from the book Silas
Marner by George Eliot, which was said by the landlord of
a tavern, who used it to settle arguments among his contentious patrons:
"Ye're both right and ye're both wrong, as I allus say,
- the truth lies atwixt and atween you."
The right solution to a particular problem of a computing
facility consists of considering all the important factors, and
making a sensible well-reasoned choice, with little regard to
fashion.

Editor

c&a
MULTI-ACCESS FORUM

riME-SHARING: A VIEW FROM NEW ZEALAND
I. From B.A.M. Moon, Director
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, 1, New Zealand
Somewhat detached here from the principal centres of
investigation, we have watched with interest the growing
activity in the use of time-shared computer systems, helpfully reviewed in recent issues of Computers and Automation.
In using computers in a scientific or technical environment, the main reason advanced in support of the timeshared system seems to be the opportunity for man-machine
interaction in the solution of design or research problems
which it offers. In some situations there are further advantages, such as the opportunity for dynamic interaction
through the computer between research workers with common problems.
At present the remote console is usually a typewriter, considered to be a limiting factor in many cases, though perhaps more apparent than real because we have become accustomed to the sorts of high-speed input/output devices
needed with batch-processing systems. Nevertheless, in writing of the next step, Hal Becker (Computers and Automation for Oct., 1966) suggests the provision of card readers,
line printers, and even small computers at the remote ter'minals.
All this raises the cost, an important point noted by Hans
Jeans (also Computers and Automation for Oct., 1966), who
observes further that so far in time-shared systems "cost is
seldom emphasized as a design criterion."
While the well-known "Grosch's Law" indicates that there
are economies in the use of large-scale central processors,
the increased cost of terminal devices and terminal servicing
complexity, which may increase exponentially with the
number of terminals, indicate that overall the cost advantage
may not lie with the large system.
Jeans, arguing further, suggests that the modest system
may be no more than most subscribers will need (at least
perhaps for those kinds of situation where intimate manmachine rapport is important), a case advanced further by
both Rudy Stiefel and George Zimmerman (Compute.rs and
Automation for Nov., 1966).
If this be true and if small computers are going to be
needed at the terminals of large time-shared machines anyway, perhaps the greatest economy in many cases would be
simply to dispose of the central machine and leave each user
in intimate contact with his own smaller computer. The
really big computational tasks would continue to be run on
really big computers by bat~h processing methods.

An interesting question at this point then, is: If immediate man-machine interaction in scientific and technical research and design problems is so important, why has there
not been more of it in the past? T.he opportunity has existed for a number of years; in fact the IBM 1620 and some
other machines were designed expressly for this purpose.
The cost has not been prohibitive (and may decrease), compared with the cost of a share in a large time-shared system.
Yet our experience, at least, with a 1620 has been that
users do not desire to use it in this way. Even when given
every opportunity for "open-shop" use, they appear much
to prefer to enter source statements on prepunched cards,
rather than at the console typewriter and to design production runs for lengthy calculations with a minimum of operator intervention. For this reason, we intend to install
shortly an IBM 360/44, a fast batch-processing system with
even less operator intervention.
Does this mean that the attractiveness of a time-shared
system in which each user has his own console typewriter
is a psychological rather than a technical one, or did computer users simply fail to appreciate what the 1620, say, had
to offer?
When our 360/44 is installed and the 1620 enters a merited semi-retirement we intend to investigate this point - to
initiate a project in whi~h we approach its console typewriter
as if it were one of the fifty such typewriters attached to a
time-shared system fifty times as fast. In this way we may
get the benefits of time-sharing without time-sharing, or else
discover that time-sharing has something else to offer which
is fundamental and important.
Do we seem naive or does the distance of our view give
it at least a little perspective?

II. From the Editor
Thank you for your letter, which I was very glad to read.
I think you have raised some important questions, which
have served as the basis for our editorial in this issue.
Personally, I think "time sharing" expresses the wrong
emphasis," and that "direct access" expresses the right em. phasis. I have found in a year's personal use of a timeshared console to a big computer much frustration, and in
several years' use of "direct access" to a small computer
much satisfaction and only a small amount of frustration.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

TECHNICAL LIBRARY SERVICE FOR BLIND COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS
SEEKS TYPE-COMPOSING TAPES
I. From David L. Neblett
Proiect Director
Computer Training for the Blind
Washington University
724 South Euclid Ave.
St. Louis, Missouri 63110
II. From the Editor

Weare organizing a technical library service for blind
computer programmers. This service will eventually provide
technical articles from various sources in Braille to enable
these individuals to keep abreast of this dynamic field. We
are using the IBM 360 computer to make the translation
into Grade II Braille. (Grade I is letter for letter and
Grade II is similar to shorthand notation.)
I would like to know if you use composing tapes or any
similar method in printing that could be used for computer
input. Would you make them available to us?
In any event we are interested in subscribing to "Computers and Automation." Please enter a subscription and bill
us.

Thank you for your subscription and for your letter telling us about your service for blind computer programmers.
We are sending you some of the punched paper tape produced at our typesetter's, Wellesley Press, One Crest Road,
Wellesley, Mass., 02192, for typesetting. They and we will
gladly arrange that tape like this be sent to you each time
our magazine is set, if this kind of tape actually meets your
requirements. Please let us know.

ADDRESSES OF COMPUTER ORGANIZATIONS
I. From Hans Lutke, Engineer
117 Berlin
German Democratic Republic
Your editorial on "The Thirst for Computer Knowledge"
in the outstanding Computers and Automation for July 1966
encourages me to ask the address of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies. I am interested
in their glossary related to computers. This glossary would
be of considerable value in my work, in either the English
or German language.
Please be so kind as to' deliver my wish to said Federation
or let me know their address. In either case, I ani much
obliged to you.

II. From the Editor
Thank you for your letter. The address you wish is: International Federation for Information Processing, 345 East

47th St., New York, N.V. 10017. We believe they will be able
to help you if you write directly to them.

III. To our Readers
As a regular service to readers of Computers and Autom.ation anywhere in the world, we are glad to provide the
address of a computer-related organization, if we know it.
Any request should be addressed to the editor.
If you are a part of a computer-related organization, and
you are not sure that Computers and, Automation knows the
address, please send it to us. In this way we can help increase communication and cooperation in the field of computers and data processing.

MODERN INDIAN STORY: ELECTRONIC FIRMS LOCATE ON RESERVATIONS
(Based on a report in the Feb. 27, 1967 issue of
Electronic News, published at 7 East 12th St., New
York, N.Y. 10003)
It is a safe prediction that more electronics firms will be
springing up on Indian reservations. One reason for this is
that the Department of the Interior has been nudging these
firms a little with one hand, and offering them sweeteners
with another. Social factors are also a consideration. The
most important fact, however, is that electronics companies
which have pioneered in employing Indians have already
demonstrated that they can produce and deliver. Other
types of firms are als() showing interest.
Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall has briefed industry
representatives on the advantages of operating in Indian areas
and of cooperating with the Bureau of Indian Affairs IndusCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

trial Development program. He has shown that Indians are
easily trained for skilled operations, and represent an abundant labor supply. The Bureau provides on-the-job training
programs under which the Bureau contracts to pay up to 50
percent of trainee wages in plants on or near reservations.
Indian trainees are recruited and screened by specialists ip
the Bureau in cooperation with local offices of the State Employment Service. The Bureau also offers services in getting
firm and tribe together.
Various tribes also put up money to help finance plants.
To date they have set aside more than $12 million to be used
for loans for this purpose.

A typical experimental plant on a reservation is the Fairchild Camera & Instrument Semiconductor Division located
on a Navajo reservation at Shiprock, New Mexico. The firm
"employs about 450 assemblers and mechanics, and has a
$700,000 contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide
, on-the-job training. The firm is negotiating with the Navajo
to build a $1 ~ million permanent facility there, which however is contingent on the provision of proper housing by the
Government. Dr. Robert Noyce, group vice-president of
Fairchild, said the company regards the experiment as successful bcause "in the Indian culture there is an emphasis on
producing when you work!" He admitted labor cost was a
factor in the decision to employ Indians, but declared social
benefit was also a consideration. "Probably nobody would
ever admit it, but I feel sure the Indians are the most underprivileged ethnic group in the United States," he said.
A major problem is educating large groups of people on
the reservation. The people are so widely dispersed, with
cities mere crossroads and without centralized housing, that
it is difficult for a large industrial enterprise to employ a
great number of people in one location.
In another experiment, a group of Seminoles are devoting
their talents to assembling components at a $500,000 Amphenol Connector division plant near Hollywood, Florida.
The plant is expected to ship approximately $7 million worth
of computer, instrument, and communications equipment connectors this year, with an expected increase to $10 million
in 1968.

As an outgrowth of these successes, an Employment Training Center for Indians will open this month in Madera, California. It will be directed by Philco-Ford Corp. under a
contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This Center is
aimed at alleviating chronic unemployment and hard-core
poverty among Indians, and is a major departure from other
programs to increase opportunities for the unemployed. The
concept involves comprehensive family training. The center
will provide education, training, urban adjustment orientation, and job-placement for all family members of employable
age. Family and vocational counseling, pre-vocational and
~ocational training, and health services, will be provided for
trainees and their families, at no cost to them.
Specialized training for jobs, job placement, and follow-up,
are included. Philco-Ford is committed to place all trainees
who complete the program. It is expected that more than
one job will be generated for each family.
The center will initially enroll 30 Indian families from all
parts of the country. An additional 200 single trainees will be
added by July 1.
Theodore S. Hoffman, president of Hoffman Info'rmation
Systems, Inc., has been appointed a consultant on economic
development with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He will
advise the Bureau on development and use of Indian talents
and resources; promotion of locations on Indian reservations
for industrial plants, commercial endeavors, and tourist enterprises; encouragement of Indian-owned-and-operated commercial ventures; and mobilization of credit and financing for
such activities.

CYBERNETICS IN THE U.S.S.R.
Robert W. Brainard and William D. HiH
Battelle Memorial Institute
Columbus, Ohio 43201
The Soviet Union is making a considerable effort to integrate cybernetics with the beliefs and institutions of Soviet
society. In the Soviet Union cybernetics has kept a solid
scientific meaning as the science of control and communication in man, machines, and organizations with emphasis on the
use of automatic computers; and the subject is being applied
to a very broad range of activities, including factory production control, economics, law, medicine, and education.
The Soviets consider that cybernetics is relevant to contemporary scientific and technological problems, and reinforces certain statements of dialectical materialism, a' philosophy of development of societies and similar complex
phenomena.
Official recognition, and acceptance of cybernetics in the
Soviet Union began in 1958 with the establishment of the
Scientific Council on Cybernetics by the USSR Academy
of Sciences.
The most ambitious application is in the field of economics,
where a national program aimed at establishing a cybernetic
system for controlling the entire economy is being vigorously
developed.
At the heart of this proposal is a dynamic mathematical
model of the entire Societ economy. Planning and control
would be implemented through an integrated nation-wide
network of computer centers. Soviet experts predict that this
program, when introduced, will raise the national economic
output by one-third, and will double the present rate of
economic growth.
Introduction of cybernetic methods could result in fundamental changes in Soviet economic theory and practice. The
use of such methods raises the possibility that the Communist
party might eventually lose its control over the economythat the formulation of economic objectives will be taken
over by technicians.

Some specific economic applications of cybernetics in the
Soviet Union are:
• Systematic control of planning and administration of
large construction enterprises.
• Selection by computer of the optimum method of
transporting a raw material between its producers and
its consumers.
• Simulation of production processes in machine and
tool design.
• Development of a city master plan which even specifies the optimum time period for urban renewal.
In fact, the control of the total national development is considered a part of cybernetics.
In the legal field, the Soviet objective is to use cybernetics
to provide a scientific basis for law and law enforcement.
Numerous Soviet writers have suggested that cybernetics can
be used to codify the laws and to analyze their internal consistency. Although the application of cybernetics to legal
problems looks promising, few, if any, cybernetic techniques
have yet been used in ~ctual practice. The major impediment
is the technical problem of converting legal information into
computer language.
Some work has started recently on collecting and analyzing
legal statistical data in an effort to identify conditions that
produce crime. The aim is to find means for detecting
criminal tendencies at an early stage. Considerable effort is
also being made to automate the analysis of fingerprints,
handwriting, facial features, and of substances such as metal
shot, glass, and paint.
In the field of medicine, Soviet practitioners look to
cybernetics to convert medical practice from an essentially
qualitative art to a quantitative science. They say man can
be regarded as a cybernetic system that is subject to the same
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

general laws of control and communication as inanimate
systems.
A great deal of effort has been directed toward automating
medical diagnosis. Several medical centers are reported to be
using diagnostic machines. No remarkable results have yet
been reported in literature on these developments, nor on the
development of automatic selection of treatment.
Cybernetics is also being applied in the field of public
health, with emphasis on the collection and analysis of medical data. Some interesting work is being done in establishing
optimum diets and hygienic norms of work and rest.
In the field of education, particularly in the area of pro-

grammed instruction, the Soviets have borrowed extensively
from Western methodology and textbooks. Interest in programmed instruction is high, and a rapid increase in its use- is
anticipated. Teaching machines are under active development, particularly in the military and higher academic institutions.
In general, there are fundamental differences between the
U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the development and application of
cybernetics. The environment in the U.S. appears to be more
conducive to creative breakthroughs in cybernetic theory,
while the Soviet environment appears to be more conducive
to large-scale application of cybernetics.

COMPUTERS CHECKING ALL UNITED STATES TAXPAYERS FOR FIRST TIME
Norman P. Teich
Honeywell Electronic Data Processing
Wellesley Hills, Mass. 02181
Computers are checking all Federal income tax· returns for
the first time this year; not some
them, but all
them.
By mid-April, filing deadline for most taxpayers, seventeen
Honeywell 200 computers in the seven Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regional service centers will have received for
processing more than 100 million tax returns representing
more than $130 billion in collections.
According to IRS Commissioner' Sheldon S. Cohen, all
returns are processed in the service centers before being sent
to the National IRS Computer Center in Martinsburg, West
Virginia. At the National Center, the returns are matched
against the master files, which include a record for every
single tax paying entity in the country. The files bring
-together in one place for thorough scrutiny all tax transactions of all taxpayers - no matter where they live or when
they filed their returns. Every taxpayer has only one account
and all information affecting his tax status is matched against
that account and no other.
This nationwide system was developed during the past five
years. Its need became obvious when IRS projected its workload and realized it would become virtually impossible to
collect and account for tax revenues - while effectively enforcing tax laws - unless a significantly different approach
for administering the system was developed.
The magnitude of the job to be accomplished can be
realized from a few simple statistics: in 1930, only six million
tax returns representing $3 billion in revenue were filed; this
year, more than 100 million returns will be filed and $130
billion collected.
Tax returns are "perfected" at each of the seven regional
centers by tax examiners whose job it is to make sure all information asked for is entered on the form in the correct
places. The information IS then transcribed onto punched
cards and fed into the Honeywell 200's, which verify the
returns' mathematical accuracy and make some preliminary

calculations on deductions, exemptions, etc.
Magnetic tape records of the returns are then prepared and
sent to the National Computer Center, where they are matched
against the national master files. Each taxpayer's account includes the taxpayer's permanent tax number, a continuously updated multiple-year digest of tax data about the tax account,
data on all returns for which the taxpayer is liable, when and
where returns have been filed, the amount and status of each
liability and any audit results.
The National Computer Center, when it has completed its
job, produces a number of magnetic tape reports which disclose who failed to file returns, owes taxes for previous years,
has refunds coming or filed duplicate claims for refunds.
Also revealed are any discrepancies or unusual characteristics
of a return that would suggest a need to examine it further.
Refund tapes listing amounts to be returned to taxpayers
are sent to U.S. Treasury Department disbursing offices where
refund checks are printed and mailed. Other tapes are sent
to the regional service centers, where they are used to prepare
tax bills, delinquency notices and other communications to
taxpayers, and identify returns that are to be considered for
audit.
IRS' nationwide system - now complete - provides for
the first time a comprehensive, uniform, nationwide check on
failures of individuals or businesses to file returns. It also
improves mathematical verification of returns, increases the
ability to detect improper refurid claims, and enables more
complete checking of data reported on information documents - such as dividend and interest payments - against
information on tax returns.
In addition it will insure proper application of credits and
reduce processing errors. The capacity and memory of the
system benefits taxpayers who may have overlooked prior
year's credits or advantages provided by law and enables
credit of undelivered refund checks to tax accounts.

IFIP ADMITS HUNGARY AS 26th MEMBER COUNTRY
International Federation for Information Processing
IFIP Congress Office
23 Dorset Square
London, N.W.I., England
The total membership of the International Federation for
Information Processing was brought to 26 nations with the
formal admission of Hungary at the eleventh General Assembly of IFIP. Hungary is the fifth eastern European country
to join the Federation. The other four are U.S.S.R., Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

At the meeting, both Yugoslavia, whose admission is under
consideration, and Mexico issued invitations for IFIP Congress 71 to be held in their respective countries.
As previously announced, IFIP Congress 68 will be -held
in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 5-10, 1968.

"INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY AND CENTRAL
COMPUTERIZED FILES" -

COMMENTS

I. From Sherman C. Blumenthal
Sr. Systems Planner
Union Carbide Corp.
New York, N.Y. 10017
The following letter was sent to Senator R. F. Kennedy,
Senator J. Javits, and Congressman Leonard Farbstein, relating to your editorial in the October 1966 issue of Computers
and Automation:
The invasion of privacy of the individual citizen by various government agencies is' an increasingly disturbing phenomenon to many thoughtful people. Deliberate and widespread patterns of government snooping of questiomible
legality have come to light. This includes such reprehensible practices as the monitoring of first class mail in the
Post Office, unauthorized wiretaps by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, and a
suspicion of ubiquitous, rampant and virtually undetectable
electronic eavesdropping.
Most disturbing of all, perhaps, are recent proposals to
establish a 'centralized computer data bank, collecting all
the information about each individual available throughout
the government in a single file. The existence of this capability will whip imaginative bureaucrats into a frenzy of
unrestrained abuse. The temptations are simply too great
for us to believe that the desire for information will not
outpace the ability to restrict its use.
I have enclosed what I believe to be an excellent editorial on this subject from a recent issue of Computers and
Automation. As a practicing professional in the computer
sciences I can vouch for the reality of this threat to'individual freedom. This development should be stamped out
now, firmly and forever, by enacting legislation along the
lines suggested in the ed~torial.

II. From the Editor
Thank you for the copy of your letter to the Senators and
Congressman. Weare pleased that you thought the editorial
worth sending on to them.'

"BOOTSTRAPPING A CAREER IN THE
COMPUTER FlELD" - COMMENTS
I. Fred V. Rubenstein
Los Angeles, Calif.
As an avid reader of Computers and Automation I have
been active in promoting many of the philosophies you touch
upon in your C&A editorials. If possible, I would very much
appreciate receiving ten copies of your September 1966 editorial entitled "Bootstrapping a Career in the Computer
Field." I have shown my copy (still intact in my personal
file) to several of my associates who enjoyed your message.
How nice it would be to circulate copies among some of our
high school and college students.
Some of us are interested in contributing articles to your
magazine. Please indicate what the appropriate steps would
be to submit an article to Computers and Automation.

II. From the Editor
We appreciate your kind remarks, and we are happy to
provide several copies of the September 1966 editorial. If you
want still more, we suggest you make arrangements with some
local copying service.
We would like to have an article from you; some information for prospective authors is enclosed (see the notice "Articles Jor Computers and Automation in this issue).

ECPI PROGRAM WRITE-UPS AVAILABLE
A. Estipona, Technical Director
Electronic Computer Programming Institute, Inc.
Empire State Bldg.
New York, N.Y. 10001
In order to facilitate testing of 1401 and 360 programs
. written by our students, Electronic Computer Programming
Institute (ECPI) has developed two resident core dump programs for its IBM 360 16K model 30. It has occurred to us that
these programs may have a wider appeal and we are therefore willing to supply a write-up and an object deck to all
requestors. Both programs reset themselves each time they
are executed and need only be loaded once. In addition,
both programs permit periodic dumps to be taken by inserting the coding given in the write-up at the appropriate point
in the user's source program. When this option is used, all
registers are restored and control is returned to the user's
program.
Our 1401 dump program is designed to overcome the
problem of obtaining the contents of the read area when
taking a storage dump in the Compatibility mode. The program solves this problem by being loaded prior to testing and
remaining resident in high core. A storage print, starting at
the read area and continuing to 14,999, may then be obtained
whenever needed simply by altering to the starting address of
the dump program (15,000). The primary restriction on the
use of the program is that any programs to be tested must
not have a CTL card greater than 55 (12K). This is to pre~
vent the dump program from being cleared when the user's
program is loaded.
For testing of 360 programs, ECPI uses a supervisor generated by the BPS 8K tape System. To obtain a storage
print after a student's program caused a program check interruption, we .used IBM's storage print program. However,
since this program included its own supervisor, it was neces,sary to re-Ioad our supervisor before we could resume testing.
To avoid this extra step, we developed a resident storage
print program which is placed immediat~y behind the super7
visor and loaded with it. The program modifies the instruction address in the new Program Check PSW so that linkage
is automatically provided to the storage print program in the
event oJ a program check. The contents of the sixteen registers, the interruption code, the address of the next sequential
instruction, and -the contents of main storage are printed in
hexadecimal format on SYSLST. Control is then returned
to the program loader in the supervisor.. The two restrictions
on the use of the program loader in the supervisor must not
go beyond address 2999 and programs to be tested must not
begin before address 4000. The program as assembled, will
print the contents of storage beginning at address 0000 and
ending at address 16,000.
As an additional feature, both prognims can be modified
to print fewer positions of storage by modifying the beginning
and ending address constants. Additional information on this
aspect is provided in the program write-ups.
The write-ups and object decks rilay be obtained by writing
to me.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

JOVIAL BULLETIN ESTABLISHED
- PAPERS SOUGHT
David K. Oppenheim
Abacus Programming
3507 Barry Ave.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90066
A new information bulletin has been established to deal
with the Jovial programming language. The new Jovial Information Bulletin (JIB) will be published under the auspices
of the Special Interest Committee on Programming Languages of the Association for Computing Machinery, and will
be distributed (along with the Algol Bulletin, the PL/I Bulletin, and the Cobol Information Bulletin) as a supplement
to SICPLAN Notices, the Committee's informal monthly
newsletter.
As editor of "The JIB," I am seeking contributions concerning Jovial that may be of interest to Jovial users and
implementers, as well as to computer programmers in general.
Suggested topics include:
• Comparisons of Jovial with other programming languages, outlining advantages, disadvantages, etc.
• Interesting applications of Jovial, including real-time and
non-real-time applications.
• Language features that are compiler or machine dependent and are not generally available in Jovial systems.
• Information about Jovial processors, including machines
involved, current status, language restrictions or extensions, interesting processing techniques or outputs, and
error checking capabilities or incapabilities.

• Algorithms for processing Jovial source-language programs, as well as algorithms in Jovial for which the
language is especially applicable.
• Philosophy and techniques of Jovial programming, including coding, debugging, and operation, machineindep~ndent programming methods, use of and extensions to the com pool, etc.
.
• Improvements, extensions, and deletions that would be
desirable in Jovial.
In addition to contributions on these and other topics, I
would like information from: those in charge of programming
groups or computing facilities that use Jovial as a programming or documentation language; those with development or primary maintenance responsibility for an existing,
developmental, or planned Jovial compiler or processor; those
interested in receiving copies of "The Jovial Information
Bulletin."
Please address all comments and contributions to me at
the above address.

(Please turn to'

FORUM,. page 53 )

c&a
PROBLEM CORNER
Walter Penney, C.D.P.
Problem Editor,
Computers and Automation

Readers are invited to submit problems (and their solutions) for this column to: Problem Editor, Computers and
Automation, 815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. 02160.

This month's problem:
Claude Liffey picked up a piece of paper from one of the
desks and was studying it when John Lawthorne came in.
"Did you forget we were going to have lunch together
today?," his fellow-professor asked.
"Oh, I'm sorry. One of the students in my programming
class left this behind and I was trying to figure it out. Must
have gotten a little too engrossed." He handed the sheet to
John (see Figure 1 ) .
"I was going to punch up a few cards and run the program
just to see what would come out," said Claude. He watched
as his companion hit a few keys on the desk calculator, then
wrote a number at the bottom of the sheet.
"No need to do that. Here's the value of z that would have
been printed out," he announced.
What did he write?
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Solution to last month's problem:
The number waS 1 001 1
1 0. Whether interpreted as
a decimal or binary number (i.e., 610), this leaves the same
remainders when divided by 3, 5 and 7. But when divided
by 11, only 1,001,100,010 (decimal) leaves a remainder
of 9.

°°°

c&a
MARKET REPORT

TOP 100 COMPUTER USERS AMONG INDUSlRIAL FIRMS HAD
OVER $ 2 BILLION WORTH OF COl\1PUTERS AT WORK BY MID1966
Over a third of the market for computers
among industrial firms consists of the one hundred
top accounts.
These hundred (the "EDP 100") have over $ 2
billion worth of computers installed, and they account for 34.~/o of the total value of computers
used by industrial corporations. Indeed, these
hundred companies use nearly 16% of the $13 billi'on worth of computers currently installed in the
world (not counting military applications which are
classified) •
These figures are derived from a study of
the value of computer and related data processing
equipment in use by the 500 largest industrial corporations in the U.S. and the 200 largest foreignbased industrial concerns, as compiled by Fortune
magazine, July and August, 1966. The study was
conducted by International Data Corporation. The
top 100 computer customers -- the "EDP 100" -- are
listed lJelow.

is virtually no way to separate computers used for
computer product development, programming, a~d
sales support, from those actually used for lnternal business in such firms.
Interpretation
The world's largest manufacturing corporation, General Motors, heads the list as the world's
largest computer user among manufacturers. It was
using $175 million of computers as of June 30,
1966, the cutoff date for the study. Next down the
list was General Electric, with $85 million of computers, followed by Boeing with $80 million, Lockheed with $75 million, and Ford with $72 million.
Other firms tend to line up by size-within
their industry classifications, but there are
quite distinct characteristics of computer usage
among different industry groups. As Table I indicates, 12 aerospace firms on the EDP 100 list account for 21.8% of the computers included in this
study.

Preparing the Base
To qualify as "industrial corporations", and
thus be included in this study, firms must have
received at least 50% of their revenues from manufacturing or mining during the most recent fiscal
year. American Telephone and Telegraph, a utility,
would therefore not qualify, even though it is
probably the largest computer user outside the
Federal Government. However, Western Electric, its
manufacturing affiliate, is included in the EDP
100.
Also, companies whose primary products are
digital computer systems -- such as IBM and Control
Data -- were not considered for the EDP 100. There

TABLE 1

EDP 100

Foreign Use
Although 35 of the EDP 100 are foreign-based,
they use only 18.~/o of the computers. To some
extent, this indicates relative immaturity of the
foreign marketj one of the reasons for the higher
growth rate currently being achieved 'in this market is that foreign firms are catching up with
their U.S.-based firms in the value of computers
used to support their business activities.
For more information about complete IDC survey results, designate 4 on the Readers Service
Card.

DISTRIBUTION OF VALUE OF COMPUTERS
WITHIN INDUSTRY GROUP ($ Million)

Aerospace
Automotive
Chemicals
Electrical
Food & Beverage
Petroleum
Primary Metals
Rubber
Miscellaneous

$450
14

,COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

a·

''Alii know
is one evening in our
living room, my wife
and I decided it was
agood idea to jOin
the Peace Corps.
So we did:'
What the David Kadanes did puzzled and puzzles a lot of people. Maybe because tho Kadanes weren't anywhere near twenty years old
anymore. Maybe because they gave up two
years' worth of a lot of salary, two years' worth
of a big job as General Counsel for the Long
Island Lighting Company, two years' worth of a
life they had spent their whole lives building
... just to join the Peace Corps.
But what a lot of people don't realize is
that the Peace Corps isn't just a place for justout-of-college kids with strong arms and heads
and good-size hearts. The Peace Corps is a
place for p·eople who want to do something
and can do something. It's a. place for people
who want to see things and do things firsthand
and closeup. People who want to give other
people a chance to get to know and under·
stand their country and themselves as they
really are. People who care about the world
and other people maybe even as much as they
care about themselves.
And, maybe more than anything, the
Peace Corps is a place for people who, for
some reason, are willing to give up whatever
they have to give up to do something they.feel
they have to do. And the David Kadanes are
two of those people.
Write: The Peace Corps, Washington, D.C.

20525.

.....

:\\

f~'i

1-~;

PUBLISHED AS A PUBLIC SERVICE IN
COOPERATION WITH THE ADVERTISING COUNCIL

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

REAL-TIME PROCESSING POWER:
A STANDARDIZED EVALUATION
J. Burt Totaro~ Associate Editor
Auerbach Standard EDP Reports
Auerbach Corporation
Philadelphia~ Pa. 19107

((Most current computer systems offer several different types of randomaccess storage devices, with speed and storage capacities (and prices)
that vary by several orders of magnitude. H ow can the user determine
what computer system can best serve his growing real-time needs?"

A clear trend in the computer industry today is toward the
use of computer systems that employ large-capacity randomaccess storage devices and perform "real-time" processing in
a wide variety of application areas. Real-time processing in
its broadest sense can include any type of processing that for
practical purposes is instantly responsive to external events
and is capable of influencing the further course of these
events. Thus, both missile guidance and simple on-line file
inquiry systems can be considered rcal-time activities.

Applications
Random-access devices and the real-time processing they
permit have become so important that many current computer systems require some kind of mass storage· device in
every equipment configuration that is sold. These devices can
aid considerably in improving the performance efficiency of a
system's hardware and software. Fast-access storage devices·
make possible efficient real-time processing in such diverse
applications as:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Inventory control
Airline reservations
On-line savings
Process control
Credit checking
On-demand management reporting
Conversational programming.
-

The performance advantages and application flexibility
gained with real-time processing in random-access-oriented
systems have forced almost every current or prospective computer user to come to grips with questions such as "Are we
ready for real-time processing?," or "What computer system
can best serve our growing real-time needs?" The user contemplating installation of real-time hardware or addition of
another real-time application to his -system cannot easily find

answers to his questions because the subject matter is complex and the consequences of any decisions are far-reaching.
Evaluating, selecting, and utilizing real-time equipment is
especially difficult because up to this time there has been no
effective method - short of full-scale (and expensive) simulation - of measuring the performance of planned real-time
"ystems.

New Estimating Technique
This article discusses a new standardized estimating procedure for measuring the ability of computer systems to locate
and update randomly addressed records in real-time applications. It is based on a standard random-access benchmark
problem, which is similar in concept to the standard sequential benchmarks. 1 Using a detailed programming technique
that is standard, objective, and yet flexible, the new estimating procedure measures computer systems in their performance of the random-access benchmark problem. The resulting performance times serve as a valuable guide to the overall
performance of those systems which are oriented toward the
use of random-access devices. They also serve as a useful tool
in comparative system evaluations, since all systems can and
will be measured in basically the same standard manner.

Real-Time Benchmark Approach
One of the most common real-time jobs in commercial data
processing installations is the processing of randomly (and
often remotely) entered detail transactions against a master
file stored in random-access storage devices. The detail transactions supply the information used to update the master file
by inserting new records, deleting old records, and modifying
1

"Standardized Benchmark Problems Measure Computer Performance,"
John R. Hillegass, Auerbach Corporation, Computers and Automation,
January 1966, pages 16-19.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

the contents of existing records. Usually an activity report is
prepared concurrently to reflect the modifications made to the
on-line master file. Figure 1 illustrates this type of application. An on-line savings system is a typical exarriple of this
for.m of real-time processing.

Computer

F'igure 1. Rllil Diagram of Random-Access Benchmark Problem

The application parameters that ~ave the greatest effect on
throughput ,times in real-time processing are: organization of
the master file in random-access storage, source and frequency
'of real-time detail transactions, amount of computation required to update each master-file record, and method of
handling the activity report. With regard to these parameters,
the random-access benchmark problem (like any standard
benchmark problem) includes certain necessary assumptions
and parameter specifications. The following paragraphs explain these basic assumptions and general parameters.
Master File Organization

The master file is assumed to be stored on one or more
random-access storage devices in sequential order by item
number. It is further assumed that the master records will
be accessed through use of the indexed s2quential access techriique, with a complete cylinder index permanently resident
in core storage and a track index stored on the first track of
every logical cylinder. 2
Thus, when a detail transaction enters the system, the
cylinder index in core storage is searched to find the number
of the cylinder that contains the desired master-file record.

Seek Operation

•

A seek operation is then performed on the random-access
device to locate the desired cylinder. Next, the first track of
the cylinder is read to obtain the track index, which reveals
the exact track and block number within which the desired
'record is stored. Using this information, the desired master
record is read into core storage for updating.
As mentioned;' the master file is assumed to be distributed
in strict sequential order through the random-access storage
medium. One reason for this assumption is to make the storage of the master file as application-independent as possible
and thereby extend the general applicability of the results. It
is fu'rther assumed that there are no known differences in the
activity (i.e., frequency of access) of individual master-file
records, so that no performance advantage can be gained by
organizing all highly active records in the same or consecutive cylinders. Experience has shown that the master files in

A "cylinder" is that group of tracks or data storage locations that can be
accessed when the movable access mechanism of a random-access storage
device is positionecl at one discrete position. A fixed-head drum unit or
disc file would, therefore, consist of only one actual cylinder since all of
the data it holds can be accessed without repositioning of the access
mechanism. In practice, however, the cylinder concept. can be - and
usually is - applied to fixed-head devices by subdividing the total body of
data tracks into a number of logical "cylinders" so that the. two-level indexing scheme, as used in this benchmark problem, can conveniently be
applied.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

many application areas are organized in just this straightforward fashion, especially in their earliest versions of implementation.
Detail Transactions

-The random-access benchmark problem primarily measures
the speed at which a given system can locate, read, update,
and write randomly speG,ified master records on randomaccess storage devices. In order to ensure that the benchmark
will accurately measure the throughput capabilities of random-access devices engaged in file-updating activities (and
. to ensure that the times for this primary activity will not be
muddled by extraneous and widely varying considerations),
no attempt' has been made to include timing considerations
involved in obtaining the Detail Transadions. Instead, the
Detail Transactions are assumed to be arriving in random
sequence and at a continuous rate from either local or remote
input devices.
Wh-en the transactions enter the central computer system,
they are stored in a transaction queue in a communication
area of core storage by a r~al-time program or simple data
input routine resident in a "foreground" portion of core
s'torage. The random-access benchmark problem, then, obtains
its Detail Transactions by accessing the common communication area of core storage. It is assumed that the Detail
Transactions arrive at a sufficiently high rate so that one or
more transactions are always waiting to be processed; i.e., the
transaction arrival rate is nev~r allowed to be a limiting
factor upon the computer system's throughput.
Through this assumption, the applicability of the results
of the standard benchmark test is again kept broad. To the
random-access benchmark problem, it makes no difference
whether the Detail Trqnsactions enter the system via a local
card reader, via a simple remote inquiry device, or via a
complex data communications network. Detail Transactions
are considered to be device-independent. The random-access
benchmark problem primarily measures a system's ability to
locate and update randomly addressed master records. It
does not attempt to measure the efficiency of the system's data
communications network.
Required Computation

The amount of computation required to update each
master-file record is determined by the number of computatiRnal steps required to perform the program functions specified in' a series of detailed flowcharts. The general flowchart
in Figure 2 summarizes these detailed flowcharts and indicates the basic computational processes that must be performed. Because of the imbalance between computational
speeds and the access times for most current random-access
devices, the central processor time required to perform the
spe~ified computations will generally be a small portion of
the total time required to update one randomly addressed
master-file record. The amount of computational time can,
however, affect the number of disc or drum revolutions required to complete the processing cycle for a single master
record.
The central processing time for each system is clearly indicated in a Worksheet Data Table that lists both processor
and input-output times required to perform each logical
function of the standard problem. Standard throughput pertormance graphs show both the elapsed job time and the total
amount of central processor time used in processing the master records. Comparing elapsed and central processor time
will show the amount of central processor time available for
use by other jobs. This information is of vital interest when
measuring computer systems that are ~capable of multiprogrammed operation~. These graphs and worksheets form part

sequential access
technique to
obtain Master
Record Address

Search cylinder index in core storage for
address of cylinder holding Master Record;
read first track of cylinder (Track Index)
for location of Master Record in cylinder.

Read track or portion of track containing
Master Record and isolate Master Record.

Using information from Detail Transaction
in buffer area, update stock control data in
Master Record.

Move next Detail Transaction from com-

access storage for master-file storage; the medium-scale standard configuration must have at least 20,000,000 bytes; and
the large-scale standard configuration requires at least
100,000,000 bytes.
Most current computer systems offer several different types
of random-access storage devices, including magnetic drum,
magnetic disc, and magnetic card or strip devices. The speed
and storage capacities of these devices (and their prices) can
vary by several orders of magnitude. The principal guideline
that is followed in choosing the particular random-access
storage devices to satisfy the auxiliary storage requirements
of each standard configuration is economy, both in terms of
the monthly rental price per unit of storage and the throughput potential of the selected devices. Other guidelines are
that the selected device must be fully software supported and
must have reasonably high reFability.

munications region to buffer work area.

Benchmark Description
Put Master
Record back in
its original
location

Write updated Master Record and re-read
to verify recording accuracy.

Format Activity
Record and write
it on tape, disc,
or printer

Compose line of print for Activity Record
and write to fastest available peripheral
device for later off-line printing.

Figure 2. General Flowchart for Random-Access Benchmark Problem

of the standard method of presenting the results for all realtime systems measured.

Activity Re~ort
The standard format of the Activity Report record is
rigidly specified. This record of master-file activity will generally be written either on a magnetic tape unit or on a
random-access device that is not used for master~file storage.
The Activity Report itself is assumed to be printed off-line at
some later time. (If a system does not have the capability
to use magnetic tape units and cannot add additional randomaccess devices, the Activity Report record will be printed
on-line, though this mode of operation may severely reduce
the system's throughput.)
It is further assumed that the Activity Report record will
be made available in core storage for access by a separate
routine for possible transfer back to the remote terminal that
entered the Detail Transaction (as in most inquiry jresponse
applications). Decisions concerning the use of either magnetic tape or random-access devices for the Activity Report
records, and amount (if any) of record blocking, are made in
such a way as to achieve the best possible throughput rates.

Standard Configurations
Real-time performance estimates derived from the randomaccess benchmark problem are meaningful only in relation
to the hardware equipment configuration that "performs"
the benchmark. Therefore, three standard system configurations have been specified, and each computer system's performance is evaluated in one or more of these standard configurations. Standard configurations permit valuable performance and price comparisons to be made between different computer systems, and also permit computer users to
evaluate performance results in relation to the standard configuration that most resembles their current or proposed
random-access system.
The small-scale standard configuration requires (among
other devices) at least 5,000,000 bytes of on-line random-

Like the widely-utilized generalized sequential file processing problems, the random-access benchmark problem represents a typical iriventory control application. The basic
processing performed in an on-line inventory control application will closely resemble the basic processing performed in
many other real-time processing applications. The sequential
file processing problems generally use master files stored
sequentially on magnetic tape, accept sorted Detail Transaction records (usually from punched cards), and print the
Activity Report on an on-line printer. The random-access
benchmark problem, by contrast, uses master files stored on
random-access devices, accepts Detail Transactions in random
order, and writes the Activity Report on auxiliary storage
devices.
Aside from these basic differences in the method of sorting
and handling the files, the sequential file processing problems
and the random-access benchmark problem share many
characteristics, including the entire computational procedure
that updates the active master-file record. Thus, valuable cost
and throughput comparisons can be made between sequential
and random processing techniques.

Format
The basic form of the random-access benchmark problem
is represented in Figure 1. Record layouts for all files are
specified in detail, but the format and packing of the masterfile records can be slightly modified to permit more effective
utilization of the hardware being measured.
The detailed processing steps in the random-access benchmark problem are clearly specified by' flowchart diagrams (as
summarized in Figure 2), but the exact programming procedures used to code these processing steps are left to the
analyst performing the estimate. Thus, the analyst can take
full advantage of the hardware features and peculiarities
(such as variable word length, special arithmetic capabilities,
input-output overlaps, special random-access instructions,
etc.) of the system he evaluates. This technique adds to the
validity of the resulting performance measurements, since the
hardware is always used to its best advantage, just as programmers strive to use it in actual applications. Automated
estimating procedures, by contrast, tend to be overly general
and can be hard-pressed to supply custom-tailored measurements that take into account each system's unique characteristics.

Presenting the Results
The estimating process is separated into a series of logical
steps, the results of which are summarized in the Worksheet
Data Table (Figure 3) that is prepared for each computer
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

WORKSHEET DATA TABLE 2 - RANDOM ACCESS BENCHMARK PROBLEM
CONFIGURATION

TASK
IVR
Flowchart
Block
1

E.1- E.4
E.5
E.6 - E.8

Random
Access
Benchmark
Problem
Timings,
msec

E.9 - E.12
E.13 - E.22
E.23 - E.30
E.31 - E.34
E.35 - E.39

1 'unction

Central Processor
Time, msec

Housekeeping
Seek and Read
Track Index
Search Track
Index
Get Master
Record
Update Master
Record with
Transaction
Get next
Transaction
Write updated
Master Record
Format and write
Activity Record

1. 51
0.76

Standard resident routines
Fixed overhead
Benchmark program
File and work areas
Cylinder Index
Track Index

3
Random
Access
Benchmark
Problem
File
Characteristics

Master Record size, bytes
Block size, bytes
Blocks per track
Tracks per Cylinder for
Master File storage
Cylinders for Master File
storage
Devices for Master File
storage

1. 52
3.35

41.3

0.15

49.1

0.20
17.5

0.70

17.5

0.99

0.30

0.51

4:200.'712

0.51
50.0

0.95

50.0

1. 56

0.91

Total Time per Master Record,
msec
2
Random
Access
Benchmark
Problem
Core Storage
Space,
Bytes

VIIIR
REFERENCE
Dominant I/O
Dominant I/O
Device/Channel Time: Central Processor Device/Channel Time:
Time, msec
Master File, msec
Master File, msec

0.91
108.8

5.79

116.6

9.34

8,000
128
4,740
1,712
1,890
1,40r.

17,000
128
4,740
2,608
1,985
6,300

Total Core Space, Bytes

4:200.715

32,761

Figure 3.

88
616
5
8

88
1,260
5
18

378

397

4:200.716

Example of a Worksheet for a Third Generation Computer
© 1966 AUERBACH Corporation and AUERBACH Info, Inc .•

system. Each logical step (or program segment) is keyed to
a series of flowchart blocks that describe' the step in detail.
Central processor and input-output times are always listed
separately in the Worksheet. Separate times are listed for
each system configuration measured in its performance of the
random-access benchmark problem.
Input-output time is represented on the Worksheet by a
single column of figures for each configuration measured.
This column shows the dominant I/O device time or the
dominant I/O channel time, whichever is greater. Generally,
this column of figures, Dominant I/O, will reflect the master
record physical .I/O time, i.e., the time required to locate,
read, write, and write-check one master-file record (with the
time required to perform each operation specified individually). Writing of the Activity Report record will usually
be completely masked behind the dominant master record
I/O operations.

Estimated Total Time
The Worksheet Data Table also includes a figure called
"Total Time per Master Record, msec" for both the Central Processor and Dominant I / a columns. The higher of
these two total figures represents the estimated total time,
expressed in milliseconds, to process one randomly addressed
master-file record according to the specifications of the random access benchmark problem.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

The central processing and elapsed I/O timing figures presented in the Worksheet Data Table are summarized and
extended on system performance graphs which indicate the
time, in minutes, required to update from 100 to 100,000
master-file records.

Applying the Results
Since the results of the random-access benchmark problem
are presented in logical timing "kernels" keyed to logical sections of the standard problem flowchart, a systems analyst
can easily obtain performance estimates for his specific realtime processing jobs by substituting or adding his estimated
timing kernels for program segments that are unique to his
problem programs. Thus, he can arrive at a new total time
(central processor and I/O) to process one randomly-accessed
master record in his specific program.
This new real-time performance estimating technique has
already been successfully applied to a number of thirdgeneration real-time systems, including six models of the IBM
System/360. In applying the real-time measures to current
systems, widely diverse random-access devices have been used
for master-file storage, providing a good test of the flexibility
of the technique. The estimating procedure' has shown itself
to be objective, flexible, easy to use, easy to modify, and
capable of producing valuable measurements of real-time
processing power.,

13th ANNUAL EDITION OF THE

COMPUTER DIRECTORY
AND BUYERS' GUIDE
the regular June issue of

carn"'uters
r:'nd automation

to be published in June, 1967

Contents
• A Roster of Organizations in the Electronic Computing and Data Processing Industry.
• A Buyers I Guide in the Electronic Computing and Data Processing Field.
• A Special Roster of organizations supplying entire equipments for computing and data processing
systems.
• A Special Roster of computing, data processing, and consulting services.
• A Special Roster of commercial time-shared computing services.
• A Special Roster of commercial organizations supplying courses, training, or instruction in computing, programming, or systems .
• A Special Roster of organizations specializing in leasing or financial services in the computer field.
• Characteristics of General Purpose Digital Computers.
• Characteristics of General Purpose Analog Computers
• A Roster of School, College and University Computer Centers.
• A Roster of Computer Associations.
• A Roster of Computer Users Groups.
• A List of Over 1100 Applications of Electronic Computing and Data Processing Equipment.

Price
• $12. 00 separately
• Prepublication price for Subscribers to "Computers and Automation, " whose present subscription
does not include the "Computer Directory" (magazine address label is marked *N) .
. $7 .. 50
• Prepublication price for Nonsubscribers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. $9.95

(Notice: If address label is marked *D, your subscription includes the "Computer Directory")
SEND PREPAID ORDERS TO:
Designate No. 18 on Reader Service

COMPUTERS AND A UTOMA TION, 815 Washington Street, Newtonville, Mass.
20

Card

02160

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Small computers
are Innovation machines
The power under the direct control of the scientific investigator with small computers is enormous. Not just
the power to calculate. Not just the power to analyze.
But the power to innovate.
Small computers - and by that we mean laboratory
, size or smaller general purpose machines - are most
frequently used on-line, in real time, intimately hooked
up to the experiment. Inputs to the computer are direct from the experiment. Outputs are instantaneous
detail, or instantaneous sampling, or instantaneous
averaged results, all provided while the experiment
proceeds.
Two things can now happen. First, the investigator can
change the method of data taking, or the sequence of
data taking, based on the results he sees emerging, He
can sample more frequently than he thought necessary, or can look in detail, at an unexpected result.

Second, he can influence the experiment, either by
himself or automatically by the computer, based on the
results he sees emerging.
If he waited to complete the experiment and analyze
the results at the computation center, the opportunity
.
to innovate would be gone.
Small, real-time, on-line, general purpose computers
are intensely personal, highly approachable, responsive scientific innovation machines. It will be the rare
laboratory that will not have one in the next few years.
DIGITAL is the largest supplier of small
computers to the scientific disciplines, PDP8/S, PDp·8, L1NC-8, PDP-9, PDP·9 Multianalyzer, and five versions of the PDP-10,
Write for the just-published 540-page Small
Computer Handbook and Primer. Free.

COMPUTERS· MODULES

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION. Maynard, Massachusr:tls 01754. Telephone: (617) 897·8821 • Cambridge, Mass, • New Haven. Washington, D. C.• Parsippany,
N. J•• Rochester, N, Y .• Philadelphia. Huntsville. Pittsburgh. Chicago. Denver. Ann Arbor. Houston· Los Angeles. Palo Alto· Seattle. Carleton Place and Toronto,
Ont. • Reading, England • Paris, France • Munich and Cologne, Germany • Sydney and West Perth, Australia • Modules distributed also through Allied Radio

Designate No. 11 on Reader Service Card

COMPUTER PERFORMANCE PROJE,CTED
THROUGH SIMULATION
Fred C. Ihrer
Vice President and Technical Director
Comress
Washington, D.C. 20018

"The implementation of a data processing system is as complex as any
function faced by management - and evaluation of computer hardware can no longer be realistically accomplished simply by comparing
hardware performance data."

Increasingly, computer management is recognizing the
need to employ scientific_methods to assist in the complex
tasks of hardware and software selection and evaluation.
Prominent among the scientific techniques available today is
an integrated series of computer programs called SCER T
(Systems and Computer Evaluation and Review Technique).
The SCERT Program has been used extensively for over
four years by diversified groups of commercial and governmen"t organizations throughout the United States, Canada
and Europe.
Proper management of the total environment in data processing requires realistic prediction of computer performance
at a number of different points in the total cycle of selection
and implementation.

Feasibility Analysis
Today's computers have the inherent capability to do just
about anything from playing chess to completely controlling
complex manufacturing operations; but this capability does
not necessarily prove feasibility. The planning for new computer applications should include precise measurements both
of the cost of implementing and processing, and the response
that the computer hardware and system design can provide.

the industry for any length of time have seen the explosion
of implementation costs caused by the selection of inadequate hardware. Frequently, a bad computer selection
requires complete restarting of the whole implementation
process. Just as important is the delay of important missions
and programs. Far less frequently, improper selection can
result in too much hardware power with obvious excess cost.
The ability to accurately predict performance when selecting
is a vital need in most organizations.
Hardware and software systems now offer different "approaches to the solution of anyone problem on a computer.
Measuring the performance of alternative designs in terms
of cost and response can lead to an optimum design selection.

Program Design
As computer hardware has become more reliable, the
capacities available to programmers have expanded. A predictive tool was needed to allow the programmer to optimize
the capability and capacity utilization of the programs. Just
as important is the proper selection of programming language
from the several now available for a typical computer system.

EDP Management
Computer Selection
Proper computer selection is a need easily recognized by
all levels of computer management. Those associated with

Finally, computer management needs a predictive tool to
measure
operational and programmer resources. Such a
tool should enable them to' measure increasing and/or peak
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 196i

workload before the fact, and to plan for obtaining proper
hardware at a realistic time.

Why Simulate?
The evaluation of computer hardware can no longer be
realistically accomplished by comparing instruction execution
times, peripheral speeds, memory sizes and other unrelated
hardware performance data. Other approaches to performance prediction, such as benchmark processing and
instruction mix statistical data, are inadequate for the evaluation of computers performing in a multi-programming
mode of operation.
Simulation is a scientific tool that provides for the
analysis of complex structures, procedures or systems by
modeling the systems and examining the impact of alternative decisions based on predictive results. The more complex the simulation, the greater the need for a computerized
modeL
The planning, installation and implementation of a data
processing system is as complex as any function faced by
management. The number of decisions and alternatives
presented at every stage of planning and implementation
makes simulation a useful tool. From early stages, when
alternate gross automation plans are presented, to the complex decision for propel~ hardware/software selection, each
decision is best made in light of the eventual impact of the
alternatives on the final performance of the system.

Hardware Independence
A second basic premise in the design of SCER T is concerned with the hardware independence of the input specifications. Optimum use of SCER T would allow for the
evaluation of a defined system on any conceivable configuration of computer hardware and its related software. SCER T
would have the responsibility for adjusting the system to
conform to the particular hardware being simulated. This
IS accomplished in two ways:
1. Factor Library
An important part of the SCER T Program is the Factor
Library. This Library represents a technical data base
which contains the significant electronic and mechanical
performance factors for virtually all commercially available computer hardware. The Library also contains
performance characteristics of most of the software
packages available. This software includes data on
compilers, operating systems, Input/Output Control
System packages, and sort-merge packages.
SCER T uses the Factor Library based on component
model numbers defined at simulation time, and constructs a model of the hardware to be simulated, parametered by the specified software. SCERT then produces its first output report which shows general cost
and environmental characteristics of the hardware, and
serves to confirm the actual configuration being simulated.
.

The Design of SCERT
~CE~T

There are two basic premises underlying the design of
SCER T. To properly evaluate the relative ability of computers to process projected (or actual) applications, the
total workload to be placed on the computer hardware must
be considered. This first premise is particularly true when
processing employs on-line real-time concepts or when the
hardware and software under consideration is operated in a
multi-programmed mode.
To provide for the simulation of the total processing
workload, the primary consideration is to allow for a rapid
but accurate definition of processing requirements. Obviously,
SCER T was going to be employed in situations where the
processing workload only existed at a high level conceptual
design. But in other cases, SCER T would be used to study
systems where the programming had been accomplished and
the systems were already running on computer hardware.
The input to SCER T which describes processing therefore
must have a broad range of adaptability but, at the same
time, have the capability of being prepared in a minimum
amount of time with a minimum amount of analytical effort.

AIJALvSIS PAkT 1

CU~lPUTEI{ COMPLEMEr,T REPORT

FOR SYSTt::M Xt:Lbb
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----------------------------~

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Analytical Language
This design goal was met by the development of an
analytical language which is structured similar to programming languages, but at a much higher level. The language
has three divisions: (1) the environment division, which
provides background data on the system to be simulated; (2)
the file division which describes the general characteristics
of all files involved in the computer processing; and (3) the
systems division which specifies the actual processing to be
accomplished on the computer.
In a typical situation, a trained SCERT Analyst can
define a computer system consisting of approximately 100
runs in one week or less.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

2. Presimulation Algorithms
The second way hardware independence is achieved in
SCERT is through presimulation algorithms. These
algorithms structure the processing descriptions so that
they are compatible with the particular computer being
simulated. The major algorithms accomplish the following:
a. A computation of internal processing time and memory requirements. As a by-product, a computation of
the number of program steps required to perform the
internal processing.

b. The assignment of all files to available peripheral
devices and channels.
c. The restructuring of files in terms of record format,
optimum file blocking and buffer areas.
d. The calculation of throughput timing for all input/
output functions and their memory requirements.
e. The calculation of pre- and post-run overhead time
such as program insertion, setup, error correction, and
re-run.

component involved in the real-time processing and shows
the statistical probability distribution of queue sizes in the
hardware complex.
SCERT HEAL TIME. Ar.ALYSls.I'ART 2
FOR

SYSTE~l

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l l . ~3

The SeER T Program employs three distinct simulation
methods. The first of these derives the elapsed running
times for each computer run or real-time event. If the
system being simulated is only concerned with sequential
batch processing in a non-multi-programmed environment,
this stage of simulation is the only one employed.
This first stage of simulation is called a throughput simulation. SeERT literally explodes the processing requirements into the maximum number of unique throughput
possibilities, and then simulates the flow of processing for
each unique situation, thereby producing a projection of
net running time.
The result of the throughput simulation is then reported
in a "Detailed System Analysis," which is produced for
every computer run simulated. It also contains certain other
data useful for the implementation of the system such as
optimum file blocking and channel assignments.
SCERT DETAIL SYSTEMS AI,AL.vsis
FOR RUN

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impact on total performance of various levels of
operating systems.
6. System Specifications
A natural by-product of SCERT is its portrayal of
systems processing requirements in a non-hardware
form. SOER T is frequently used to simulate a proposed systems design prior to the time of asking computer manufacturers to furnish hardware bids. An

11~~

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automatic output of these preliminary simulations are
the systems specifications (which have been used by
computer manufacturers as an ideal form for communicating processing requirements for bidding purposes).
.
7. Programming Management
One of the outputs produced by SCERT provides,
possibly for the first time, a reasonable vehicle for the
management of programming workloads. As a byproduct of its presimulation algorithms, SCERT projects
- SCERT ANA~,SIS PAI'l 4

PROGRA'IMING

REQUIREMEr,TS

REPORT

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PROGRAMMING
EFFORT IN
MAN MONTHS

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the programming effort required to implement each
computer run simulated. This projection can provide
a standard measurement to allocate programmer workloads and to derive a degree of relative efficiency and
effectiveness for a programming staff.

c&a
WORLD REPORT - GREAT BRITAIN

I saw a bored Alexei Kosygin replying perfunctorily to official speeches of welcome when he visited the Elliott-Automation development plant at Borehamwood, North of London,
early in February. But ten minutes later I saw an animated,
interested textile machinery engineer, Alexei Kosygin, discussing the possibilities of a computer-controlled laser beam
system to cut out textile patterns at very high speed and with
the greatest economy of cloth.
There seemed little doubt that the Soviet Premier has a
good grasp of what automation can do for industrial processing. Whether he is quite so interested in replacing his armies
of bureaucrats by business computers remains to be seen. One
rather piquant detail of his visit was the praise he lavished on
the design of Elliott's 920 M microminiaturised computers
for fire control, navigation, and other military applications.
Since these computers are based on integrated circuits developed under license with Fairchild Camera, it is doubtful
whether the U.S.S.R. would be allowed to buy them, even for
the "Concordski." However, in the present milder climate
and provided the ultimate use could be specified, who knows?

software is not running as smoothly as it should, according
to Dr. L. Rotherham, Member for Research. The existing
IBM 7094 II is being retained for as long as necessary, Dr.
Rotherham said, adding that the 360/75 "was about twice as
effective." In the meantime, the Board has ordered five ICT
1905 machines, worth about $1.4m each, one for each of
the Regional Centres. Interfacing these with the 360/75 is
going to be quite a problem. An attempt at compatibility
between the smaller 1904 of the Stationery Office and the
360-compatible System-4 computers of the Post Office is to
be made by an independent programming group.
A design and research collaboration agreement between
Scientific Data Systems, General Electric Company of the
UK, and the CEA organization in France has broken down,
and GEC Computers and Automation is being absorbed by
Elliott-Automation. The latte:r will work off the seven outstanding contracts involving machines from the SDS range
and is unlikely, to pay much more than the value of the contracts for the goodwill, programming know-how, and sales
team. One Elliott man hinted that some contracts had
already cost GEC a mint of money on the systems design side.
He told me that it was most unlikely that his company would
continue the connection with SDS. It was not needed since
Elliott is in about fifth place worldwide as a builder of process
control computers.

There has been a spectacular sale of a single $2Y4-million
computer installation to East Germany by International Computers and Tabulators for use in business and scientific computing by the internationally-known Carl Zeiss optical works
at Jena. The configuration is one of the largest 1907 s yet
specified, and has a mass of tape decks, visual display consoles, magnetic card files, and plotters. With it goes $600,000
worth of data preparation equipment to the main import/
export agency in Berlin.
This is the largest data processing complex ever exported
from Britain, and it brings the total value of sales to the
Iron Curtain countries in the past twelve months to around
the $15m mark.
It seems slightly ironical that, while the British computer
industry is rejoicing at these export successes, the imbalance
of imports into Britain against exports is still cripplingly
heavy. In 1966 the import figure was about $70m, overwhelmingly IBM 30's, 40's, and 50's from France and
Germany.

British European Airways, extremely happy with its twin
490 (UNIVAC) seat reservation system, is going to base a
four-stage integrated management system on its main computer centre. Extra equipment - computers, visual displays,
booking consoles - will be needed at each annual stage. By
1970, something like $30m worth of hardware will have
been utilized to control passenger schedules, crew rosters,
freight, etc., and to pFovide advanced simulation powers for
management's forward planning.
The competition for the additional hardware has been
thrown open to all comers but it is already certain that the
central machines, if they prove to be overburdened (as is
most likely) will be replaced by UNIVAC 494's.

At the same time, IBM has scored a resounding success on
the university front with the sale of a 360/67 to the joint
computer departments of Newcastle and Durham Universities.
Asked why he did not go for British machines, Dr. Page of
Newcastle said he could not wait until the end of 1968 for
an English Electric System 4-75, and he would not take an
ICT machine because it had no paging facility.
Dr. Page has been given specific promises of multi-access
software from IBM by the end of October this year, though
he did claim already that it would not be as efficient as had
been hoped.
The same theme comes from the Central Electricity Gen('rating Board which has taken delivery of a 360/75. The

Ted Schoeters
Stanmore
Middlesex
England

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

RECOVERY FROM ERROR
Jan B. Hext
Basser Computing Department
University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia

"A recent computer installation for handling air-traffic required that
no interruption last more than 30 seconds during the first five years of
operation. Such demands for nonstop service are becoming increasingly
common in the range of on-line applications currently being developed."

Ten years ago, if computing went wrong, recovery was a
comparatively simple business. For instance, if the machine
broke down, Or there was a flash of lightning, or you pressed
the wrong button, the usual procedure was to start all over
again.
Hardware Failure

Of course, if the program had been running for several
hours, this was annoying. With such programs it was standard practice to dump the contents of all registers on to magnetic tape every 15 minutes or so, and to recover from breakdowns by a return to the last dump.
In some installations, if there was a power cut during a
magnetic tape transfer, the tape was liable to snap. If this,
or any other fault, occurred while the dump was in progress,
the dump itself became useless. It was therefore important to
ensure that the previous dump was not overwritten until the
new one had been successfully made. Ideally the dump
would alternate between two tapes. The same principle still
underlies all file updating techniques, in which the original
file is never overwritten until the updated version has been
safely established.
Program Failure

But hardware failures were not the only source of trouble.
Far more errors were caused by program failures, and so
recovery procedures had to be available for them also.
On the "open shop" system, the techniques were few and
simple. On failure, a red light would flash up, indicating
trouble; maybe a few diagnostic tit-bits would be punched on
paper tape; and then the machine would come to an abrupt
halt. To cope with these regrettable emergencies there would
be a set of post-mortem routines available, which the user
could supply to the machine in order to retrieve further
diagnostics.
Then there were those programs that produced no failure
at all, but quietly went into an infinite loop. Once again,
with Joe standing by, this caused no great trouble. He would
guess at what was happening and take on-the-spot corrective
action. This might involve throwing a switch to alter the
course of the program. Or maybe he could use a built-in
facility, which would enable him to determine the cycle
which was being repeated.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

In the age of leisure, Joe could even inspect various registers by means of lights or display tubes; he could alter little
bits here and there, and then restart at any point he chose.
As a last resort, he could step through his program one instruction at a time, watching to see what happened. It was all
a matter of patience, not hurrying too much, being careful to
press the right buttons.
Naturally Joe enjoyed having full control of the works: it
was a good and thoroughly desirable state of affairs. Unfortunately, however, in the middle of his debugging session,
George would come breathing down his neck and he would
get a little flustered. Soon he would press the wrong button,
and then he would have to recover from his recovery.
Batch Processing

Allowing Joe to dither over which button to press, or which
post-mortem to use, soon became too wasteful of valuable
machine-time. Moreover, waiting while Joe made his on-thespot corrections was wasteful of George's time too. Shortage
of machine-time, man-hours and patience eventually led to
the batch-processing system. Under this scheme, programs
were supplied to the computer in batches and then processed
concurrently under control of a Supervisor routine with a
minimum of outside intervention. As a result, Joe was kept
away from the computer and all his programs were handled
by one or two trained operators.
Batch-processing had a profound effect on systems design,
and not least on recovery procedures. As before, the need
for recovery arose from two causes - hardware failure and
program failure - and means had to be devised for coping
with each.
If there was a power failure, or some other such breakdown, recovery depended on knowing what program was in
progress at the time and being able to restart the run at that

Dr. Jan B. Hext graduated in Mathematics from Cambridge University, England, in 1962, and stayed on to
take a Ph.D. in Computer Software. He recently joined
the lecturing staff of the Basser Computing Department
at the University of Sydney, Australia, where a network
of six computers is currently being installed.

program. This was quite straightforward, as the Supervisor
would normally type out the name of each program as it was
entered.
In some installations, to avoid back-tracking after a breakdown, means were devised for dumping all active registers
immediately when a power failure was detected. A flywheel,
or some other device, ensured sufficient current for the dump.
The problem was then reduced to that of re-starting from a
standard dump and no computation was wasted.
The commonest hardware failures occurred in peripheral
equipment, especially with magnetic tapes. If reading from
magnetic tape produced parity failure, some units automatically made a second attempt; if the source of trouble was a
speck of dust, the repeat would very probably be successful.
But if a peripheral failure persisted, the hardware recorded it
in a special register. It was then the programmer's responsibility to inspect this register and to take action if failure had occurred. If the Supervisor found such trouble, it would inform
the operator by means of the on-line typewriter.

IIKeep the System Goingll
In batch-processing, the second type of recovery - recovery
from program failure - had one major goal in view: to keep
the system going. A program failure must not be allowed to
bring everything to a halt. For example, overflow, which in
early machines caused an abrupt full stop, would now be
recorded in a special register which the program was left to
inspect for itself.
More drastic errors, such as an attempt to read cards from
the line printer, returned control to the Supervisor, which
would terminate the offending program and carryon to the
next. It would probably print out a standard set of diagnostics by way of a post-mortem.
One of the greatest dangers was that a program might overwrite pa:rt of the Supervisor. This was ,so catastrophic, and
programmers attempted it so frequently, that special hardware was introduced to prevent it. By means of this hardware, the Supervisor restricted a program to an allocated
area, and any attempt to stray outside the area was immediately cut short.
If a program went into an infinite loop, intervention was
necessary. In some systems, the programmer had to specify a
time-limit to the operator; then, if this was exceeded, the
operator would interrupt the system and cause the Supervisor
to take over. In other cases, the programmer had to specify a
time-limit in his program heading. The Supervisor would
then check his run-time automatically and intervene if this
was exceeded. It was important to distinguish between his
"run-time" and his "elapsed time," since his program might
be held up for long, unpredictable periods, e.g. in waiting for
a magnetic tape to be mounted. Such a delay would not be
included in his run-time.
His prografll heading could also specify a limit on his output volume. This was important because it was usually possible to output vast volumes of garbage in comparatively short
run-time. His program heading could also include are-start
address, to which control would be transferred after certain
types of failure. This allowed him to use his own postmortem routines.

Third Generation Requirements
The change from open-shop to batch-processing thus introduced a new level of complexity in recovery techniques. The
most important aspect was that as far as possible recovery
must be handled automatically by the computer itself, using
a combination of hardware interrupts and Supervisor routines.
Today, with "third generation" computers being installed
third generation recovery problems are also being introduced.

The big issue now is how to recover from failures in an
on-line, multi-programming environment.
The problem is highlighted in situations demanding nonstop service to the users. For example, a recent installation
for handling air-traffic required that no interruption last more
than 30 seconds during the first five years of operation. Such
requirements are becoming increasingly common in the range
of on-line applications currently being developed. For them,
the prospect of having to recover from breakdown is not
attractive.

Precautions Against Breakdown
The problem becomes so acute that elaborate precautions
are taken to avoid breakdown altogether. For example, one
airline company with a reservations and message handling
system in Sydney plans to use three independent power supplies. And should all three fail together, battery supplies will
be available for an additional half hour.
Similarly, if the computer itself fails in any way, or if it
simply requires routine maintenance, there must be one or
more reserve computers ready to take over. Of course, such
back-up computers do not sit idle until a breakdown occurs:
they are normally occupied with less critical work, which can
be suspended when necessary.
In cases where it is vital that all errors be detected immediately, two computers can be run "back to back," each duplicating the work of the other. Then, if their outputs differ, the
error is immediately spotted. In an extreme case, such as
rocket control, where the recovery from such errors must also
be immediate, three computers can be run together and a
"majority vote" taken when two of them disagree.
In installations serving a number of consoles, precautions
are usually more modest. The general aim is to combine the
best features of open-shop and batch-processing; but great
care is needed if the user's needs are to be satisfied.

Time-Sharing
From the user's point of view, the wheel has turned full
circle. Once again Joe can bring his program to be run and
retain full control of it himself. No longer need he hand it
to an operator and wait for the results. Instead of the control
panel, he now sits at his console and supposedly has the happy
impression that the machine is entirely at his disposal. If his
program goes wrong, he can correct it on the spot; if it
loops, he can interrupt it or change its course. Admittedly,
George is breathing down his neck once more, but all in all
it feels good to have returned to open shop facilities.
However, although Joe thinks he has full control of his
program, in fact he does not~leven know where it is. It may
be in core, or on disc, or on tape - who can tell? Moreover,
he has no original program on cards or paper tape: it was all
type straight into the machine, and later overlaid with corrections. So in this respect his program is more remote from
him than ever. He is utterly dependent on the computer to
effect all recovery procedures for him.

Recovery by Computer
In order to do this, the system's basic need is to know the
most recent copies of all his files. These may be on disc (or
drum); but if the disc itself runs into trouble, it is preferable
to have copies also on tape. In one such system, the entire
contents of disc were dumped on tape each day. The process
took two hours, but was the only means of recovery from loss
of information on disc.
In other systems,.. such dumping is a continual process.
Copies of all files are held on tape, together with the time
and date when they were written there. Active files are also
held on disc, where they can be amended and processed.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Dumping is then applied as soon as possible to updated or
newly created files. But even with these precautions, recovery
of a large number of active programs is by no means simple.
Another hazard of such systems is that in the frequent
transfer of files from one device to another some information
may be corrupted. The dangers and attendant recovery problems are intensified when several computers are interconnected - a situation that is likely to become quite common
in the future. Although hardware incorporates many checks
of its own, it may well prove necessary to include others in
the software, possibly in the form of old-fashioned sum-checks.
Systems Testing
With sophisticated systems, a minor fault can often cause
a major headache. To track it down may require a detailed
investigation of both the hardware and the software. The
testing of hardware is normally carried out by the Supervisor,
whenever there is time available, and it is hoped that this will
show up any faults; but a transient error may slip through.
"Software is less amenable to such systematic checking and
will usually come under suspicion first, especially as hardware
is becoming increasing reliable. But since software should be
checked out once and for all when written, very little attention is paid to providing facilities for locating and correcting
errors in a working system: in theory they never arise.
Yet even assuming that systems really are error-free after
check-out, few ever remain static. New facilities will be
added and existing ones modified. It may seem preferable to
suspend all operations during software development; yet it is
only under full working conditions that some parts will ever
be fully tested. Besides, in some cases it is impossible to set
aside time (~r development; systems testing and normal computation must be carried out in parallel.
One way to do this is to simulate the system by means of a
program within the system; then software testing can be included as a normal job. But the complications are often too
great to be worthwhile. Besides, there is a danger of confusion between real failures, simulated failures and simulator
bugs.
Another technique is to write the system as a series of
"bricks," marking some as "safe" and oth.ers as "under test,"
rather like a set of drugs. Those under test are automatically
watched to ensure that they are not upsetting the system. If
a brick becomes suspect it is replaced by a previous version
which is known to be safe. This is no easy task; but something
of the sort is needed if systems are to cope with the pressures
of modern life.
The Prospects
Such are some of the problems with the up-and-coming
generation of time-sharing systems.
Recovery from hardware breakdown would be a gloomy
prosp"ect indeed, were it not that the hardware is becoming
more and more reliable. As the need for such recovery
becomes correspondingly remote, and as recovery itself becomes increasingly difficult, the time may be near when the
procedures will return to their earlier simplicity and attention
will be focussed almost exclusively on eliminating the need to
use them.
But software failures seem destined to survive longer. Only
recently have the difficulties of producing reliable software
been fully appreciated, and for the time being we continue to
improvise from one crisis to the next.
The more distant prospect suggests techniques akin to
those mentioned above, in which software bricks can be
written and tested more systematically. But it would be preferable to ensure their reliability in the first place. As always,
prevention is better than cure.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Where would you put
a record that mustn't be lost,
and may be needed at any time?
O.K. Where would you put
250,000 of them?
And while you're at it, remember that no one has time to
wait for any of them. That's the kind of problem an Acme
Visible systems analyst might run into any day of the week.
And every time his answer would be different. Because
each company he visits has a different kind of information,
a different way of using it, and a different paperflow need.
Sometimes he speeds up access to automation. Sometimes
he makes customer records instantly available. Another
time he might have to conquer inventory control. And he
does it, not by selling equipment, but by devising a unique
system each time. He'll work toward saving you time, or
money, or space. Or all three. Toward giving management
better control, or providing faster customer service. Or
both. If any of these appeal to you, call your Acme Visible
systems analyst and give him the problem. He won't give
you an answer. He'll design one. And it'll work faster.

t&ff4IVISIBLE I
Business and paperflow systems designers
Offices in 76 cities in the U.S. and Canada

f'l j, pfo'

8704 West AI/view Drive, Crozet, Va. 22932

'0 Co"d" Aom. S",., B,,',m S"tom,.

~~,~"o,
Designate No. 7 on Reader Service Card

.
31

c&a
CAPITAL REPORT

The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has called
for bids on a study to specify an information system to meet
their expanding needs. The study is the initial step in a longrange project to develop an optimum management information system for OSD's seven Assistant Secretaries and their
staffs.
OSD eliminated hardware suppliers from consideration
because of a possible conflict of interest, and will have the
Mitre Corporation monitor the work of the selected contractor. The Secretary's office indicated that they are looking for
fresh and unusual approaches to management information
reporting. They invite radically different systems and concepts, and want to exploit new techniques developed but not
yet operational.
OSD wants the study to produce recommendations for a
prototype system of radical design which could be implemented in approximately 24 months. The door was left wide
open for bidders to submit their ideas, and no specific funding limit was given, but a tight December 31 schedule was set
for completion of the initial study.
Congress is taking an ever-increasing interest in the EDP
industry as the session gets rolling in the capital. Rep. Cornelius Gallagher (D-N.J.) wants more information from the
Bureau of the Budget and the Executive Branch before
scheduling hearings by his House Special Subcommittee on
the Invasion of Privacy. He has been openly skeptical of proposals for the National Data Center, and has voiced demands
for justification from its proponents.
Senator Edward Long (D-Mo.) has scheduled Senate hearings on the same subject by his Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. Rep. Jack Brooks (DTexas) is planning on holding hearings sometime in this
session to look into putting the Federal budget on tape, disk,
or Nth generation media, and having all agencies submit their
budgets in machine digestible form. Rep. Emanuel Cellar
(D-N.Y.) will have his House Antitrust Subcommittee look
into antitrust and monopoly problems in the computer industry sometime during the session, but says that it has nothing
to do with the Justice Department's investigation of IBM.
Copywriting of computerized information routinely handled by abstracting services, libraries, and publishing companies distributing copyrighted works will be analyzed by the
Copyright office. Rep. Kastenmeier (D-Wis.) asked them to
get together with EDP industry leaders and find a solution to
who pays what to whom and when for copyrighted data disgorged from high-speed printers.
The Federal Communications Commission wants EDP industry leaders and their legal staffs, EDP users, and others to
get their arguments into its hands by October 2, so that it can
go about deciding if regulation is necessary in the burgeoning

field. Its recommendations carry significant weight in Congress, and it is concerned with questions of competition, rates,
and the future adequacy of services.
The House Census and Statistics Subcommittee, chaired by
Rep. W. J. Green (D-Pa.) says that it is going to see what it
can do EDP-wise for the Bureau of the Census as well as the
National Archives and Records Service, which is a part of the
General Services Administration.
The Washington, D.C. Association for Computing Machinery chapter, which has many influential members from
both government and industry, is taking a stand on the privacy
questions surrounding the proposed National Data Center. It
formed a committee and drafted a resolution for its Executive Council to look at which says that it doesn't want
"promises and good intentions to be substituted for technical
safeguards and effective laws: bureaucracy has a short
memory."
All in all, the industry is being besieged from every possible
angle in Congress' rush to solve the problems largely ignored
up to this time. As the spate of hearings, investigations, and
controversies rage, the industry has been prompted to begin
looking for some way to answer the tough problems coming
at it from all sides. AFIPS invited Rep. Gallagher to a policy
meeting in Warrenton, Virginia near Washington to hear
his views on how it should approach some of the problems.
There may be good cause for concern. Not too long ago,
the New York Stock Exchange's computerized system fell
down in heavy trading and an obscure bug in the program
controlling final prices came to light. Scores of erroneous
closing stock prices went out to hundreds of newspapers in
the country, and it took two weeks to get their father / grandfather records straight. Anyone who has ever hung up the
wrong master tape can visualize what could happen . . . a
grain dealer in Omaha reporting the biggest sale ever to the
Data Center over a remote, overloads the system. His confirmation message for data received begins, "John Doe, 12345-6789, married, scar left knee . . . . "
Computer systems which match unemployed Washington,
D.C. workers with jobs open in the area are being successfully
used by the United Planning Organization, a non-profit
agency funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity. Both
the unemployed and the underemployed are being encouraged
to register with UPO at ten neighborhood development centers in the Washington area. Their names, job skills, and
other employment data is recorded on input forms and then
put into a data bank. Similarly, jobs found by developers in
the agency are recorded and entered into a separate data bank.

(Please turn to page

53)

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Talk's cheap at Applied Logic.
Over twenty users can talk at once to
Applied Logic Corporation's PDP-6 computer
with its Bryant Memory System at their
time-shared computation center in
Princeton, N.J. They can listen, too. All
beca use of the low cost and easy access of
time-sharing. Scientists, mathematicians and
businessmen call in from teletype units night
and day, 144 hours a week. Their manmachine dialogue may take only a few
seconds. But it saves them hundreds of
man-hours of work. And to help the PDP-6

do its work, Applied Logic chose a 6-million
character Bryant Auto-Lift Drum. They say
it expands the core memory economically and
gives ideal swapping and storage for the
system. And interfaces with no trouble at all.
They must like it! Now they're expanding
with a 60-million character Bryant Model
2A Disc File. Write Bryant Computer
Products, 850 Ladd Rd., Walled Lake,
Mich. 48008. Ask for On-Line Application
Note #3. We'll make a Bryant believer
out of you, too.
BRYANT
COMPUTER PRODUCTS

""xL..a
~-~

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Designate No. 16 on
Reader Service Card .

LANGUAGE ENGINEERING
Hughes Aircraft Company
Los Angeles, Calif.

"Is it possible to make a machine which can reproduce all the speech
sounds? At present levels of development, such a machine would occupy
a considerable volume and would be a programmer's nightmare. But
within the next 20 years, completely automated systems will be used,
acting upon oral commands and responding with verbal answers."

Among the many research projects that exist today, each
more fantastic than the last, few have more appeal to the
imagination than the development of a machine or device
which can truly listen and talk in a human language. Robots
in science-fiction stories have had these functions, but our
duplication of them in real life has lagged somewhat. Yet
such a device would find many uses in our daily lives, and
would be as much a servant to man as any of our other
pieces of automatic, timesaving equipment.

The Human Speaking Mechanism
All peoples speak. Every known society has a spoken
language. Language is a body of spoken words combined in
a rather fixed fashion and understood by a considerable
community. Moreover, speech involves psycho-physiological
functions, the ability to make distinctive sounds that have
meaning, accompanied by listening, which includes the ability
to detect and recognize those sounds and to understand their
meaning.
The human speaking mechanism, by combining manipulations of the vocal cords, oral and nasal cavities, tongue,
mouth, teeth, and lips in various ways, can make hundreds
of different sounds. However, only about 40 distinctive
sounds are used in speaking English. These sounds, called
"phonemes," are cqmmon to a number of other languages
as well.1 There are both voiced and unvoiced sounds. The
voiced include the vowels and many consonants, and are
produced by vibrating the vocal cords with air from the
lungs. Voiced sounds contain chiefly harmonics of the frequency at which the larynx vibrates, which ranges from about
70 to 250 cycles per second (cps) for men and as high as
350 cps for women, with an average of 125 cps for men and
about 250 cps for women. The unvoiced sounds are consonants formed by the breath passing lips, teeth, or tongue,
and the combination of these.
As a speaker talks, the vibrations set up are transmitted
through the air, affecting the ear of the speaker as well as
the ear of the listener. This feedback to the speaker is
important because it aids in adjusting the pitch and amp liThis article is based on a report in Vectors, Vol. 8, No.3, and is used with
permission from Hughes Aircraft Company.

tude of the speech sounds and also is believed to play a part
in the thinking process. If the feedback is interfered with
(perhaps through acoustical delays or loud competitive
sounds) the speech will be disrupted.

Reproducing Speech Sounds
Is it possible to make a machine which can repr9duce all
the speech sounds? Although man retained his great interest
in both the phenomenon of speaking and in machines ever
since the ancient Greeks, it was not until the 18th century
that these two interests really began to merge. In the 17th
century, Bishop John Wilkins in England published phonetic
symbols portraying the vocal tract positions for alphabetic
characters. In 1779 the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg
offered a prize for a machine that could make the vowel
sounds. The prize was won by Christian Kratzenstein who
made five tubes approximately the size and shape of the
vocal passages when producing these sounds, and energized
by reeds.

First Speaking Machine
The first successful speaking machine was built by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1791. Working on it over a 20-year
period, von Kempelen designed and constructed a mechanism capable of reproducing short phrases, as well as individual sounds. Speech was formed by manipulating me~chanical elements which simulated the essential parts of the
human vocal system. The machine was restricted to short
phrases because of the limitation of the windbox to produce
adequate air flow.
The interest in devices for simulating human sounds also
continued in earnest through the 19th century. Helmholtz
excited acoustic resonators by tuning forks; Willis produced
vowel-like sounds by reed organ pipes; and Alexander Graham Bell went on to develop the telephone, a device that
could actually reproduce speech sounds.
But it was not until 1922 that an electical device was made
that could produce vowel sounds, and it was not until the
1930's that the continuous synthesis of speech was accomplished by Homer Dudley. His device, the VaDER (Voice Operation Demonstrator), was exhibited at the New York
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

·~

TO LUNGS (POWER)

(the Voder). Dudley built such a device and called it the
Vocoder ( Voice Coder). It was the result of ten years of
development. The basic principle of the Vocoder is that it
detects human speech, then transmits a description of the
speech signal in code, rather than the signal itself, to a
duplicate machine which reconstructs the signal at the receiver. What was said comes out in an artificial but understandable and recognizable voice; only another vocoder can
do this, so the system is inherently private.
One of the most successful vocoders ever developed was
the Hughes HC-137, currently used by the U.S. Army.
Hughes has designed and constructed several models of vocoders for military and foreign governments. It is an important communication tool for military police, defense and
diplomatic work and other applications requiring transfer of
private intelligence.
As mentioned, one of the major technical problems yet
unsolved in the development of a "listening" machine is
speech analysis. There are two phases or steps in this problem. The first step is to recognize the acoustic energy as
speech, and not as just noise. The second step is to decipher
the linguistic meaning contained in the speech signals.

Analogy between human and mechanical voice production

PHONEMES
VOWELS

Ii/as in "beet"
II/as in "bit"
lei as in "bait"
IE/as in "bet"
I rei as in "bat"
la/ as in·"hot"

I:) I as in "bought"
/o/as in "boat"
IV/as in "bull"
lui as in. "boot"
I A/as in "but"

Irl asin "raw"

World's Fair in 1939. The Voder used two electrically-generated complex vibrations to create the sounds, a buzz representing the larynx tone (voiced sounds) and a hiss consisting
)f random noise (unvoiced sounds). Either of these sounds
N'as applied to a group of bandpass filters which covered the
range of speech frequencies. Each filter was separately controlled, and the outputs were combined, amplified and
applied to a loudspeaker to form synthetic speecJ1 sounds.

/wl as in "wet"

Three Functions of Speech Communication Devices

Ip/as iIi "pin"
It/.8.sin "tin"
/kj as in u kin"

Any device that is constructed with the intent of duplicating human speech communication must contend with three
basic functions: (1) speaking, (2) listening, and (3) thinking (analyzing content and responding appropriately).
Dudley's Voder could "make words." A microphone can
"detect," but can't "listen." Modern computers can approximate some thinking processes to a certain extent, and newer
mechanisms are being developed that store information and
make decisions based on this information. But to date no
single machine has accomplished all functions. But progress
is being made and such a machine may not be far in the
future.

Detecting and Transmitting Speech
A machine that could accurately synthesize speech was a
natural descendant of the machine that could analyze speech
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Ijl as in "yet"

NASALS

Iml as in "ram"
In/ as in "ran"

l'lJI as in "rang"

Ibl as in "bin"
Idl as in "din"
. Ig/ asin "gun"

FRICATIVES

IfI

as in "fin"

IBI asin "thin"

./s/as in "sin"
1/las in "shill"
/hl as "him"

/vI as in "vat"
ISI as in "thai"
Iz/as in "zoo"
131 as in "measure"

AFFRICATES

/t las in '~chin"

Id 31 as in "gin"
35

Limitations of Word Recognizers

The Ultimate Speech Recognizer

Several attempts have been made to construct an automatic
speech recognizer. One of the first was Audrey, acronym for
Bell Laboratories' Automatic Digit Recognizer. Audrey was
constructed to recognize the words denoting the digits from
zero to nine. Its computer has stored in it the energy-frequency patterns for these ten words, and when the machine
"heard" a word, the computer would compare it with the
stored patterns to obtain a match. If the patterns matched,
the computer would then light a lamp corresponding to that

It is likely that the ultimate speech recognizer will operate
on both phonemes and words, though a problem arises in the
fact that two persons saying the same word do not produce
identical acoustical signals. As an approach to a solution to
this problem, Hughes has continued with the design of a
speech analyzer, AID (Acoustic Input Device), which could
be used as the input to a linguistic processor.
Much work has. been done on vocoders, speech analyzers
and synthesizers, and language translators for various immediate applications. But to date no one has assembled a complete, integrated, automatic listening and speaking machine.
Such a machine could be a self-organizing system, combining a speech recognizer, automatic translator, information
processor, speech synthesizer, information retrieval computer,
various other input-output devices, and governed by a central
linguistic processor, programmed to control each of the subsystems. At present, this conglomeration would occupy a
considerable volume and would be a programmer's nightmare, even if all the equipment were perfected and available
as off-the-shelf items.
However, as some of these devices become needed, the
advance in packaging and programming will culminate in a
more compact and workable system. It seems likely most of
the sensing equipment will be developed to the point where
it can be contained within one unit. A language machine
can then be installed into any existing computer facility,
using the computer as the central processor.
Applications of Voice Commands

Language elements

There are many man-machine functions which could
benefit from voice-controlled machine operation, and in
which voice communication would increase operating efficiency. Typewriter and punched card print-outs are fairly
effective for displaying the output of most modern computers,
but there are many occasions when an audible communication would allow faster machine response. In fact, any realtime information retrieval operation can be speeded up by
voice control. For example, imagine using the telephone to
ask a computer for a market forecast, for the answer to an
engineering problem, or for the name of a book describing
some obscure function, and then having the computer give
the answer audibly.
Another example of an activity that would benefit is air
traffic control. Voice communication with aircraft by the
tower operator is necessary when many aircraft are attempting to use the airport facilities almost simultaneously, and
when the tower controllers are kept extremely busy tracking
aircraft and talking to the pilots. A language machine,
working with the data processors most large airports already
have, could ease this burden.
In the next few years simple versions of language equipment surely will appear as hardware and will be used for
various purposes. Ultimately, completely automated systems
will be used,acting upon oral commands and responding
with verbal answers. At the current rate of development,
such a system will probably be developed within the next
20 years.
digit. But Audrey, like most other word recognizers, is limited in its ability; it is most acute to the sounds of one individual and less responsive to others.
The success achieved thus far by word recognizers is
limited because of their very small vocabularies. The construction of phoneme recognizers has also been attempted
but with limited success. A phoneme recognizer has the
advantage of dealing with a smaller number of distinct units
than does a word recognizer, although the error probability is
somewhat high at this level.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

CALENDAR OF COMING EVENTS

April 4-7, 1967: Honeywell H800 Users Association (HUG)
Spring Conference, Bellevue Stratford Hotel, Philadelphia,
Pa.; contact R. E. Hanington, Philadelphia Electric Co.,
2301 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
April 4-7, 1967: Joint Conference of the Univac Users Association and the Univac Scientific Exchange, Fontainebleu Hotel,
Miami, Fla. Contacts: UUA Murray Hepple, Harris
Trust, 111 W. Monroe St., Chicago, Illinois; or USE. - S. C.
Bloom, Univac, P.O. Box 8100, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101
April 6-7, 1967: Atlantic Systems Conference, Americana Hotel,
New York, N.Y.; contact Dr. Gibbs Myers, The General Precision Co., Wayne, N.J.
April 7, 1967: Association for Computing Machinery, San
Francisco Bay Area Chapter, Jack Tar Hotel, San Francisco,
Calif.; contact A. E. Corduan, Lockheed Missile & Space
Co., P.O. Box 504, Sunnyvale, Calif. 94088
April 7-8, 1967: The Purdue University Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind. 47907; contact Vance H. Sutton, Chainnan,
INCUM, Computer Science Center, Purdue University,
Lafayette, Ind. 47907
April 12-14, 1967: Electronic Information Handling Conference, Flying Carpet Motel, Pittsburgh, Pa.; contact. Allen
Kent or Orrin E. Taulbee, Co-Chairmen, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213
April 18-19, 1967: ECHO (Electronic Computing Hospital
Oriented) Annual Meeting, American Hospital Association
Headquarters, 840 N. Lake Shore, Chicago, Ill.; contact
Howard Abrahamson, Director of Data Processing, Fairview
Hospitals, 2312 South Sixth St., Minneapolis, Minn. 55409
April 18-20, 1967: Spring Joint Computer Conference, Chalfonte-Haddon Hall, Atlantic City, N.J.; contact AFIPS
Hdqs., 211 East 43 St., New York, N.Y. 10017
April 19, 1967: Eighth Annual Southwest Systems Conference, Systems and Procedures Association, The Towne
House, Phoenix, Ariz.; contact Robert V.Montopoli, UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand Corp., 3443 N. Central, Suite
410, Phoenix, Ariz. 85012
April 20-22, 1967: Oregon Association for Educational Data
Systems, Spring Conference, Portland State College, Portland,
Oregon; contact Phil Morgan, Room 015,' College Center,
P.O. Box 751, Portland, Oregon 97207
May 3-4, 1967: Annual National Colloquium on Information
Retrieval, Philadelphia, Pa.; contact R. M. Hildreth, Publicity Chainnan, Auerbach Corp., 121 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19107
May 3-5, 1967: Electronic Components Technical Conference,
Marriott Twin Bridges Motor Hotel, Washington, D.C.; contact C. K. Morehouse, Globe Union Inc., Box 591, Milwaukee, Wisc. 53201
May 4-5, 1967: The Montreal Chapter of the Computer Society of Canada EXPO '67 Seminar, Windsor Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; contact Raymond A. Beaudoin, Programme Committee, Computer Society of Canada, P.O. Box
1772, Station B, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
May 8-10, 1967: National Rural Electric Cooperative Association's Third Annual Data Processing and Automation Conference, Executive House, Chicago, Ill.; contact Tracy E.
Spencer, Management Services, N.R.E.C.A., 2000 Florida
Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009
May 18, 1967: Association for Computing Machinery Technical Symposium, San Fernando Valley Chapter, Century
Plaza Hotel, Century City, Los Angeles, Calif.; contact B.
G. Dexter, Jr. TRW Systems, One Space Park, Redondo
Beach, Calif. 90278
May 18-19, 1967: 10th Midwest Symposium on Circuit Theory,
Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.
May 23-26, 1967: GUIDE International, Americana Hotel,
New York, N.Y.; contact Lois E. Mecham, Secretary, GUIDE
International, c/o United Services Automobile Assoc., 4119
Broadway, San Antonio, Texas 78215
May 31-June 2, 1967: A Symposium on Automatic PhotoCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

interpretation, Washington Hilton Hotel, 1919 Connecticut
Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.; contact George C. Cheng,
Symposium Coordinator, Pattern Recognition Society, P.O.
Box 692, Silver Spring, Md. 20901
June 12-14, 1967: International Communications Conference,
Leamington Hotel, Minneapolis, Minn.; contact R. J. Collins, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Minn., Minneapolis, Minn. 55455
June 14-17, 1967: Annual Meeting of Council of Social Science Data Archives, University of California, Los Angeles,
Calif.; contact William A. Glaser, Bureau of Applied ~o
cial Research, 605 West 115 St., New York, N.Y. 10025,
or Ralph Bisco, Institute for Social Research, P.O. Box
1248, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48106
June 20-23, 1967: DPMA International Data Processing Conference and Business Exposition, Sheraton-Boston Hotel,
Boston, Mass.; contact William J. Horne, Conference Director, United Shoe Machinery Corp., 140 Federal St., Boston,
Mass.
June 26-27, 1967: Computer Personnel Research Group Fifth
Annual Conference, University of Maryland, College Park,
Md. (near Washington, D.C.); contact Dr. Charles D. Lothridge, General Electric Co., 570 Lexington Ave., New York,
N.Y. 10022
June 26-30, 1967: 8th Annual Joint Automatic Control Conference (J ACC), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
Pa.; contact G. K. L. Chien, IBM Corporation, Monterey
& Cottle Roads, San Jose, Calif. 95114
June 28-30, 1967: 1967 Joint Automatic Control Conference,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; contact Lewis
Winner, 152 W. 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10036
July 31-August 4, 1967: MEDAC '67 Symposium and Exhibition, San Francisco Hilton Hotel, San Francisco, Calif.;
contact John J. Post, Executive Secretary, AAMI, P. O. Box
314, Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. 02138
August 22-25, 1967: WESCON (Western Electronic Show and
Convention), Cow Palace, San Francisco, Calif.; contact Don
Larson, 3600 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90005
Aug. 28-Sept. 2, 1967: AICA (International Association for
Analogue Computation) Fifth Congress, Lausanne, Switzerland; contact secretary of the Swiss Federation of Automatic
Control, Wasserwerkstrasse 53, Zurich, Switzerland
Aug. 29-31, 1967: 1967 ACM (Association for Computing
Machinery) National Conference, Twentieth Anniversary,
Sheraton Park Hotel, Washington, D.C.; contact Thomas
Willette, P.O. Box 6, Annandale, Va. 22003
Sept. 6-8, 1967: First Annual IEEE Computer Conference,
Edgewater Beach Hotel, Chicago, Ill.; contact Professor S. S.
Yau, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, The Technological Institute, Northwestem University, Evanston, III. 60201
Sept. 11-15, 1967: 1967 International Symposium on Information Theory, Athens, Greece; contact A. V. Balakrishnan,
Dept. of Engineering, U.C.L.A., Los Angeles, Calif. 90024
Sept. 25-28, 1967: International Symposium on Automation of
Population Register Systems, Jerusalem, Israel; contact D.
Chevion, Chainnan of Council, Infonnation Processing Association of Israel, P.O.B. 3009, Jerusalem, Israel
Oct. 18-20, 1967: Eighth Annual Symposium on Switching
and Automata Theory, University of Texas, Austin, Tex.;
contact Prof. C. L. Coates, Room 520, Engineering Sci.
Bldg., Univ. of Tex., Austin, Tex. 78712
Nov. 14-16, 1967: Fall Joint Computer Conference, Anaheim
Convention Center, Anaheim, Calif.; contact AFIPS Headquarters, 211 E. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10017
May 21-23, 1968: Spring Joint Computer Conference, Sheraton
Park/Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.; contact AFIPS
Headquarters, 211 E. 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10017
Aug. 5-10, 1968: IFIP (International Federation for Infonnation Processing) Congress 68, Edinburgh, Scotland; contact
John Fowlers & Partners, Ltd., Grand Buildings, Trafalgar
Square, London, W.C. 2., England

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for example;
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• The Model 1720 uses center tape unwind for
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• Performs error and validity checks.

• Broad programming capability handles virtually all code conversion or format con.
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• Minimal space required; any table or desk
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• Nationwide service.

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In addition to our line of converters, Digi-Data Corporation manufactures card and paper tape
Data-Phone® transmission units such as the Model 2120 Magnetic Tape Receiver and the 2020 Card
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COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

r·

ACROSS TH,E EDITOR'S DESK
Computing and Data Processing Newsletter

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Applications.
New Contracts
New Installations.
Organization News

39
41
42
43
Business News

Education News.
Computer Related Services.
New Products.
Research Frontier

44
45
45
51

APPLICATIONS

WEATHER FORECAST FOR
ONE-HALF OF THE WORLD

The U.S.N. Fleet Numerical
Weather Facility (FNWF) supplies
over 500 forecasts each day for
one-half of the world, predicting
meteorology and oceanography conditions up to 72 hours in advance
of its occurence. Recently five
Auto-Lift Drum Memory Systems were
purchased from Bryant Computer
Products Division of Ex-Cell-O
Corporation and installed at the
FNWF, Monterey, Calif. Officer in
chargeCaptai n Paul M. Wolff, U.S .N.
said, "The Bryant Computer Products
Auto-Lift Drum Memory Systems are
used to store all the operational
functions for pre-processing and
post processing as well as storing
all the library records for the
facility."
In order to make the forecasts,
the FNWF collects information on
current;conditions from over 4000
observation stations. They must
make about six billion computations
on the information received before
they can relay forecasts in the
form of charts and maps to several
hundred operating Navy units that
the FNWF services.
This is accomplished by observations collected from regional
teletype weather circuits, terminating i'n computers at High Wycombe,
England and Fuchu, Japan. This
data is then immediately transmitted by high-speed communication
links to a collection center at
Tinker A.F.B., Okla. From there,
it is relayed together with western hemisphere data at 6000 teletype words-per-minute to the FNWF.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Oceanographic observations and meteorological data for selected naval operating areas are collected
by outlying computer networks and
transmitted again by high-speed
communication links to the FNWF.

operator to set up the part imprecisely since it calculates and corrects for workpiece skew. The most
revolutionary feature is the adaptive scheme which is used to get
increased accuracy from the mechan- •
ical system.

Here the observed data is recorded onto magnetic tape and an
Auto-Lift Drum memory by one of
the three separate computer systems installed at the facility.
Captain Wolff said that the memory
systems allow expansion of the data
processing center's capability and
give the over-all system more computing speed.

IBM DEVELOPS
COMPUTER-LINKED
PRECISION MEASURING SYSTEM

A computer-controlled measuring system --- which automatically
and preci sely guages two- or threedimensional parts --- has been developed by IBM Corporation at Kingston, N.Y. The measuring system is
used for quality control checking
of its own manufactured parts and
printed electronic circuitry.
The computer-controlled measuring machine (shown in the picture, above right) automatically
measures parts and processes measurement data. Measurements from
this Precision Measuring System-analyzed and summarized in a quality report --- can be studied a few
seconds after measurements are
taken.
The measuring system has a
number of features. It allows the

The system was described in a
paper -- "A Computer-Controlled
Measuring System" --- presented by
Alan Frane, of IBM's Kingston laboratory, at the Fourth Annual Meeting and Technical Conference of the
Numerical Control Society.
(For more information, designate
U41 on the Readers Service Card.)

HOSIERY INDUSTRY
HELPED BY COMPUTER

The increase in high fashion
hosiery styles has meant a bigger
inventory control headache for the
hosiery manufacturer and retailer.

Newsletter
L. A. Brabender, vice president and
general manager of the National
Mills Division of U.S. Industries,
Inc., Memphis (Tenn.) Rlant, reports,
"A new computer has helped us cure
this headache and has saved us
money in the bargain." National
Mills is one of the nation's largest hosiery manufacturers and markets stockings under its own Roundthe-Clock brand, as well as many
leading private label brands.
A computer-based store stock
replacement system has been evolved
which keeps customer store inventories at a maximum service level
to meet shopper demand. Thesystem
also regulates the distribution of
hosiery from National's distribution plant at Memphis and schedules
stocking production at the company's
mills in Grenada and Batesville,
Miss. Mr. Brabender says National's computerized stock replacement
program was a first in the apparel
industry.
The IBM System/360 Model 30
computer provides data on what is
being sold and where; it can predict hosiery sales trends by region
and ev~n by individual store.
To
set off the merchandising control
cycle, an IBM card is placed in
each box of hosiery shipped by National to a store customer. When
the box is opened for sale, the
card is returned to National's
headquarters and processed via the
computer to initiate an immediate
replenishment order. Computerprepared information tells packaging personnel at the firm's Grenada, Miss., mill exactly what
stockings to package, which labels
to put on the boxes and what packaging materials to use.
At the same time, the computer
keeps track of the store's shelf
stock bY'style and color and of the
mill and warehouse inventory supplies. Because the computer stores
data on what has been sold the previous week by stores across the
country, it can predict the stockings that should be knit, dyed,
packaged and shipped this week and
the next. The computer also considers seasonal trends and other
sales variables to predict customer demand for styles and colors
months into the future.

ASE HAS COMPUTER-BASED
DATA RETIUEVAL SLSTEM

A computer-based data retrieval system now enables officials of
the American Stock Exchange and
member firms to obtain immediately

price range and volume data on
stocks and warrants traded during
the latest six weeks. The new procedure replaces a 35-year old manual operation. The new electronic
system was developed in cooperation with The Bunker-Ramo Corporation and is called Record Room Interrogation System (RRIS).
Data is made available to
record room personnel on a BunkerRamo Cathode ray tube input/output
device (BR 203). In addition, on
push-button request, the RRIS will
simultaneously prepare a print-out
summary of stock information.
Range and volume records for
the six latest trading weeks are
maintained at Bunker-Ramo's New
York City data center (TeleCenter)
on storage drums of a Univac 418
computer, from which it is called
out instantaneously through the
BR 203 in response to a telephone
call to the Record Room from a member firm. Query of records is made
through the BR 203 device which has
seven function keys for seven separate types of market data. There
are two inquiry devices in the Exchange's Record Room and another
in the Stock Watch section.
The Record Room Interrogation
System has been designed to compile trading records from time of
entry at the Trading Post. The
system is programmed directly from
the ticker tape; a TeleCenter computer digest tape data; posts the
data on magnetic tape; and transfers the material to the Univac
418. These functions are performed
at the close of each business day,
so that trading data is ready for
dissemination the following morning.

COMPUTER ANALYZES
CHEMICAL SAMPLES
AT MONSANTO PLANT

Some 1000 chemical samples a
week now are being analyzed by computer at Monsanto Company's Chocolate Bayou Plant near Alvin, Texas.
Use of the computer, and IBM 1800
data acquisition and control system, has dramatically improved the
precision of laboratory analysis
and reduced the time required for
completion of tests. A major improvement is in the precision of
analysis achieved. Average improvement of results has been tenfold. In one instance, sampling
with a variation of 4 per cent in
results was changed to a variation
of only .02 per cent.

Another saving is in the time
required for analysis. Computercontrol permits a faster run through
the chromatograph (an analytical instrument which determines the nature
and concentration of compounds in a
sample). Significant time also is
saved in calculation of results. A
chart with 100 chromatographic signals takes 2Yz hours to interpret
manually. The computer does the
job in 3Yz minutes.
The system, jointly developed
by Monsanto and IBM, monitors 40 gas
chromatographs. It is designed for
routine operation by laboratory
personnel. In the picture below, a
lab technician is shown using a
table-top keyboard to tell the comI

puter what technique to follow, The
IBM 1800 computer, located adjacent
to the control lab, is programmed
to run the sample through a testing
instrument and interpret its data.
Results are printed on an output
typewriter and furnished manufacturing personnel.
Although several computerized
laboratory systems have been developed recently, the system at Monsanto is said to differ significantly in several respects. The
system carries out a completemethod of analysis, including external
standards, internal standards, normalization and grouping. It is programmed to handle 150 methods and
permits programs to be changed
without taking the computer off its
regular work. It is also selfdocumenting and capable of keeping
its own files. No external records
are required. The system's flexibility also allows the addition of
essentially any advanced type of
analytical method.
Products of the plant include
ethylene, propylene, benzene, naphthalene, phenol, alkrlbenzene, acrylonitrile and butadiene.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Newsletter
G-E USING COMPUTER TO AID
IN-HOUSE MANUFACTURING
OPERATIONS

computer even produces the N/C control tapes for the machines which
will run the job.

At General Electric Company's
Computer Equipment Department in
Phoenix, Ariz., a computerized methods engineering system for sheet
metal production may portend a significant new development for metalworking shops both large and small.
The Phoenix plant produces a broad
range of sheet steel chasis, panels
and other components for G-E electronic computers. More than 45
tons of sheet steel are processed
each week, on a 6-day, 24-hour per
day schedule. Production is handled by three numerically-controlled
A-15 turret punch presses supplied
by The Wiedemann Division of the
Warner & Swasey Company. Lots
range from 1 to 1000 pieces.

William L. Lord, Manager of
Shop Operations at Phoenix, says,
"Regenerative planning with the
computer provides the best production plan for a particular set of
production conditions. It is much
faster than the old method of individual manual job planning which
sometimes required a cycle time of
a week to ten days to complete.
With the computer it is virtually
an overnight service."

To handle production control
and raw material inventory for this
complex metalworking operation,G.E.
uses one of its own G-E 400 line
computers. All of the various production parameters and workpiece
specifications are stored on magnetic tape. When a job order comes
to the shop for a particular component, the data tapes enable the
computer to "regenerate" a production plan, including paper work,
for the job under optimum conditions for the individual lot size
and current shop conditions. The

AIR FREIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM
DEVELOPED BY
AIRBORNE FREIGHT CORPORATION

A new system for the control
of air freight shipments, in which
an advanced data processing operation is integrated with an extensive network of private communications lines, has been announced by
Airborne Freight Corp., San Francisco, Calif.
J. D. McPherson,
president of the international air
freight firm, said that the system
is the first of its kind in the
industry and represents a major
breakthrough in the control of
air freight, promising an entirely
new dimension of service to air
freight users.

The total control system is
named DART, from the initials describing its basic function, Direct
Airbill Retrieval and Transmission.
With DART, all Airborne stations,
located throughout the nRtion, are
directly connected with an {BM 360
computer, in San Francisco, via more
than 43,000 miles of Airborne's private communications lines. After
more than three years of developmental work by Airborne air freight
traffic specialists, IBM data processing technicians, and Pacific
Telephone communications engineers,
DART now is operational.
More than 220 programs have
been written to instruct the IBM
360 computer. Essentially every
step of each shipment handled by
Airborne will be controlled or influenced by DART. Some of DART's
advantages are: computer-accurate
airbills, automatic alerts, instant
proof of delivery, positive followthrough and fast tracing. Via DART,
every station in the Airborne system can query the computer on the
status of any shipment, during any
portion of its journey, and recei ve
a reply through retrieval, from the
360' s memory system, of the detailed
information fed into the computer
at every significant point in the
move.
The economics of DART indicate
that no increase in rates wi 11 be required, the Airborne president said.

NEW CONTRACTS

AMOUNT
Federal Aviation Agency

Raytheon Company, Wayland Laboratory, Wayland, Mass.

NADGECO Limited, London,
England

Cubic Corp., San Diego, Calif.

U.S. Air Force

Sylvania Electric Products,
Inc., a subsidiary of GT&E,
Needham. Mass.
Sylvania Electric Products,
Inc., a GT&E subsidiary

Air Force Systems Command's
Electronic Systems Division,
Hanscom Field. Mass.
Recognition Equipment Inc.,
Dallas, Texas

Scientific Data Systems,
Santa Monica, Calif.

Grumman Aircraft Engineering
Corp.

Fairchild Space and Defense
Systems, Syosset, N.Y.

Trans World Airlines, Inc.

Recognition Equipment Inc.,
Dallas, Texas

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Developing, producing, installing and
testing automation equipment for modernizing the nation's long-range, air route
traffic control centers; the equipment,
described as the Computer Display Channel (CDC) of FAA's advanced National Airspace System (NAS), is a key element in
the Agency's emerging semi-automatic air
traffic control system
Production of 37 computer peripheral systems for the NATO Air Defense Ground Environment system (NADGE)
Expanding the data processing capabilities
of Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic
missile systems
Installation and system testing of special
purpose electronic receiving equipment
Twenty SOS 910 computers to be used in
Recognition Equipment's Electronic Retina® Computing Readers
Design, development and preproduction
quantities of data converters for the
avionics system of the EA-6B aircraft
An Electronic RetinaW Computing Reader
to automate computer data input

$44.8 million

$3.7 million
$3 million
$2.1 million
$1.6 million
$1,449,914
about $750,000

Newsletter

International Computers and
Tabulators, Ltd., London,
England
Data Products Corp., Culver
City, Calif.

Data Products Corp., Culver
City, Calif.

Oak Park and River Forest High
School, Oak Park, Ill.
Houston Lighting & Power
Company, Houston, Texas

Ampex Corp., Redwood City,
Calif.
Leeds & Northrup Co., Philadelphia, Pa.

United States Steel Corp.

C-E-I-R, Inc., Washington, D,C,

Aro, Inc., Tullahoma, Tenn.

Systems Engineering Laboratories, Inc., Fort Lauderdale, FIa.

Board of Education, Orange,
N.J.
Great American Insurance
Companies, New York, N.Y.

System Development Corp. (SOC),
New York Metropolitan Operations Center. Paramus. N.J.
Mohawk Data Sciences Corp.,
Herkimer, N.Y.

American National Insurance
Co., Galveston, Texas

Ampex Corp., Redwood City,
Calif.

Model 5045 DISCfILE random access memory
over $420,000
systems to be used in conj unction wi th
the new advanced ICT Atlas computers
100 Model TM-7 digital tape units which
$400,000
will be incorporated into'the line of
LIP MIOOO and Lip M640 Off-Line Print
Stations manufactured by Data Products
Manufacture and installation of an audio
$358,000
teaching system
A computer control system encompassing, for
the first time, a coordinated overall system operation including both energy dispatching and transmission dispatching through one
integrated system. The system will be built
in cooperation with the Philco Houston Operations of the Philco Ford Corp.
Development of special network planning and
mathematical programming "packages" for U,S.
Steel's new 88500 computer
An SEL 810A computer system to be used for
total data acquisition of wind tunnel testing of the C5Aengine for the U.S. Air Force;
delivery scheduled for May to Arnold Air
Force Station, Tenn.
Technical assistance in the planning of an
Educational Resource Center
65 Mohawk Data-Recorders to be installed in
Great American's home office and 16 regional
offices throughout the U.S.
A Videofile document filing and retrieval
system to automate the handling of insurance policy files

NEW INSTALLATIONS

Continental Telephone Corp., St.
Louis, Mo.; Bakersfield, Calif.:
Syracuse, N.Y.

Four of six comp~ters; three
Honeywell 200's and three Honeywell 1200 systems; total value about $3 million

Michigan State University, East
Lansing. Mich.
Potter Instrument Co., Inc., Plainview, N.Y.

Sigma 7

B. B. Walker Shoe Company, Asheville. N.C.
Irani Associates, Inc., Miami, Fla.
Archdiocese of Brooklyn Data Center,
Health & Hospitals Division of Catholic Charities for the Counties of
Brooklyn and Queens
Martin Marietta Corp., Denver, Colo.
Tokyo ShibauraElectric Co. (Toshiba),
Tokyo. Japan
Mohawk Data Sciences Corp., Herkimer,
N.Y.
Rex Chainbelt Inc., Milwaukee, Wisc,
Palo Alto Data Center, Control Data
Corp., Palo Alto, Calif.
First Federal Savings and Loan Association, Charleston, S.C.

BIT 480 general purpose computer

NCR 315 computer system
IBM 1130 (equipped with COGO
language)
RCA 301 computer

Control Data 6400 computer system
GE-635 computer system
Honeywell 200 computer
The first of six System/360
Model 20 computers
Control Data 3800 computer system
NCR 315 computer system

Computing rates for long-distance and special calls,
and for perfo~ming all customer billing, inclUding
toll calls, local service charges and special service charges; later the system will be expanded to
perform general accounting, data communications,
forecasting of demand for construction planning
and trouble analysis applications
Operating the controls of MSU's 55-million electron
volt nucleus smasher
Use in developing special systems that will link
Potter's data processing peripherals and allied
products with a central processor such as the
BIT 480
Order processing, billing, inventory, sales analysis. cost and general accounting
Engineering calculations, construction costs
analysis. etc.
Providing detailed information data to doctors on
patients in six New York hospitals: also hospitals'
payroll and personnel records will be computerized
along with routine accounting procedures
A variety of technical and scientific data processing applications, including research and development. design analysis. and production support
Scientific and engineering calculations, and some
business data processing applications
General accounting and production control operations
Primary stage in the company's development of an
advanced management system
Increased capacity and capability; Data Center
provides computer services on a rental basis to
business firms and institutions
Savings, mortgage, payroll and general ledger
applications
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Newsletter

Rock-Mill Inc., Rockford, Ill.

IBM 1130 computer

Bonneville-Sylvan Life Insurance Co.,
Salt Lake City, Utah
Fort Worth Division, General Dynamics
Corporation

Honeywell 200 computer
EAI 8800 Analog/Hybrid Computing System and an EAI 640 Digital Computing System valued at
over $500,000

ORGANIZATION NEWS

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA
ACQUIRES INTEREST IN
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY FIRM

Encyclopaedia Bri tannica, Inc.,
Chicago, Ill, has acquired an interest in TECHNOMICS, Inc., a one year
old California company engaged in
the application of computer-centered technology to the fields of
general education, governmental administration, public health, welfare, and medical programs. The
agreement involved a stock purchase
in which Bri tannica bought 200 shares
of co~vertible preferred stock with
the option to buy an additional 100
shares. All stock now i s contro lIed
by TECHNOMICS and Britannica. Price
was not disclosed.
TECHNOMICS, Inc., was formed
in December, 1965, by a group of
psychologists, educators, system
and computer experts from the RAND
Corporation and the System Development Corporation. They have developed numerous computer applications
in education and training and have
applied system analysis, cost-benefit analysis, operations research
techniques, gaming and simulation to
the problems of development of large
systems for military, health, education, and public welfare needs.
President and chairman of the board
is Dr. Norton F. Kristy.

MEMOREX ACQUIRES
DISC PACK CORP.

Memorex Corp., Santa Clara,
Calif., has acquired the balance
of the outstanding equity of Disc
Pack Corp., Laurence L. Spitters,
President of Memorex has announced.
Previously, Memorex had owned 40% of
Disc Pack Corp. Acquisition of the
balance involved an issuance of
15,000 shares of Memorex Common
Stock or 1.5% of the total Memorex
shares outstanding.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Numerical control contouring work; prepares coded
tapes which control milling and other precision
machines
Life insurance and service bureau data processing
work
Simulation of complex aerospace weapons systems;
initially in developments for the F-lll family of
aircraft

Memorex is the nation's second largest manufacturer of precision magnetic tapes for computer,
instrumentation and television recorders. Disc Pack Corporation,
located in Hawthorne, Calif. is
presently engaged in the development of preci sion memory di sc packs
for use as information storage devices for IBM and other new computers. Production of disc packs
is expected to begin later this
year.

Group, Inc., has acquired controlling interest of a French planning
firm called IRCOM. IRCOM, established in 1963, specializes in economic and planning studies, market
research, and construction feasibility studies. A substantial portion of the firm's business consists
of planning assignments conducted on
behalf of the French government. One
of the current assignments of IRCOM
is a large study of the impact of
automation on the French economy being conducted on behalf of the
French government.

LEAS CO TO ACQUIRE
DOCUMENTATION, INC.

Diebold France, S.A. is jointly
owned by The Diebold Group, Inc., New
York, N.Y., and Rothschild Freres,
the senior bank of the French Rothschild Group. The Diebold Group, an
international management consulting
company specializing in the business
applications of advanced technolog~
maintains offices in six European
cities.

Saul Steinberg, President of
Leasco Data Processing Equipment
Corp., Great Neck, N.Y. CASE) and
Eugene Miller, President of Documentation Incorporated ·of Bethesda,
Md. (OTC) announced that the two
companies have reached an agreement in principle for a pooling of
interests whereby Leasco would acquire Documentation Inc. The transaction will be based upon an exchange of shares at the rate of one
share of Leasco stock for each seven shares of Documentation stock.
Leasco is in the business of
leasing computers and other data
processing equipment. The business
of Documentation Inc. is the development and operation of computer
information technology systems for
government and industry. The present officers and staff of Documentation Inc. will continue to manage
its business.
The officials of the two companies stated that the completion
of the transaction was subject to
the execution of definitive contracts, the approval of both boards
of directors and of shareholders in
the case of Documentation Inc.

STANDARD REGISTER SIGNS
KNOW-HOW AGREEMENT
WITH GERMAN FIRM

The Standard Register Company,
Dayton, Ohio, has concluded a knowhow agreement with Hessdruck, a
printing company located in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, Germany.
Hessdruck is the third largest business forms printing house in Germany. In business forover 65 years,
it produces continuous business and
transportation forms and also has
flat printing facilities, serving
all Germany.

DIEBOLD FRANCE ACQUIRES
FRENCH PLANNING FIRM

Under the terms of the agreement, Standard Register will provide the German firm with technical
and administrative advice and assistance relative to the production
of manifold business forms and the
printing equipment necessary. Hessdruck wi 11 also have marketi ng right s
in Germany for the sale of Standard
Register mechanical forms handling
equipment.

Diebold France, S.A., the
French subsidiary of The Diebold

The signing brought the total
of foreign firms having know-how
43

Newsletter
agreements with Standard Register
Company to 14.

NCR PLANS TO ACQUIRE
MICROCARD CORPORATION

The National Cash Register
Co., Dayton, Ohio, announced that
it has entered into an agreement
to acquire the Microcard Corporation of West Salem, Wisc., in exchange for an undisclosed number
of shares of NCR common stock. Microcard, a privately held company,
is a leading producer of microfiche
information storage systems.
Robert S. Oelman, NCRchairman,
said acquisition of the Microcard
Corporation would complement NCR's
recently announced line of PCMlro
microform systems (see Computers &
Automation, January, 1967, p. 56).
The agreement to acquire Microcard
is subject to certain tax rulings
and audits, the NCR chairman said.
Under its terms, Microcard would
become a wholly owned subsidiary
of NCR and would remain under its
current management headed by
A. L. Baptie, president.

DATANAMICS CORPORTION OF
AMERICA ACQUIRES COMPUTER
PERSONNEL CONSULTANTS, INC.

systems engineering and programming services. DSA's activities
also will include conventional EDE
consulting services. Data Systems
Analysts, Inc., corporate headquarters is located in Pennsauken,
N.J., with regional offices located
in River Edge, N.J.; Phoenix, Ariz.;
Amsterdam, Holland; and Paris,
France.

DATA SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, INC.
ESTABLISHES HEADQUARTERS
IN PARIS, FRANCE

Data Systems Analysts, Inc.,
announces the opening of its European Headquarters in Paris, France.
These facilities will provide online, real-time and communication

An institute for advanced computer research and education at postgraduate, professional levels has
been announced by the IBM World Trade
Corporation. It is located in Geneva, Switzerland and begins full
activity this year. About 80 of
IBM's top systems engineers in Europe will be accepted by the institute in 1967.

EDUCATION NEWS

COMPUTERS IN THE CLASSROOM
BECOMING ROUTINE IN
NEW YORK CITY

Students at Jamaica High
School, Jamaica, N.Y., like hundreds of other boys and girls in
New York City high schools, are
studying computer mathematics.
The New York City Board of Education reports that 22 of its high
schools now offer this course to
juniors and seniors. According to
Dr. Bernard E. Donovan, superintendent of schools, the city's high
school system makes more extensive
use of computers in the classroom
than any other high school system
in the nation. This use is being
expanded experimentally to include
junior high school students.

Datanamics Corporation of
America (Chicago, Ill.), a data
processing service organization,
has acquired Computer Personnel
Consultants, Inc., also of Chicago.
Datanamics president, David S. Pemberton, in announcing the acquisition, said, "By adding the proven
procurement ability of Computer
Personnel Consultants to our present array of data processing skills
and equipment, we can now offer total data processing service to our
customers. "
CPC is an established name in
the personnel consulting and recruiting field. It has developed
a specialized practice in the data
processing, operations research,
mathematical sciences and related
personnel areas.

SYSTEMS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
ESTABLISHED IN EUROPE
BY IBM WORLD TRADE

In the picture, Stephen Orphanos, a mathematics teacher at Jamaica High School, Queens, is working with a group to program the IBM
1130 in the foreground. The student at the left, Steven Gabriel,
already has written a number of
programs for the computer. One
of them allows the IBM 1130 to
speed through many of ~he school's
accounting jobs.

The IBM European Systems Research Institute will extend studies of theoretical computer concepts, provide opportunities for
research, and offer courses in advanced mathematics, the design and
operation of computer systems, and
other subjects.
A permanent staff of teachers
will be assisted by visiting lecturers from IBM's Systems Research
Institute in New York and other
professional IBM people in Europe
and the United States. P-rofessors
from leading universities in Europe
also will lecture from time to time.

ACLS AND NYU ESTABLISH
A NATIONAL CENTER FOR
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA
PROCESSING

The American Counci 1 of Learned
Societies (ACLS), a federation of 32
scholarly organizations representing
modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, the arts
and humanistic elements of the social sciences, is working with New
York University to develop and exploit computer technology specifically for researchers in these fields.
With the aid of a $144,000 grant
from IBM Corporation, the ACLS and
NYU have established a national Center for Bibliographic Data Processing. Dr. Frederick Burkhardt, ACLS
president, stated that the work of
this center will be to "tailor computer technology to the specific
needs of humanists and give them
the help and multiplied capabilities that computing has given researchers in' the sciences and other
fields."
Under the cooperative program,
NYU's Institute for Computer Research in the Humanities (ICRH) , an
existing research center and national clearing house for information in this field, will supply computer indexing and other special
services for the publications of
ACLS societies and other interested
scholarly organizations. Through
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

Newsletter
the societies and their publications, the ACLS will encourage humanities scholars to take full advantage of computer technology in
their research and study. It also
will speed the distribution of developments in computing for the
humanities to the academic community and to computing centers
throughout the nation.

copper technology, watch a data
display screen as the computer was
querierl, and then, within seconds,
see the answer displayed on the
screen in the form of reference
numbers. The engineer then is
able to turn to the volumes containing extracts of the documents
referred to, which show the actual data in which he is interested.

The major NYU project is the
compilation of a massive electronic
data bank of cross-referenced indexes for 30 cooperating scholarly
journals. Only separate annual or
cumulative indexes for individual
journals are available now. This
cross-referenced data bank, Dr.
Burkhardt said, ultimately will
provide far more comprehensive bibliographic information than scholars normally obtain in their own
li brary searches. "One day", Dr.
Burkhardt said, "it may be possible to keep individual 'interest
profi les' on record for large numbers of scholars and periodically
or on request supply them with all
information in the data bank matching their specific interests." NYU
researchers now are trying to overcome the technical barriers to such
a system.

The demonstration unit, with
a desk-size computer showed -- on
a small scale -- exactly how the
retrieval system at CDA's Technical Data Center actually operates.
The Center, established in 1965,
is at the COlumbus (Ohio) Laboratories of Battelle Memorial Institute. The CDA Technical Data Center's objective is ta provide engineers, who select and apply materials, with complete and up-todate technical data on the properties, processing and applications
of copper, brass and bronze. The
copper and brass industry Technical Data Center, and the computerbased services it provides, are
the first of their kind in the
metals industry.

COMPUTER RELATED SERVICES

Engineers needing data of
this type may make use of the facility simply by requesting specific information from CDA, CDA
member companies, or the CDA Technical Data Center. By completing
a CDA Interest Check List Card,
engineers obtain periodic reports
and data sheets in their fields of
interest which are generated by
the CDA Technical Center. There
is no charge for either of these
services.

Information and data from both
published and unpublished sources
are collected, reviewed by speNYU investigators also are
cialists at the Columbus laboratrying to develop computing "shorttories of Battelle Institute, and
cuts" for humanists similar to the
selected documents are evaluated
special programs that handle the
by one of seventy engineers in the
findings of square roots and other
industry who are the staff ~f exroutine problems for engineers and
perts that guide the program techscientists. Dr. Jack Heller, dinically. After evaluation, the
rector of the Heights Academic Cominformation and data are edited
puting Facility and a prime mover
into an "extract" containing all
behind the establishment of the ICRH of the text, tables and figures
said, "We want to give musicolojudged to have long-term usefulgists, linguists and other humaniness. This document then receives
ties scholars similar computer
a serial number which is stored in
'software' to handle the routine
the computer memory behind each
procedures in their work."
appropriate term of the more than
five thousand terms in CDA's
"Thesaurus of Terms on Copper
Technology".

COMPUTER ANSWERS QUESTIONS
ON COPPER & COPPER ALLOYS

At the 1967 Insti tute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
Show in New York last month, a special computerized information retrieval system provided instantaneous access to worldwide technical literature on the technology of
copper and its alloys at the booth
of Copper Development Association,
Inc. Electrical and electronic
design engineers were able to ask
questions on specific phases of
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for April, 1967

NEW PRODUCTS

D igital

fRIDEN INTRODUCES
5610 COMPUTYPER
DATA PROCESSOR

A third-generation business
machine,known as the 5610 Computyper® Data Processor, has been developed by Friden, the business machine division of The Singer Company,
San Leandro, Calif. This smallscale data processor uses microintegrated circuits for speed, compactness, and reliability and has
many of the capabilities of larger,
higher-priced machines.
The 5610 has two separate memories. For data storage, it has
sixty registers (plus additional
capability with auxiliary units).
Totals can be read out at any time
and in any format. The second mem-

Newsletter
ory contains 1118 alphanumeric
characters exclusively for internal program storage.
Programming is speeded up and
simplified by the 5610'8 own universal programming language, SWIFT
(~oft~are Implemented Iriden !ranslator), a language composed of 38
simple alphabetic command statements, such as add, divide, branch,
and type. Programs can be written
in everyday English (or German,
FrenCh, etc.). The 5610 itself
automatically translates SWIFT English into machine language.

MATHATRON 4280

An all new, desk size computer/calculator has been introduced
by Mathatronics, a division of
Barry Wright Corp., Waltham, Mass.
This compact, low cost digital machine, designated Mathatron 4280,
is designed to solve complex mathematical problems in engineering
and scientific applications.
Mathatron 4280, wi th over 4000
bits of storage, accepts standard
algebraic and decimal numbers and
includes automatic operators for
square root, log, anti-log, sine,
arc-tangent and parenthesis.
Up to 82 individually addressable storage registers are available with internal programmable
memory of 480 program steps. Master programs can automatically
branch to sub programs, execute
them and then continue along the
original path.

-- To the left of the
Input-Output Station is
a horizontal tape transport. The electronic processor, below the transport, is the control center for the complete 5610
system
The 2205 Input/Output Station
transmits data to the electronic
processor and prints out finished
documents. Input is automatic
through punched tape, edge-punched
cards, tab card, or program control. Variable data can be manually entered via its electric typewriter keyboard. Output is in the
form of printed documents and byproduct tape/cards which can be
used for further processing.
The 5610 has its own diagnostics capability. If a malfunction
should occur, a Friden product
service specialist merely loads a
special diagnostics program and
the 5610 searches for the fault
and types out the location. Corrective action can be taken quickly with minimum downtime.
The new Friden data processor
is geared primarily, but not limited to, business applications.
Fiv~ auxiliary on-line input/output devices are available to expand the capabilities of the 5610
system to meet individual applications. These include a Tape Reader, Automatic Card Reader, Selectadata
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