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SCIENCE · & TECHNOLOGY

May, 1972
Vol. 21, No.5

"SAILBOA T"

Effective Management of an Instrument Pool
EDP Axioms - A Critical Analysis
Academic Computer Practices, and Their Deficiencies
Deciphering an Unknown Computer Program, as Compared With Deciphering Ancient Writing

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The C&A Notebook on
COMMON SENSE. ELEMENTARY AND ADVANCED
It deals with one of the most important of all branches of knowledge, i.e., the subject of

WHAT IS GENERALLY TRUE AND IMPORTANT

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editor of Computers and Automation.

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1. Right Answers - A Short Guide to Obtaining Them
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COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

INVENTORY OF THE ISSUES OF

TITLES AND SUMMARIES

THE C&A NOTEBOOK ON COMMON SENSEI VOLUME 1
1. Right Answers -- A Short Guide to
Obtaining Them
A collection of 82 principles and maxims.
Example: "The moment you have worked out
an answer, start checking it -- it probably i sn' t right."
2. The Empty Column
A parable about a symbol for zero, and the
failure to recognize the value of a good
idea.
3. The Golden Trumpets of Yap Yap
4. Strategy in Chess
S. The Barrels and the Elephant
A discussion of truth vs. believability
6. The Argument of the Beard
The accumulation of many small differences
may make a huge difference.
7. The Elephant and the Grassy Hillside
The concepts of the ordinary everyday world
vs. the pointer readings of exact science.
8. Ground Rules for Arguments
9. False Premises, Valid Reasoning, and True
Conclusions
The fallacy of asserting that the premises
must first be correct in order that
correct conclusions be derived.
10. The Investigation of Common Sense
11. Principles of General Science and Proverbs
8 principles and 42 proverbs
12. Common Sense -- Questions for Consideration
13. Falling 1800 Feet Down a Mountain
The story of a skimobiler who fell 1/3
of a mile down Mt. Washington, N.H.,
and was rescued the next day; and how ;:~
used his common sense and survived.
14. The Cult of the Expert
Rules for testing expert advice.
IS. Preventing Mistakes from Failure to Understand
Even though you do not understand the
cause of some trouble, you may still
be able to deal with it. The famous
example of a cure for malaria.
16. The Stage of Maturity and Judgement
17. Doomsday in St. Pierre, Martinique -- Common
Sense vs. Catastrophe
How 30,000 people refusing to apply their
common sense died from a volcanic eruption.
18. The History of the Doasyoulikes
A parable in which the stern old fairy
Necessity plays a part.
19. Individuality in Human Beings
Their chemical natures are as widely
varied as their external features.
20. How to be Silly
71 recipes for being silly. Example:
"Use twenty words to say something when
two wi 11 do."
21. The Three Earthworms
A parable about curiosity; and the importance of making observations for oneself.
22. The Cochrans vs. Catastrophe
The history of Samuel Cochran, Jr.,
who ate some vichyssoise soup.
23. Preventing Mistakes from Forgetting
The commonest cause for mistakes probably
js forgetting. So~e remedies.
24. What is Common Sense? -- An Operational
Definition
A proposed definition of common sense
not using synonyms but using behavior
that is observable.
2S. The Subject of What is Generally True and
Important-- Common Sense, Elementary and
Advanced
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

26. Natural History, Patterns, and Common Sense
Some important techniques for observing.
27. Rationalizing and Common Sense
Coming to believe what you want tobelieve;
and some antidotes for thi s common mi stake.
28. Opposition to New Ideas
Some of the common but foolish reasons
for opposing new ideas.
29. A Classification and Review of
the Issues of Vol. 1
30. Index to Volume 1
Some Comments from Subscribers

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I believe these to be the best, if not the
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year.
William Taylor, Vice President, Calgary, Alberta:
Very good articles; something all managers
should read.
Edward K. Nellis, pirector of Systems Development,
Pit t s ford, N. Y. :
As I am involved with systems work, I can
always use one of the issues to prove a point
or teach a lesson.
David Lichard, Data Processing Manager, Chicago:
Thoroughly enjoy each issue.
Richard Marsh, Washington, D.C.:
Keep it up. All are good and thought-provoking -- which in itself is worthwhile.
Ralph C. Taylor, Manager of Research and Development, West Chester, Ohio:
Especially liked "Right Answers".
Jeffrey L. Rosen, Programmer, Toronto, Canada:
Your tendency to deal with practical applications is very rewarding.
As a new subscriber, you do not miss
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3

Vol. 21, No.5
May, 1972
Editor

Edmund C. Berkeley

Assistant Editors Barbara L. Chaffee
Linda Ladd Lovett
Neil D. Macdonald

computers
and automation

Software Editor Stewart B. Nelson

u
AdvertisillR
Director

Edmund C. Berkeley

A rt Director

RayW. Hass

Publisher's
Assistant

Paul T. Moriarty

ContributillR
Editors

John Bennett
Moses M. Berlin
Andrew D. Booth
John W. Carr III
Ned Chapin
Alston S. Householder
Leslie Mezei
Ted Schoeters
Richard E. Sprague

Advisorv
Comi'I1'llee

The Computer Industry

James J. Cryan
Alston S. Householder
Bernard Quint

EditorialOffices Berkeley Enterprises,lnc.
815 Washington St.,
Newtonville, Mass. 02160
617-332-5453

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THE PUBLISHER
Berkeley Enterprises,lnc.
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"Computers and Automation" is published monthly, 12 issues per year, at 815
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If you elect to receive "The Computer Directory and Buyers' Guide", please add
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Please address all mail to:
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© Copyright 1972, by Berkeley Enterprises, Inc.
Change of address:
If your address
changes, please send us both your new
address and your old address (as it appears on the magazine address imprint),
and allow three weeks for the change to
be made.

8 EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF AN INSTRUMENT [T A]
POOL
by D. H. Townsend, Lockheed Missile and Space Co.,
Sunnyvale, Calif.
How a centralized system for managing testing instruments was implemented and produced a large saving.
[T A]
12 EDP AXIOMS - A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
by W. Leon Sanford, Touche Ross & Co., St. Louis, Mo.
Many of the "rules of thumb" that did apply to first
generation and second generation computers no longer
apply to third generation computers in a third generation environment.
[T R]
48 IBM COMPUTERS INSTALLED AND ON ORDER
by George M. Luhowy, GML Corporation, Lexington, Mass.
Some estimates of the number of IBM computers installed and on order: new data in Monthly Computer
Census
29 On the Legal Side: COMPANY NAME SELECTION
by Milton R. Wessel, Attorney, New York, N.Y.

[T F)

40 liThe 1972 Computer Directory and Buyers' Guide",
18th Annual Issue - Notice

[T G)

Computers and Education
[T A]
16 ACADEMIC COMPUTER PRACTICES, AND
THEIR DEFICIENCIES
by Dr. Herbert E. Humbert, Director of Learning
Resources, Lorain County Community College,
Elyria, Ohio
An argument that indifference or antipathy towards
computers in education evaporates when faculty groups
(rather than other agencies) actually control computer
personnel and computer time.

Computers and Programming
[T A]
19 DECIPHERING AN UNKNOWN COMPUTER PROGRAM, AS CqMPARED WITH DECIPHERING
ANCIENT WRITING
by Edmund C. Berkeley, President, Berkeley Enterprises,
Inc., Newtonville, Mass.
The methods and principles used in deciphering the
ancient Cretan system of writing called Linear B; and
their utility and application in deciphering an unknown
computer program.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

The magazine of the design, applications, and implications
of information processing systems - and the pursuit of
truth in input, output, and processing.

The Profession of Information Engineer and the Pursuit of Truth
28 Unsettling, Disturbing, CritiCilI ...
[NT F]
Statement of policy by "Computers and Automation"
6 THE DEATH OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAN- [NT E)
DIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, 1972
by Ed mu nd C. Berkeley, Ed itor
A prediction, together with the grounds for it.

[NT R]
7 POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN THE UNITED
STATES
Inventory of articles published on this subject in
"Computers and Automation" May 1970 to May
1972: Titles, Authors, and Summaries
[NT A]
34 DALLAS: WHO, HOW, WHY? - Part III
by Mikhail Sagatelyan, Moscow, USSR
A report published in Leningrad, USSR, by a leading
Soviet reporter about the circumstances of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and their significance from a Soviet point of view: Part 3.
31

[NT A]
HOW FIENDISH CAN YOU GET?
by Helsingen Sanomat, Ian Low, and others
A round-up of information and news on the developments in "atrocity engineering" by the Pentagon and
other organizations.

Common Sense, Wisdom, Science in General, and Computers
3 The C&A Notebook on Common Sense,' Elementary
[NT G)
and Advanced
Titles, Thirty Issues of Volume 1, and Some Summaries
2 What May be the Most Important of All Branches of
Knowledge

[NT G)

[T G)

28 Missing Issues of "Computers and Automation"
[NT F)
by Stanley Jaffin, Arlington, Va., and the Editor
29 Ode in Celebration of R FPs
by Michael Lipp, Bogota, N.J.

Departments
41

Across the Editor's Desk Computing and Data
Processing Newsletter
Advertising Index
Calendar of Coming
Events
Monthly Computer
Census
New Contracts
New Installations
Who's Who Entry Form

44
45
30

[NT G]

Key

Computers, Games, and Puzzles
26 Problem Corner
by Walter Penney, CDP

[T C]

49 Numbles
by Neil Macdonald

[T C)

33 Advanced Numbles
by Neil Macdonald

[T C]

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

"Sailboat" was produced by B.C.
Munday, III, of Plantation, Florida,
and was one of the entries in the
Ninth Annual Computer Art Contest of "Computers and Automation" (see the August 1971 issue).
Five basic algorithms were used to
generate the points that produce
the sails; the hull and masts are
formed by standard point to point
plotting.
"Sailboat" was programmed in FORTRAN IV on a
SE L 840 MP computer and plotted
by a Calcomp 565.
"Computers and Automation"
cordially invites entries in the Tenth
Annual Computer Art Contest (see
page 40).

The Golden Trumpet
40 The Tenth Annual Computer Art Contest - Notice

Front Cover Picture

[A]
[C]
[E)
[F)
[G)
[NT]
[R]
[T]

Article
Monthly Column
Editorial
Forum
The Golden Trumpet
Not Technical
Reference Information
Technical

C- a
EDITORIAL

The Death of the Democratic Party Candidate
for the Presidency, 1972

As most of our readers know, "Computers and Automation" has published from May 1970 on, a series of articles
and reports on the assassinations and deaths of important
leaders in the United States who are opposed to the de facto
alliance of the military-industrial complex, the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, and the office of the
Presidency, which has been carrying on the war in South
East Asia.
Among those who have died from assassination or from
alleged accidents in the 1960's are:
- President John F. Kennedy (shot by at least one
assassin, 1963)
- Senator Robert F. Kennedy (shot by at least one
assassin, 1968)
- Reverend Martin Luther King (shot by one assassin,
1968)
- Adlai Stevenson (died suddenly on a street in London,
1964)
- Waiter Reuther (auto workers union leader, killed
with 5 other persons in a chartered airplane accident in Michigan, 1970)
- Joseph A. Yablonski (shot with 2 other members of
his family in his sleep, 1969 - a miners union leader
who opposed Tony Boyle for president)
Also, Senator Edward Kennedy had an extraordinary and
still largely unexplained accident at Chappaquiddick Island,
in which he narrowly escaped death; and he has chosen so
far not to run for president this year.
It is reasonable to conclude that the United States contains a remarkably unhealthy climate for liberal American
leaders.
On the basis of the evidence that "Computers and
Automation" has published in the two years since May
1970 (see the list starting on page 7 of this issue), and
more evidence besides, I make the following prediction:

1. If the Democratic candidate for president is not
acceptable to the de facto alliance of the militaryindustrial complex, the Pentagon, the Ce-ntral Intelligence Agency, and the present occupant of the
Presidency, he will be eliminated before coming into
the power of the Presidency.
2. Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator George
McGovern are not acceptable.
What is the force opposing the fruition of the choice in
1972 of the American people for a different president?
Probably, about 10% of industry, business, and labor in
the United States, and 90% of the military have a profound
stake in military solutions to problems of the United States.
They are diverting to themselves upwards of $50 oillion a
year out of the United States budget"beyond the needs of
reasonable defense. This is large-scale theft, decorated
with the phrase "national security". They have convinced
6

themselves that the United States ought to spend billions
of dollars a year defending the interests of certain businesses, such as oil, all over the world, including South
East Asia. They are deeply opposed to communism (where
communism is defined as any system that does not permit
private ownership of the means of production). They are
killing Asians through air war at a rate of over 500
persons a day. They have killed more than 50,000
Americans in the war in South East Asia. Why not kill
a few more Americans at home who oppose them?
I am certain that most of the conspiracy is a "silent
conspiracy", groups acting together because of common
interests. But some of it is conscious conspiracy and
organizes the deaths. That is very simple for any organizations that may 4ave the efficacy of the Central Intelligence
Agency, which has not hesitated to use assassination and
death as instruments to attain power outside of the
United States. Examples: Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam;
Patrice Lumumba in the Congo; Che Guevara in South
America. The list goes on and on.
The point where serious danger to the Democratic
candidate becomes almost certain is when the nominee
for president of the Democratic Party becomes almost
certain. Take the example of Senator Robert Kennedy,
assassinated a little after midnight after his victory celebration in the California primary in 1968. The assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy made Richard Nixon's
victory in the election a very much safer bet. There were
10 bullets found at the scene; Sirhan's gun contained only
8. (See "Computers and Automation", August, 1970,
p. 48.) The sooner the liquidation takes place after it
becomes "clearly necessary", the better for the de facto
alliance. And all public-spirited citizens can go to his
funeral and mourn publicly - but ,the office of commanderin-chief, the Presidency, will still be safely in the hands of
the de facto alliance.
I deeply hope my prediction is wrong. But I am very
much afraid it is right. The stakes are too great for the
de facto alliance to ever again risk having another president
like John F. Kennedy.
As for the credibility, honesty, honor, and any other
possible virtues of the de facto alliance, the Pentagon
Papers released by Daniel Ellsberg, the Anderson Papers
on the Tonkin Gulf incident and on the deal between
ITT and the Department of Justice in which an antitrust
suit was called off for $100,000 (or $400,000) to be
given to the Republican Party, etc., provide a ·little of
the evidence of what these people really amount to:
thieves, liars, scoundrels, and killers, wrapped in a cloak
of words, illusions, and "holy war" against communism.

Edmund C. Berkeley, Editor
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

not one but two conspiracies relating to the
assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Political Assassination In the
United States
56
Articles Published in Computers and Automation
May 1970 to May 1972: I nventory of
Titles, Authors, and Summaries

INDEX TO "SPECIAL UNIT SENATOR: The Investigation of the Assassination of Senator Robert F.
Kennedy"
An index is supplied for the Random House
book written by Robert A. Houghton, of the
Los Angeles Police Department, about the
investigation of the assassination of
Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
November 1970

May 1970
THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY:
THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS TO THE PHOTOGRAPHIC
EVIDENCE
by Richard E. Sprague
A reexamination of some of the evidence relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- with emphasis on the possibilities
and problems of computerized analysis of the
photographic evidence.

CONFIDENTIAL AND SECRET DOCUMENTS OF THE WARREN
CO~~ISSION DEPOSITED IN THE U.S. ARCHIVES
by Neil Macdonald, Assistant Editor
A list of the subjects of over 200 documents
of the Warr~n Commission which ~ere classified confidential, secret, and top secret.

THE ASSASSINATION OF REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER
KING, JR., THE ROLE OF JA~ffiS EARL RAY, AND THE
QUESTION OF CONSPIRACY
by Richard E. Sprague
James Earl Ray says he ~as coerced into
entering a plea of guilty to killing Martin
Luther King ... and contrary evidence (plus
other evidence) have led to filing of legal
peti tions for "post-conviction relief".

THE DEATH OF WALTER REUTHER:
ACCIDENTAL OR PLANNED?
by Edmund C. Berkeley and Leonard Walden
Some significant questions about the plane
crash in May 1970 in which Walter Reuther
was _ki lled.

December 1970

July 1970
29

THE MAY ARTICLE, "THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY: THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS TO
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE" -- REPORT NO.2:
32 More About Jim Hicks
32 Confirmation of FBI Knowledge 12 Days Before
Dallas of a Plot to Kill President Kennedy,
by Edmund C. Berkeley
35 The Second Conspiracy About the Assassination
of President Kennedy, bv Richard E. Sprague

January 1971

August 1970
48

THE ASSASSINATION OF SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY:
Preface, by Edmund C. Berkeley
Two Men With Guns Drawn at Senator Kennedy's
Assassination: Statem~nt to the Press, by
Theodore Charach
50 Map of the Scene of the Assassination of
Senator Robert Kennedy
51 The Pantry Where Senator Robert Kennedy Was
Assassinated
52 Bullet Hole in the Frame of a Door
53 Two Bullet Holes in the Center Divider of the
Pantry Door

48
50

February 1971
48

September 1970
39

PATTERNS OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION: How Many
Coincidences Make a Plot?
by Edmund C. Berkeley, Edi tor, "Computers and
Automation"
How the science of probability and statistics
can be used as an instrument of decision to
determine if a rare event is: (1) within a
reasonable range; (2) unusual or strange or
suspicious; or (3) the result of correlation
or cause or conspiracy.

March 1971
35

"THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY: THE
APPLICATION OF COMPUTERS TO THE PHOTOGRAPHIC
EVIDENCE" -- COMI\ffiNT
35 I. ANOTHER VIEW
by Benjamin L: Schwartz, Ph.D.
A polemical attack on "The Assassination
of President Kennedy: the Application of
Computers to the Photographic Evidence"
by Richard E. Sprague published May 1970.
40 II. RESPONSE
by Edmund C. Berkeley, Editor, "Computers
and Automation"

DISTRICT ATTORNEY JIM GARRISON ON THE
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY:
A Review of Heritage of Stone
by Neil Macdonald, Assistant Editor, "Com-'
puters and Automation"

COMPUTER-ASSISTED ANALYSIS OF EVIDENCE REGARDING
THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
-- PROGRESS REPORT
by Richard E. Sprague
October 1970
THE CONSPIRACY TO ASSASSINATE SENATOR ROBERT F.
KENNEDY AND THE SECOND CONSPIRACY TO COVER IT UP
by Richard E. Sprague
.A summary of what researchers are uncovering
in their investigation of what appears to be

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

THE REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COI\IMITTEE
TO INVESTIGATE ASSASSINATIO~S
by Bernard Fensterwald, James Lesar, and
Robert Smith
What the National Committee in Washington,
D.C. is doing about computerizing files of
evidence, initiating lawsuits to obtain information, etc., and comments on two new
books by District Attorney Jim Garrison and
Robert Blair Kaiser.

(please turn to page 50)

Effective Management of an Instrument Pool
D.H. Townsend, Supervisor
Standard Tool and Instrument Operations
Lockheed Missile and Space Co.
P.O. Box 504
Sunnyvale, Calif. 94088

"Utilization of the instruments included in the Instrument Pool Data System has increased
from 56% to 87%, and the number of instruments has decreased from 20,000 to 12,000
with no loss of effectiveness."

The Basic Pool Function

In the early years of a rapidly expanding new company, management decisions must be made to establish
tool cribs, instrument pools, office supply facilities, etc. At the Lockheed Missile and Space Company (LMSC) this problem became rather significant in
late 1961 in relation to the test instrument inventory. During this period LMSC was growing by leaps
and bounds as was this expensive inventory. From
essentially no inventory in 1957, the number of calibrated test instruments had grown to over 45,000, with
a value of approximately $30,000,000, by 1963. These
instruments were custodially assigned to organizations
throughout the plant.
Interest in a pool concept was emphasized through
the results of both customer and corporate audits conducted during this period. An Instrument Pool would
provide the disciplines considered lacking at the
time, namely:
a. Centralized management
b. Increased inventory flexibility
c. Common control systems
d. Improved utilization
e. Lower calibration costs.
Implementation

The implementation of the Instrument Pool .at IMSC
could only be accomplished through the complete awareness of top management that the need existed and positive benefits would be realized. Management was
aware, by early 1962, that action must be taken to
effectively control the dramatic instrument inventory
growth and realize the five benefits identified above.
Company policies and procedures were established in
1962 that basically created the Instrument Pool functions and responsibilities that exist tOday. These
policies and procedures stipulated that all calibratable, general purpose, portable test instruments
were to be controlled by a centralized Instrument
Pool Organization. Based upon these established
functions and responsibilities an Instrument Pool
organization was created and m~nned in mid-1962.
Crib facilities were planned and initial control
systems established.
The major difficulty at this point was to effectively motivate test organizations to comply with the
intent of established company policy. This was primarily accomplished through a company wide publicity
campaign entitled "Operation Roundup". The campaign

was carried out through a company letter signed by
the general manager instructing all managers and supervisors to transfer property to the pool as outlined
in the "Operation Roundup" instruction packet issued
to them. The campaign was also widely publicized
through the company newspaper. The overall effect
was awareness of management's intent at all levels of
the company structure. Most importantly, each division was given a goal they were to attain in order
to effectively accomplish the objectives of the campaign. Weekly tracking information was circulated
to top management reporting the ability of each division to attain targeted goals. "Operation Roundup" was completed in December, 1963 with the transfer of approximately 5,000 items to the Instrument
Pool.
At this point, a significant effect was achieved
that would pay considerable dividends in years to
come; namely, the awareness of all test instrument
users of the purpose of the Instrument Pool and the
interest of top management in its success.
The Instrument Pool Organization Today

As mentioned earlier, the test instrument inventory had grown very rapidly in the first six to seven
years after the company was founded. The pool was
created to control this growth and ensure centralized
management of general-purpose equipment. This function of the pool was achieved rather quickly through
a reduced total inventory growth rate and the concurrent increased control the pool exerci sed over the
inventory. The Instrument Pool inventory grew from
approximately 2,000 in 1962 to over 20,000 in January.
1967. The inventory currently consists of government
funded facilities and special test equipment in addition to Lockheed funded equipment.
During the initial coordination and planning with
the test labs in establishing an Instrument Pool, it
became apparent that Instrument Pool control stations
should be located in each of the major buildings rather than having one centralized station servicing
the entire facility. This philosophy is practiced
today with five control stations located at strategic
points throughout the plant. Each of the stations
also act as a depot for the pickup and delivery of
all instrumentation requiring calibration. Specially
designed instrument carrying trailers are pulled by
tugs for the movement of instruments between stations
and the centralized calibration laboratories. One
station exists which, to a large extent, exemplifies
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

r~
I

Photo ·No. 2

Photo No.1

Photo No.3
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Photo No.4
9

a primary benefit of a strong Instrument Pool. The
Storage/Retirement Station typically has an inventory
that ranges from 800 to approximately 1900 and has
been the clearing house for over 25,000 excess instruments in the past five years. Each of the major stations is manned by an industrial engineer with electronics and test lab experience in addition to a sufficient staff of station attendents to satisfactorily
control the inventory. There are three engineers and
nine attendants performing this function at the present time.
The single most important element in the control
of any inventory of this size, diversity, and value
is a system that will adequately and accurately report
the condi tions of the inventory wi thin reasonable cost.
Instrument Pool Data System

The present Instrument Pool Data System (IPDS)
consists of RCA Remote Data Input (RDI) terminals in
each station which process inventory status data to
a central computer system as each transaction occurs.
The data consists of the instrument property tag number, description, borrowing employee number, loan date
and promised return date.
The current system is the outgrowth of a first phase
charge-a-plate, five part loan form that required considerable manual filing and keypunch support in addition to efforts to decipher the handwritten data entered by the attendants. This handwritten data included loan dates, instrument description, borrowing employee data, etc.
The second phase was the conversion of the station
records to prepunched tab cards contai ni ng the identi ty
and description of each item and requiring only the
entry of each specific transaction on the loan cards.
This second phase required periodic collection of all
loan cards and considerable keypunch support prior to
batch processing to the computer for the generation
of utilization reports. This involved the collection
of approximately 15,000 loan cards, keypunch processing, verification and return of the original cards
to the submitting station. This whole process had to
be completed in 7 working days on a quarterly basis.
The result of this effort was a test instrument utilization report which was never seriously used as a
management tool due to the high data c'ollection and
processing error rate. .
The current system requires. little keypunch
effort. The status of the inventory is automatically maintained by the station attendants as the
transactions take place through the use of remote
terminals. (Photo ttl). Based on this information
the IPDS generates three reports -- a weekly, biweekly, and a monthly.
These reports are:
1. Weekly Inventory Status Report
2. Bi-Weekly Loan Recall Report by Organization
3. Monthly Utilization Report
The implementation of the OPDS in November 1967
has accounted for the highest instrument retirement
levels achieved at LMSC: 6000 in 1968, over 5800 in
1969 and 4088 in 1970. The utilization rates, based
upon days available for loan vs. days on loan, have
increased from 56% to a high of 87%. The inventory
has been decreased from a high of over 20,000 in
January 1967 to approximately 12,000 today with no
loss in the effectiveness of Instrument Pool functions.

During initial installation of the Instrument
Pool Data System (IPDS), it was particularly important to obtain the cooperation of the station attendants in the use and benefits of the Remote Data
Input (RDI) terminals. Job instructions were written and modified as needed based upon suggestions
from the attendants and engineers. Concurrently,
training sessions were held explaining the use and
benefits of the RDI terminals and the workings of
the computer system. The uses of the computer reports were explained and most importantly, what information these reports would provide.
Monthly Utilization Report - Exhibit A

The first reliable utilization report generated
by the system indicated that 56% of the inventory
was on loan with 44% on the shelf -- idle. The first
reaction was to consider the report inaccurate and
of no use. Inventory audit samples, however, proved
the report to have considerable validity. The
monthly utilization report is currently the basic
source of data for determining inventory excesses,
developing retirement decisions and justifying procurement needs. Current figures average around 80%
on loan with a high of over 87%.
The report detail identifies for each unit within
a manufacturer/model the percentage utilization for
the past six months. The six month figure is used
to stabilize decision making as related to the possible variances that may be experienced in monthly
data.
Currently the utilization report is analyzed on a
bi-monthly basis to determine those specific instruments having less than acceptable utilization. This
information is then keypunched and listings prepared
for each specific Instrument Control Station. The
cards are routed to the responsible engineer for re.tirement disposi tion or retention justification.
Weekly Inventory Status Report - Exhibit B

The weekly report identifies the status of each
instrument within the Instrument Pool as of the previous Friday. Each Monday this report is routed to
each control station and also the central procurement screening desk for status reference. This report is sequenced by instrument manufacturer and
model and identifies if the instrument is on loan,
in calibration, storage or pending retirement. If
the item is on loan it identifies the borrowing employee by name and number, his department, the day
the item is to be returned, and if overdue from
loan, the number of days overdue from loan and the
calibration due date.
The information provided allows each Control Station to have access to the information as to the
availabili ty of all the test instruments assigned to
the Pool. There is no need to call other stations
in the plant on a hit or miss basis. The calls are
limited to those stations that have equipment available. If none are available and an item is in calibration, a request for expedited calibration is negotiated and the request satisfied in this manner.
Bi-Weekly Instrument Pool Loan Recall

The bi-weekly report identifies all the Instrument Pool inventory overdue from loan. The report
is sequenced by department number and then by employee name listing each instrument overdue from
loan charged to that employee. The sequence of the
report was deliberately established by employee name
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Exhibit A

Monthly Utilization Report
TOR 064-71

OF.TAIL U-1SC

PAGE

INSTRLMENT POOL EQUIPMENT UTlLllATICN FOR THE SIX MONTHS ENOED 10-30-71, "'FG DAY 863

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78496 00 127

47.2

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16.0

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.0 100.0 100.0

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127 100.0

.IJ 100.0 100.0

59467 00 127 100.0

.0 100.( 100.0

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.Q lQQ.,8.100.0

127 100.8

.0 10C.6 100.0

13371 OC 127 100.8

.0 100.6 100.0

CO 127 100.0

.0 100.C 100.C

127 1CO.0

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127 100.0

.0 100.0 100.0

.0 10C.8 1CO.0
.0 100.8 100.0
.0 100.8 100.0_

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.J3ARlillL.J NS.L '.0._1 ClI)P SI _._ GA_GE. P R. E SS
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GAGE PRESS

BARTON INST CO

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BECKER CHRIS CO SG7

7092

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COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

I-lBuJ
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6 I t 72
72

(please turn to page 30)
11

EDP AXIOMS - A Critical Analysis
w.

Leon Sanford
Touche Ross & Co.
Railway Exchange Bldg.
St. Louis, Mo. 63101
"Data processing is so young a field that none of its self-evident truths" can be
accepted as true without questioning and validating.

This article is not intended to convey the idea
that computer programmers and systems analysts are
either unintelligent or naive -- in fact my experience has indicated that they are generally above
average in intelligence, highly motivated to perform
their job, well qualified (technically), logical in
their approach to problem solving and generally work
20% more hours per week (without pay since most are
salaried) than th~ir counterparts in business. However, this article is written from,the businessmen's
point of view and from this angle the author recognizes several habits that bear closer scrutiny.
In this article, the author takes to task several
"rules of thumb" currently being appl ied on a day-today basis by computer programmers and sy.stems analysts.
These "rules of thumb" were logical when developed
during an earlier era of computers, but for various
reasons are no longer val id. One of the reasons that
these items have not been subjected to more scrutiny
is that today's "third generation" EDP manager was a
programmer or systems analyst when these axioms were
developed and they were logical at that time. Unless
these "rules of thumb" are quickly subjected to an
objective review, today's manager will find that he
is attempting to enforce a set of outdated standards.
Third-generation "novice" programmers and systems
analysts, those never exposed to first and second
generation computers, will probably be the key "to the
detection of, and hopefully correction of, illogical
procedures being employed in the day-to-dayoperation
of the average EDP shop. Today's EDP managers would
do well to listen intently when questions are raised
and suggestions are put forth by neophyte systems
analysts and programmers. It can be tough, even for
the most astute manager, to listen objectively as a
fledgling programmer or analyst questions the validity of (pseudo) standards in daily use by an EDP
shop, but the manager must listen if the EDP function
is ever going to attain real stature in the typical
company.
What Are EPP Axioms?

Upon close inspection it becomes readily apparent
that data processing just like any other field of
endeavor has developed a "folk lore" that is being
passed from (computer) generation to generation of
computer specialists. This means that new generations are springing up every five years. I have
chosen to refer to the components of this""folk lore"
as axioms since they represent:
- Maxims that are widely accepted on their
intrinsic merit "(one of the characteristics of an axiom according to Webster's
dictionary)
12

- Propositions that are regarded as selfevident truths (ibid.)
In the author's opinion there is a great danger
involved in the application of seemingly "self-evident" truths that have not withstood the test of
time -- data processing is so young relative to other
fields that none of its "self-evident" truths have
been exposed to the jaundiced eye of the non-believer
over an extensive period of time. Though it is undoubtedly true that a number of the axioms currently
employed by data processing personnel will withstand
the test of time, the author firmly believes that
several of these EDP "golden rules" are of doubtful
value and others are totally worthless. This article
is devoted to a discussion of selected EDP axioms
that, in the author's opinion, are producing negative
and undesirable results.
"Axiomatic" Phrases

The following phrases are indicative of EDP axioms
being employed:
1. "Reject all transactions as early as possible
in a system ------".
In other words: Incomplete or erroneous transactions should be detected and rejected as soon as
possible in a computerized system.

2. "Programmer A's programs, eat up core as
though it were going out of style".
In other words: Emphasis should be placed on reducing each program to a minimum core size to
promote operational efficiency.
3. "That program is no good (i t is process
bound), it cannot be used in a multiprogramming
environment".
4. "We are going to be a mUltiprogramming
shop -- we must develop programs which will function in a multiprogramming type environment.
In other words: Multiprogramming is the key to
the future and new systems should be designed
to function in a multiprogramming environment.
5. "Wish we could get rid of those tables in
our programs, it seems as though we are constantly
recompiling programs to add or change items in
these tables".
In other words: Having to recompile programs to
change data in tables is a necessary evil which
must be endured because the use of tables is such
a powerful feature of the computer.
6~ '''An Operations Supervisor is giving instructions to the night shift operators" "Don't forget
this is the last day of the sales month for XYZ
system; today is Friday and program 1204 must be
notified to purge the weekly production data ____

ft.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

In other words: Having computer operators respond
to automated systems to indicate such things as
last day of sales month, today is Wednesday, etc.
is unde~irable, but to do anything else is too
time consuming and/or complicated.
Each of These Axioms Is Being Overemphasized
By Many EDP Shops

In the author's opinion the preceding axioms are
being overemphas ized by many EDP shops and this overemphasis is detrimental to the EDP profession inparticular and to organizations in general because:
• The reason for employing some of these
axioms no longer exists and has not existed since the advent of 3rd generation
computers.
• Better alternates exist and should be
employed just as fervently as the axioms
are being applied today.
• Undue emphasis is being placed on techniques that are destined to be obsolescent in the near future.
• The axioms are being applied as absolutes,
when in fact they should be applied based
upon the characteristics of each individual situation.
Invalid Transaction

(Axiom ~l): Invalid or incomplete transactions
generally should not be rejected.
The axiom that invalid or incomplete transactions
should be detected and rejected by a computerized
system as quickly as possible is absurd today - good
computer programs always test each transaction for
~ errors before rejecting them which is logical,
but the early rejection of transactions containing
errors should be avoided. A well designed system
should handle errors in this way:
- Test each transaction for all error conditions
and notify the user of each error detected.
- Hold the·error transaction in limbo (generally
by logging the transaction onto a disk) until the
user has supplied the missing information ~ the error
listing generally can be designed such that it is a
turn-around document for the re-entry of incorrect
information.
- Continue to highlight erroneous, incorrect or
missing data elements. Having the automated system
"remember" the status of rejects eliminates the need
for elaborate control systems to assure that rej ~cted
items are resubmitted, since the system will automatically highlight all errors during the next reporting cycle.
- Hold errors in.abeyance to facilitate the generation of error statistics (by type of error encountered) and the number of corrective attempts made.
NOTE: This philosophy is just as valid with online data entry applications as off-line applications. Consider the situation in which the terminal
operator is keying data as it appears on her source
document, but the automated system is telling her
that a field is in error because of a logic test:
It is generally best, in the interest of efficiency,
to accept the partial transaction and log it on a
disk error file if the reason for the rejection cannot easily (and quickly) be determined. The system
should always highlight such inconiplete transactions
during successive reporting cycles until the missing
data has been supplied and the transaction can be
handled as any other valid transaction.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Saving Core

(Axiom ~2): Programmers should not be given blanket instructions to save core.
Core storage is the most economically priced component of today's computer, relative to its capabili ty to perform. In the author's opinion core storage
was moderately priced in the second generation; its
cost was halved with the third generation and it is
currently being slashed again with the 3~ generation
computer models being announced.
To dramatize, let's take a look at typical ways
in which programmers conserve core storage:
- First, he shortens all of the long descriptive error messages so that they become meaningless.
- Second, he resorts to the elimination of
all descriptive error messages and provides an error code instead.
- As his next to last resort, he will combine several different error messages
under one code. This particular aspect
of core conservation has caused untold
hours of wasted effort on the part of
users who must analyze each error in an
attempt to decipher the real reason a
transaction was rejected.
- The last resort is to reduce the blocking
factor of one or more files; programmers
hate to do this because this step makes
their programs operate less efficiently.
Some programmers never determine how much
longer the program will run (30 seconds
or 14 hours) in order to evaluate this degrading of their system against the overall benefits to be gained.
Process-Boufld Programs

(Axiom
fective.

~3):

Process-bound programs are often ef-

In the average (business oriented) computer shop
it is common for process bound programs to be criticized by operations personnel because they cannot be
efficiently run in a multiprogramming environment.
To determine whether such a program is good or bad
it is first necessary to ascertain why the program
is process bound. Common reasons are:
1) Poor systems design.
2) Sloppy or illogical programming.
3) Extensive logic checking between input/
output instructions.
4) Extensive arithmetic manipulations between input/output instructions.
Naturally, if a program is process bound because
of poor systems design or illogical programming
techniques, it should properly be criticized and the
errors corrected as quickly as possible if practical.
If, on the other hand, the program is process bound
because it performs extensive logic checks or does
massive arithmetic calculations and is thus "properly" process bound, it will seriously degrade the
performance of any input/output programs that are
being run at the same time, and thus it will be a
poor candidate for use in a mul tiprogramming environment.
The percentage of properly designed programs that
logically are process bound has been steadily increasing for several reasons:
13

• The experience level of systems analysts
and programmers has increased significantly; experienced personnel tend to design and implement more complex systems
(which generally means numerous logic
tests) which are more likely to be process
bound.
• The mere fact that recent generations of
computers have large core storage capacity
has tended to encouraye the creation of
larger, more sophisticated programs. It
is a well known fact that you quickly
reach a point of diminishing returns by
increasing record blocking factors as a
means of utilizing increased core, storage
-- operating efficiencies quickly diminish
after block length exceeds a few thousand
characters plus the fact that manufacturer
supplied sorts have relatively small maximum block sizes. Once these optimum block
maximums have been reached, it is only natural for programmers and analysts to expand programs in an effort to utilize as
much of available core storage as possible.
• The systems being implemented today are orders of magnitude more complex than their
predecessors -- this additional complexity
usually translates itself into additional
logic and/or arithmetic instructions and
an increased likelihood that a program will
be process bound.
Multiprogramming

(Axiom U4): Multiprogramming may not exist in the
fourth generation.
To put this axiom into its proper perspective we
must realize that multiprogramming today exists for
one basic reason -- The Fact That The Central Processing Unit Is Much Faster Than The Average Input/
Output Device and thus the cpu is often ~dle while
waiting for input/output operations to be completed.
Multiprogramming is the interim solution created
to improve the productivity of the cpu by allowing
it to control the I/O units of two or more programs
at the same time. Consequently, the need for multiprogramming will eventually disappear (in the author's
opinion it may well occur with the 4th generation of
computers) :
• Let us assume that the major'input/output
device of the future will bea mass-storage device (s).
• Let us further assume that present increases
in efficiency continue to the point that
such mass storage devices are so fast that
no cpu is fast enough to handle two input/
output operations while executing other
instructions.
An initial tendency might be to criticize a cpu
that is not fast enough that it can handle such high
speed I/O devices, but in fact we will have improved
the situation greatly by establishing a proper bal-'
ance between the speeds of the two components of the
computer. In fact a situation in which the speeds
of the two components were the same would be a major
improvement over today's multiprogramming environment
-- such a situation would have removed the imbalance
that initially gave rise to multiprogramming (a mismatch between the speed of the cpu and I/O devices).
It Is Not Outside The Realm Of Possibility That
The 4th Generation Of Computers May Create a Need For
14

"Multi-I/O-ing", the opposite of multiprogramming -where I/O devices are faster than cpu's such that two
or more cpu's must function in tandem to keep p~ce
with an I/O unit.
Table Look-Up

(Axiom U5): Data for table look up operations
should not be part of source programs
The practice of including the elements of a table
lookup operation as part of a computer program necessitates recompiling the program each time an element
must be added or changed. More logically, the data
for all table lookup operations would be stored on
disk and read into core each time the program is run.
Changes to tables would be handled just like the updating of any master file -- the user does it as a
clerical function. In this environment an update
program is written to handle changes and/or additions
to all tables on disc. A single, generalized routine
is inserted in each program to retrieve the tables
required for that particular program.
Operator Responses

(Axiom U6):'Operators should never have to respond
to a system: Today is the last day of month; Today is
Monday; today is a holiday; today is the 5th of the
month; etc.
Operators have traditionally had to make this type
response to computer programs to permit the program
to determine if files are to be purged; if payroll is
being run at mid-month or at the end of the month; if
today is sales closing, etc. A system can be designed whereby data concerning day of month, week,
etc. is placed on a disk and each individual program
makes its own determination (with nothing more than
current date) as to what special things are to happen
each processing cycle. This type of system gives the
operator an option to override any automatic decision
made by the computer. In one instance a system has
been operational for a number of years, when the computer programs are able to determine the prop~r,
course of action to take each processing cycle with
90% accuracy -- the operator overrides the programs
10% of the time.
Business Benefits Should Be Emphasized

Finally there is a general criticism of the EDP
function, which is not specifically related to the
axioms in this article, that must be mentioned.
This is the continuing need for the EDP technician
to become much more cognizant of the business benefits he and his automated systems must provide. lie
must be willing to acknowledge that technical perfaction does not always result in satisfied users,
nor does it necessarily provide profitable results.
In a large company a computer program is constantly criticized by EDP technicians because it
cannot be used effectively in a multiprogramming environment. From a technical point of view these
computer professionals are to be congratulated
(their timing tests proved that the program was process bound 97% of the time) upon the conclusion
reached. However, if the business benefits had been
considered by those individuals it would have been
readily apparent that whether or not the program was
"process bound" was irrelevant, -- a program which
produces a quarter of ~ million dollars in benefits
(as is projected for this one) throughout its useful
life could have a number of undesirable aspects from
a technical point of view and still be perfectly
sound from the businessman's vantage point.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Had the businessman's perspective been utilized
in the foregoing example, not one minute would have
been wasted to determine if the program was input/
output bound (and thus a good candidate for multiprogramming) -- the benefits are so staggering that
this program must be used regardless of whether or
not it is practical for another program to be run at
the same time. Other examples of "technical excellence but business folly" that the author has encountered are listed below.
• A programmer once boasted to me about his
inventory reporting system that produced 66
boxes of output (at maximum printer speed)
each month. The problem here is that a
whole army of human beings could not possibly assimilate this much data.
• A system manager once convince~ a user that
he did not need a particular systems improvement because it would increase computer run
time by 10%. The program in question required 20 minutes per day and would have an
additional 2 minutes with the modification.
This particular computer center has a minimum of 5 hours per day available on each of
its 1. computers.
• Some programmers like to keep refining programs to obtain the maximum rated speed of
one or more input/output devices and/or reduce the number of micro-seconds for a complex arithmetic operation. Generally speaking, these minor improvements are worthless
unless the EDP shop is nearing its computer
capacity (on a 24-hour basis).
Standards for Measuring Performance

The time has come for computers to be measured by
the same standards as any other tool. The same
should apply to data processing people. Management
criteria such as objectives, results, benefits and
budgets are just as applicable to data processing as
any other segment of the business. The following
elements (though not an all-inclusive list) should
be utilized in managing any business-oriented EDP
function:
1. Potential projects to be automated are identified and given priorities for development based on
the cost to develop versus the benefits to be realized from implementation of the system.
2. Emphasis will be placed on implementing projects in the sequence which produces the best net
cash flow.
3. Sophisticated project control techniques will
be utilized to plan and control projects. Such a
technique will include:
a. A defini tion of the maj or tasks, to be performed to install each project.
b. Identification of the various types and
quantity of technical skills required to
perform each task.
c. The assignment of overall project responsibility as well as responsibility assignment
for each major task.
d. A periodic reporting mechanism that accurately records the status of partially completed tasks in addition to the status of
fully completed tasks.
e. A definition of the sequence in which tasks
must be implemented and an identification
of the "critical" items that will determine
the final implementation date.
4. A "creeping-commitment" approach will be utilized whereby each project passes through several
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

"go" or "no go" stages and any decision to continue
is based upon the latest information available regarding benefits to be gained and further implementation costs to be encountered.
5. Documentation should be produced as a normal
by-product of the systems management process, thus
making it possible to interrupt any project (because
another project logically should be given a higher
priority) and continue the process at a later date
without losing the benefit of efforts expended prior
to the interruption of the project.
6. Equipment planning is done based upon the composite requirement of the various projects to be installed on the equipment throughout its estimated
useful life.
7. The number of, and capabilities of, personnel
in the systems development and programming area are
based upon the requirements of the projects to be
developed and installed together with the implementation time frame desired by management.
8. Each potential development project is evaluated to assure that it is in fact an independent project (not a modification to another system) and that
its development will be compatible with management's
overall objectives.
In essence such an approach tends to remove the
awe or mystique commonly associated with the management of the EDP facility.

Oonclusion

As was stated earlier, many of these axioms were
valid with second and earlier generation computers,
but generally are not valid today because of the increased capabilities of the various components of
modern computers. What is really needed today is
for EDP technicians to continually test the logic
behind the guidelines (axioms) being used when automation is applied, much as they test a user's logic as
part of the problem definition of any new system.
In essence EDP technicians must make an extra effort
to assure that the tools of their trade are consistently applied in an objective manner.
Actually, many of these axioms can still be applicable to particular situations today and when it is
logical they should be applied. I am not advocating
that they all be abolished and the negative form of
each blindly followed -- this would be just as foolhardy as what is happening now. I do strongly recommend that all EDP axioms, not just the few listed
here, be recognized for what they are and then be
tested for reasonableness before being applied.
One of the best ways I can think of for EDP technicians to test the validity of their axioms is to
attempt to explain to a "hard nosed" businessman why
each is logical and its application is consistent
with the solution of the immediate problem and with
the overall objectives of the company. Many illogical axioms can be detected in this manner, but more
importantly, this can be a step toward breaking the
communications gap that exists between technicians
and managemen t.
Sound management practices dictate that the expertise of the EDP technician and the business manager must be optimized if today's computers are to
be used effectively. For this to happen these two
elements of an organization must communicate with
each other. Hopefully, a conscientious effort on
the part of both parties plus a "schooling" of each
in the rudiments of the discipline of the other,
will eventually permit these two diverse elements to
function as a cohesive unit.
0
15

Academic Computer Practices, and Their DeFiciencies
Dr. Herbert E. Humbert
Director of Learning Resources
Lorain County Community Col/ege
Elyria, Ohio 44035

"Teachers are behind in computer know-how and use:

The Report to the President and the Congress of
the United States by the Commission on Instructional
Technology, March, 1970, enti tled "To Improve Learning", among other things, dealt with the causes of
technology's lack of impact on American education.
The causes listed are:
1) Indifference or antipathy toward us~ng technology in education;
2) Poor programs;
3) Inadequate equipment;
4) Inaccessibility;
5) Teachers not trained in Instructional Technology;
6) Media specialists excluded from central
planning;
7) Limited staff.
The use of computers in education, when measured
against these seven reasons for lack of impact,
fails in all seven areas.
School Computer

The computer presents a different problem from
other educational media primarily for two reasons:
1) The school computer is already functioning well
in areas other than educational, such as financial
accounting and student records, and therefore has a
group of users with a vested interest; 2) There is
already a vested interest in computer education by a
group of professional and technical computer people
and teachers of the computer. The combination of
these two interest groups presents a very formidable
wall for teachers. They must break through that wall
in order to improve learning through computerization
of methodology and learner assessment. The techniques that these two interest groups use to prevent
the introduction of th~ teacher to the computer field
are subtle, and they seem very reasonable, although
the end result is restricted use or no use by the
faculty.
I will attempt in this article to identify and
describe some of the techniques used by these interest groups and show how they demotivate potential
users- of the computer and prevent its wide-spread
use in instruction. What I have to say will be objected to vehemently by professional and technical
computer men because it will strike directly at the
basis of their operation, which is based on exclusive control and independent decision-making on
their part.
16

it is time to catch up."

Division 01 Authority

One of the biggest arguments that goes on within
educational institutions today concerns the question: Where should the authority and responsibility
for computer management lie? Shall data processing
services be attached directly to the president, the
vice' president for academic affairs, or the vice
president for business affairs? Or, should they be
controlled by an independent administrative board?
This question would not be so difficult of resolution if administrators knew as much about computers
as they do about adding machines and bookkeepers.
It is the mystery and the mysticism of the computer
that makes the non-computer mind assume that it is
different from older forms of data processing. In
reality it is not. The computer is essentially
nothing more nor less than an adding machine, or an
abacus, or marks on the wall of a cave. The computer deserves no more honor or respect than an adding
machine, plus a typewriter plus a tape recorder.
This mysticism has placed educators in a position
of having to rely almost entirely on the professional and technical computerman to establish his own
objectives, set up his own department, including
equipment and procedures, and determine his own services.
The greatest problems in educational institutions
with computers seem to come from the services offered and for this reason various organizational
forms have been tried to control computer services.
At the present stage of development, the committee
seems to be the most effective. This is probably
because the committee can spend more time collectively studying computer problems. Also it has
more possibility of having some educators on the
committee who are fairly knowledgeable about computers, as compared to having the computer services
under a single boss. The single boss is apt to be
preoccupied with the traditional expectations of his
office. When the responsibility for the computer
function is overlaid on his office, he will slough
it off onto the professional and technical computerman, rather than seek to make himself informed so
that he can ~nteliigentfy direct the development of
all computer use in the educational institution, including instruction.
Advisory Committee:

A Dead End

It seems to me that the establishment of an advisory committee to control computer operations virtuCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

ally makes the data processing services in,educational institutions an independent agency. Because
data processing personnel have been educated and
trained in business divisions of colleges, services
to business activities of an educational institution
are usually good and evoke little criticism. However, if these personnel try to function in an instructional setting, they immediately encounter
problems which they do not understand because of
their business experience and training background.
Since it is an independent agency, academic administrators and instructors are very apt to yield, because not only do they run into a lack of~~nder
standing of their problems but also they find themselves powerless to bring any power to bear on the
computer operation. As a result:
• educators look in other directions than the
computer to improve learning;
they are indifferent or antipathetic toward
the computer;
• the available programs remain mediocre or
poor;
• the equipment remains inadequate for learning,
however adequate it may be for business functions;
• the equipment and programmers remain inaccessible behind ,the curtain of an independent
agency; teachers remain untrained in the 'uses
of the computer in learning and teaching;
they remain excluded from central planning
processes because they are not computer users.
Nothing militates against educational uses of the
computer as much as independently established computer agencies. We could not design a system that
would more effectively "kill off" the use of computers by teachers if we sat down intellectually and
carefully and tried to design a plan to do it.
Mystical Computer

Various practices of professional and technical
computer personnel are designed to keep the computer
mystical. One of the most effective of these practices is: to use no headings on ~omputer printouts;
or, if headings are used, ihey include non-standard
abbreviations and code numbers and letters which
make it virtually impossible for any of the uninitiated to understand what is on that printout.
Only a continuous user can remember the meanings of
the abbreviations and words. This practice prevents
teachers from becoming familiar with what kinds of
uses the computer is providing because they cannot
understand the printouts that they may see in meetings or see on other colleagues' desks. This practice also perpetuates the ignorance of administrators because they cannot understand the printouts
that their subordinates use on a daily basis. So
the computer remains a mystery.
Rejection of Responsibility for Educating

Another practice of professional and technical
computermen is to tell the teacher that they will
make programs for him if he will just describe what
he wants the program to do. This is understandable
as most computermen are oriented in a business tradition, not an educational tradition, and to some degree they do not know what to provide for a teacher.
However, this practice has become a fetish, to the
extent that it represents a solid brick wall between
data processing services and a teacher who is ignorant of what the computer can do for him. People
working in computer services traditionally accept no
responsibility whatsoever for familiarizing themCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

selves with what is going on in educational institutions nationwide that would provide a basis for them
to help teachers to get started with computer uses
in their own institutions. We would not tolerate
this from other divisions within our educational institutions but because of the mysticism of the computer we allow this to exist in data processing services. The professional educator must stand up and
demand that these practices on the part of administration and computer services stop. All other professional fields are proceeding to develop technical
and equipment support both in quality and quantity
beyond that which is available to the teachers.
Hospitals are the most easily understood illustration of this point. As much as we detest the high
cost of illnesses, no one questions the medical
competence of the practitioners.
Proposed Changes

I propose that the following changes in educational institutions are necessary in order to promote rapid and high quality uses of the computer at
the learner-teacher level:
1. The computer, computer time, and computer personnel must be fractionated so that those,persons
being served have both responsibility and authority
over the equipment and personnel which will be doing
their work. This is becoming easier as various kinds
of computei terminals become more wide-spread. This
development will siop all arguments about priorities,
projects, division of expenditures, competence of
programmers and systems analysts, development of programs and systems, and many of the other arguments
now plaguing educational institutions in regard to
the computer users and uses and,will relegate these
problems directly to the responsible user. They will
then be resolvable on an operational basis among the
people and proj ects concerned., Thi sis no different
from what has always been in school work, where secretaries, office machine operator~~ store keepers,
librarians, and media producers, have been attached
directly to academic groups.
Bosses

2. Computer people should have bosses, not operating committees. This is a natural result of the development mentioned above. When I make this statement.
I do not imply departure from the normal committee
structure of any educational institution which will
bring its educational thinking to bear on what is going on. Faculty meetings, department meetings, divisional meetings, administrative meetings, and all
committees that are assigned some form of control
will offer direction to computer people. But, the
computer operation does not deserve or require an
operating~ommittee, any more than do the girls who
run the adding machines or prepare reports for the
administrators. Administrative councils and committees should exercise control over computer people as
part of their overall responsibility structure, and
thereby make this function a part of an integrated
whole rather than an isolated phenomenon.
Titling of Reports

3. A uniform rule in educational institutions in
regard to computer printouts should be followed. This
rule is: Every report and every column in a report
shall be titled. The titles should not include abbreviations or codes. One only has to think of various financiai reports he has read over his lifetime
to realize that almost all of these are well titled;
the exceptions have been those with poorly selected
titles or titles too abbreviated or titles containing
17

terminology unfamiliar to the viewer. This requirement is really just a matter of good English usage
that any writer would expect to follow; we would not
consider publishing articles or books without proper
chosen titles and headings on the graphic and illustrative material. any more than we would publish a
newspaper without headlines.
4. Institutions should provide funds for travel
and conference attendance so that computer people can
find out what is going on with computers in other educational institutions.
We have seen fit to supply computers and appropriate peripheral equipment for business uses in educational institutions. These uses have come first probably because it is very easy to see savings in terms
of personnel and the instantaneous availability of
coordinated information somewhere down the road. These
uses are primarily substituting computer production
for what we formerly did by hand and by fewer machines.
If we can do these jobs faster, the ~bvious result
should be eventual reduction in cost.
Institutional Computer Uses

Instructional computer uses are different. The
projected uses computers have in instruction add instructional elements that are new, currently lacking
in education:
• they speed up student learning by doing large
scale calculating rapidly;
• they group and regroup students on the basis
of selected criteria. which will lead to personalized and individualized learning (and to
eventual discard of the semester and class
system);
• they provide for student record-keeping, and
faculty information services upon which instruction can be based, on a vast scale that
has never been available before.

3. Inadequate equipment -- Money supplied specifically for this purpose will add to existing computers used for other purposes and provide an equipment basis for use in instruction.
4. Inaccessibili ty -- If specific time is assigned
for computer use and specific personnel are assigned
for programming and systems work,then the problem of
inaccessibi li ty is reduced to a manageable level. Communication between business-oriented computer personnel and instruction-oriented teachers will become the
maj or problem and a "pressure" will build up to sol ve it.
5. Teachers not trained in instructional technology
When responsibi li ty and authori ty of computer uses
are placed at the academic level, the necessity to
become knowledgeable or trained in this field will
become apparent, and will motivate teachers to become able to function with the computer and with
computer programmers.
6. Media specialists excluded from central planning -- When authority and responsibility resides
with teachers who are competent in the computer
field, the problem of making oneself felt at the
planning level is largely resolved.
7. Limited staff -- The staff necessary as a resuI t of sol vi ng the six above problems wi 11 clearly delineate what kinds of staff are needed and how many.
Computer practices have militated against instructional uses long enough. It is time that we alter
the practices which prevent instructional computer
uses. Teachers are behind in computer know-how and
use. It is time to catch up.
0

The dream of dramatically increased quality and
quantity of learning is just now beginning to materialize because of the computer and other forms of
automation. Academic uses of the computer actually
increase costs; so if we hope to improve learning
significantly. additional funding for computers, peripheral equipment. and personnel that wi 11 make thi s
improvement possible must be provided. Categorical
aid must become a reality -- general aid to the state
and to schools and institutions of higher education
is not good enough. Past experience with non-categorical aid has proved that most of this aid goes
into salaries. To achieve the optimum in computer
use and its resultant i~provementin learning, we
must ask for funds to be spent for this purpose as
well as for other automation facilities for learning
and teaching.
Remedy

Let's review here the six causes of technology's
lack of impact on education, and consider how the
suggested reforms would help to eliminate these causes.
1. Indifference or antipathy toward technology in
education -- This cause evaporates as responsibility
and authority move to the level of use. Having control of computer time and personnel, faculty groups
will do as they have always done -- they will use the
new force to improve learning.
2. Poor Programs -- As the suggested reforms are
put into practice over a period of time, the quantity
of programs available and the continued use by learners and teachers will refine the programs and develop
quality computer software.
18

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COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Deciphering an Unknown Computer Program l as Compared
With Deciphering of Ancient Writing

Edmund C. Berkeley, President
Berkeley Enterprises Inc.
815 Washington St.
Newtonville, Mass. 02160

"In working on the problem of deciphering a computer program, we can be helped by
comparing the deciphering of other systems of symbols, and noticing the principles used."

Outline

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

The Problem of Unknown Computer Programs
Documentation, an Old Problem
Analogies with Other Deciphering Problems
Deciphering the System of Ancient Writing,
Linear B
Arthur Evans
The Urge to Discover Secrets and the Flair for
Learning Languages
Astonishingly Rapid Thought and the Power of
Seeing Order in Apparent Confusion
The Existence and the Availability of Adequate
Material
The ·Conjectural Method, i.e. Guesswork
The Nature of the Language as Seen Through the
the Script
The Recognition of Variant Forms and the Distinction of Separate Signs
Orderly Analysis
Any Code in Theory Can Be Broken
Linear B, Basically a Syllabic System

Edmund C. Berkeley concentrated in mathematics
while attending Harvard College and graduated in
1930 with an A.B. summa' cum laude. He did actuarial work in the life insurance business 1930
to 1948 except for 3~ years on active duty in
the U.S. Navy 1941-45. He is a Fellow of the
Society of Actuaries; a founder of the Association for Computing Machinery; its first secretary, 1947-53; the author of 13 books on computers and related subjects; an invited lecturer
on computers in the United States, Canada, England, Japan, the Soviet Union, and Australia.
He implemented the programming language LIS'P for
the DEC PDP-9 computer. He has been editor of
"Computers and Automation" since 1951, and president of Berkeley Enterprises, Inc. since 1954.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

15. The Science of Cryptanalysis
16. A Definite Interpretation
17. Principles in Decipherment of Computer Programs,
Contrasted with Principles in Decipherment of
Ancient Wri ting
18. References
The subject of this article is the interesting
parallel between two problems:
- the documentation of an unknown computer program; and
- the decipherment of a system of unknown
anci en t wri ti ng .
Both these problems consist of finding and reporting
the meaning of a recipe, a procedure. A computer
program is a recipe or. procedure for making a cal.culation, for computing some desired information. A
piece of writing is a recipe or procedure for conveying a message.
When a computer program is adequately documented,
the programmer who reads the documentation kno~s
just what part of the program does what job. He
knows just how to change or mOdify or replace any
part of the program so that he can do something
else that he may wish to do.
When a system of ancient writing is adequately
documented, a human being who reads a script knows
what is being said; and he knows just how to use
the signs in some other sequence so that something
else can be said instead.
This report is based on research supported under
Contract NOOI4-C-70-0225 from the Office of Naval
Research, on computer-assisted documentation of Navy
computer programs.
19

The Problem of Unknown Computer Programs

In almost all computer installations, it is very
easy to be confronted with the problem of unknown
computer programs. Among other reasons are the
following:
1. No Programmer. The programmer who wrote the
computer program has left to work elsewhere
and is not available to answer questions.
2. No Recollection. The programmer who wrote
the program does not remember what he did,
because much time has gone by.
3. No Glossary. If mnemonic symbols are used in
the symbolic program which assembled gives
the working binary program, the meanings of
the mnemonic symbols have to be guessed,
for there exists no glossary of the mnemonics with their explanations. For example,
on one occasion it took me several weeks to
guess that the mnemonic PDL stood for "pushdown list"; and I still do not know what the
mnemonic ZORCH means.
4. No Recordi ng of What is "Obvi ous". The programmer who produced the computer program
did not write down "what everybody of course
knows because it's obvious" - so that when,
for example, peripheral equipment changes,
many undefined symbols are left as relics
in the program.
5. Accidental Incompleteness. The programmer
"forgot" to record some of the essential information. For example, on one occasion it
took me several hours of effort and two long
distance phone calls to discover that a carriage return had been omitted from the operating instructions at a certain point in the
operation of an interactive program.
Etc., etc., etc., as the King of Siam said.

For example, the understanding of the hieroglyphic
writing of ancient Egypt was lost for at least a
thousand years. Its successful deciphering began
with the finding of what is called the "Rosetta'
Stone". This was found near the port of Rosetta in
Egypt by a French army engineering officer in 1799.
This stone is a basalt stele inscribed in three languages and systems of writing: ancient Greek; Egyptian hieroglyphic; and Egyptian demotic, a simplified form of cursive Egyptian writing used for books,
deeds, etc. The Rosetta Stone expressed in three
parallel texts a decree by priests at Memphis in
regard to Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, around 190 B.C. The
demotic and Greek parts of the stone were quite complete; the hieroglyphic part was rather incomplete.
But the Rosetta Stone gave enough clues so that with
other information, the French scholar, J. F. Champollion, effectively began the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. He worked at this problem from 1802 (when he was aged 11) until his death
in 1832. In 1822, he had essenti ally "broken the
back" of the problem, and had establi shed the meaning and significance of about 14 of the hieroglyphic
characters denoting sounds.
A much harder problem was the deciphering of what
is called "Linear B", a system of ancient wri ting
used in the Island of Crete about 1450 B.C. by the
Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. Here there existed no "Rosetta Stone", no translatIon of the same
text into two or more scripts, one of which was
known

Deciphering the System of Ancient Writing:

Linear B

It is useful and instructive to study the account
of deciphering Linear B. We can examine the principles that were applied, and compare them with
those useful in deciphering and documenting an unknown working binary program for a computer.

Documentation, an Old Problem

Documentation is an old, old problem. Whenever
a person A has written something without deliberate
intention to conceal, and later on other persons
have read it and tried to understand what A meant
when A wrote it, the problem of deciphering what A
meant has arisen. For example, in Shakespeare's
play (published 1603) Hamlet says:
Who would fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear the ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
But we who live more than 300 years later, need to
be told by the documenter that "fardels" means "burdens", and "bourn" means "boundary" (though in another of Shakespeare's plays it means "brook").
Analogies With Other Deciphering Problems

In working on the problem of deciphering a computer program, we can be helped by comparing the deciphering of other systems of symbols, and noticing
the principles used.
There are basically two cases. Case 1 is where
the writer has attempted to conceal his message, as
in all systems of ordinary cryptographic writing.
Case 2 is where the writer has made no attempt to
conceal his message, as in a system of ancient writing to which the key has been lost. Our situation
resembles Case 2.
20

A book that is interesting and important, and
that sheds much light on thi s deci pherment is "The
Deci pherment of Li near B", by John Chadwi ck, a
scholar of the University of Cambridge, England,
second edition, published by Oxford University
Press, 1967~ softbound, 164 pages.
In this article, we shall select from that book
a number of passages that shed light on problems and
principles. For frequently when a group of scientists work on a difficult and complicated problem,
and afterwards describe what they did and how they
achieved success, they succeed in noticing and expressing principles that are much more widely applicable than in just the field of the problem they
are working on. A good investigator generalizes
from his experience in solving a problem; and many
of his generalizations are useful to those who come
after him.
In the case of Linear B, there existed somewhat
over 3000 clay tablets that had been found in archeological excavations at the ruins of a palace at
Knossos in Crete (and from a few other locations).
This palace had been built of timber and bricks,
stood for many years, and burned about 1400 B.C.,
thus firing the sun-dried clay tablets which otherwise would not have survived even one thorough
wetting.
The language was unknown. The script was unknown. The message was unknown.
The problem of decipherment was worked on by several dozen investigators from about 1890 to about
1960. The person who contributed the most to the
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

decipherment was an Englishman named Michael Ventris, an architect and brilliant schol~r who was
unfortunately killed outright in an automobile accident in Sept. 1956 at the age of 34. John Chadwick was his friend and collaborator, and the author
of the book above mentioned.
Arthur Evans

The first English investigator of the tablets
from Crete was Arthur Evans, who was the first
archeologist who excavated at Knossos in Crete. He
wrote in 1901 (Beginning of quotation):
From the frequency of ciphers on these tablets
it is evident that a great number of them refer to
accounts relating to the royal stores and arsenal.
The general purport of the tablet, moreover, is in
many cases supplied by the introduction of one or
more pictorial figures. Thus on a series of tablets,
from the room called after them the Room of the
Chariot Tablets, occur designs of a typical Mycenaean chariot, a horse's head, and what seems to be
a cuirass .•• Among other subjects thus represented
were human figures, perhaps slaves, houses or barns,
swine, ears of corn, various kinds of trees, saffron flowers, and vessels of clay of various
shapes ... Besides these were other vases of metallic forms -- implements such as spades, singleedged axes, and many indeterminate objects ...
In the present incomplete state of the material
it is undesirable ,to go beyond a very general statement of the comparison attainable. Among the linear
characters or letters in common use -- about 70 in
number -- 10 are practically identical with signs
belonging to the Cypriote syllabary and about the
same number show affinities to later Greek letterforms .•. The words on the tablets are at times divided by upright lines, and from the average number
of letters included between, it is probable that
the signs have a syllabic value. The inscriptions
are invariably written from left to right .•.. (End
of quotation)
Linear B eventually turned out to be the result
of adapting the Minoan script to the writing of an
early form of Greek -- though this was not guessed
prior to the discovery and proof. In fact, the hypothesis that the script expressed an early form of
the Greek language was among the experts extremely
unfashionable, "ridiculous", and heretical, for
half a century.
The Urge to Discover Secrets,
and the Flair for Learning Languages

(Quoted, p.l)
The urge to discover secrets is deeply ingrained
in human nature; even the least curious mind is
roused by the promise of sharing knowledge withheld
from others. Some are fortunate enough to find a
job which consists in the solution of mysteries,
whether it is the physicist who tracks down a hitherto unknown nuclear particle or the policeman who
detects a criminal. But most of us are driven to
sublimate this urge by the solving of artificial
puzzles devised for our entertainment. Detective
stories or crossword puzzles cater for the majority;
the solution of secret codes may be the hobby of a
few. This [book] is the story of the solving of a
genuine mystery which had baffled experts for half
a century.

anniversary of the British School of Archaeology at
Athens. They heard a lecture by the grand old man
of Greek archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans; he told them
of hjs discovery of a long forgotten civilization in
the Greek island of Crete, and of the mysterious
wri~ing used by this fabulous people of pre-history.
In that hour a seed was planted that was dramaticclly to bear fruit sixteen years later; for this
boy was already keenly interested in ancient scripts
and languages. At the age of seven he had bought
and studied a German book on the Egyptian hieroglyphs. He vowed then and there to take up the
challenge of the undeciphered Cretan writing; he
began to read the books on it; he even started a
correspondence with the experts. ,And in the fullness of time he succeeded where they had failed.
His name was Michael Ventris . . . .
. As this book is largely the story of his achievement, it will not be out of place to begin with a
short account of his life. He was born on 12 July
1922 .•. His schooling ... was unconventional; he
went to school at Gstaad in Switzerland, where he
was taught in French and German. Not content with
this, he quickly mastered the local Swiss-German
dialect -- an accomplishment that later on endeared
him at once to the Swiss scholars whom he met -and even taught himself Polish when he was six. He
never outgrew this love of languages; a few weeks
in Sweden after the war were enough for him to become 'profi cient in Swedi sh and get a temporary job
on the strength of it. Later he corresponded with
Swedish scholars in their own language. He had not
only a remarkable visual memory, but, what is rarely
combined with it, the ability to learn a language by
ear.
Astonishingly Rapid Thought, and the Power of
Seeing Order in Apparent Confusion

(Quoted, p. 4)
If we ask what were the special qualities that
made possible his achievement, we can point to his
capacity for infinite pains, his powers of concentration, his meticulous accuracy, his beautiful
draughtsmanship. All these were necessary; but
there was much more that is hard to define. His
brain worked with astonishing rapidity, so that he
could think out all the implications of a suggestion almost before it was out of your mouth. He
had a keen appreciation of the realities of a situation; the Mycenaeans were to him no vague abstrac~
tions, but living people whose thoughts he could
penetrate. He himself laid stress on the visual approach to the problem; he made himself so familiar
with the visual aspect of the texts that large sections were imprinted on his mind simply as visual
patterns, long before the decipherment gave them
meaning. But a merely photographic memory was not
enough, and it was here that his architectural
training came to his aid. The architect's eye sees
in a 'building not a mere facade, a jumble of ornamental and structural features; it looks beneath the
appearance and distinguishes the significant parts
of the pattern, the structural elements and framework of the building. So too Ventris was able to
discern among the bewildering variety of the mysterious signs, patterns and regularities which betrayed the underlying structure. It is this quality, the power of seeing order in apparent confusion, that has marked the work of all great men.
The Existence and the Availability
of Adequate Material

(Quoted, p. 26)
In 1936 a fourteen-year-old schoolboy was among
a party who visited Burlington House in London to
see an exhibition"organized to mark the fiftieth
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

The success of any decipherment depends upon the
existence and availability of adequate materIal.
21

How much is needed depends upon the nature of the
problem to be solved, the character of the material,
and so forth. Thus a short 'bilingual' inscription,
giving the same textJin two languages, may be used
as a crib, and may supply enough clues to enable the
rest of the material to be interpreted. Where, as
in this case, no bilingual text exists, a far larger
amount of text is required. Moreover, restrictions
may be imposed by the type of test available; for
instance, the thousands of Etruscan funerary Inscriptions known have permitted us to gain only a
very limited knowledge of the language, since the
same phrases are repeated over and over again.
There are two methods by which one can proceed.
One is by a methodical analysis, and this approach
will form the subject of the next chapter; the other
is by more or less pure guesswork. Intelligent
guessing must of course play some part in the first
case; but there is a world of difference between a
decipherment founded upon a careful internal analysis and one obtained by trial and error. Even this
may produce the correct result; but it needs to be
confirmed by application to virgin material, since
it can gain no probability from its origin. A cool
judgement is also needed to discriminate between
what a text is likely or unlikely to contain. This
faculty was notably lacking among those who risked
their reputations on the conjectural method.

The Conjectural Method, i.e. Guesswork

(Quoted, p. 26)
Evans and the more cautious of his followers had
observed that with few apparent exceptions all the
documents were lists or accounts. The reasons for
this will be discussed later on. But this did not
prevent some amateurs from venturing upon interpretations of their own. In most cases these would-be
decipherers began by guessing the lan~uage of the
inscriptions -- most of them treated LLinear] A and
[Linear] B and even the Phaistos Disk as all specimens of the same language. Some chose Greek, though
the Greek which they obtained would not stand philological examination. Others chose a language with
obscure affinities or one imperfectly known: Basque
and Etruscan were proposed as candidates. Others
again invented languages of their own for the purpose, a method which had the advantage that no one
could prove them wrong. One attempt, by the Bulgarian Professor V. Georgiev, presented an ingenious
melange of linguistic elements, which resembled
Greek when it suited his purpose and any other language when it did not. Almost all decipherers made
resemblances with the Cypriot script their startingpoint.
(Quoted, p. 31):
The Bulgarian V. Georgiev summed up a series of
earlier publications in a book entitled (in Russian)
Problems of the Minoan Language published in Sofia
in 1953. He dealt somewhat scornfully with his
critics, but recognized that his theory would take
a long time to perfect and could not convince everyone at once. The Minoan language was, he believed,
a dialect of a wide-spread pre-Hellenic language
spoken in Greece before the coming of the Greeks
and possibly related to Hittite and other early
Anatolian languages. This theory, which in one
form or another has enj oyed considerable populari ty,
undoubtedly contains an element of truth, though we
are still unable to say how much. One thing that
is certain is that most Greek place-names are not
composed of Greek words: There are a few that are,
22

like Thermopulai "Hot-gates"; but a good number,
like Athenai (Athens), Mukenai (Mycenae), Korinthos,
Zakunthos, Halikarnassos, Lukabettos, are not only
devoid of meaning, but belong to groups with a restricted range of endings; just as Engl~sh names
can be recognized by endings like -bridge, -ton,
-ford. The preservation of place-names belonging
to an older language is a common phenomenon: in
England many Celtic names survive, such as the
various rivers called Avon (Welsh afon 'river'),
though Celtic has not been spoken in their neighbourhood for more than a thousand years. The attempt has therefore been made to establish the
pre-Hellenic language of Greece through the medium
of these place-names; but although the fact of its
existence is clear, its nature is still very much
disputed.
The Nature of the Language as Seen
through the Barrier of the Script

(Quoted, p. 35)
The most valuable contribution came a little
later (1943-50), from the American Dr. Alice E.
Kober. She died at the early age of forty-three in
1950, just too soon to witness and take part in the
decipherment for which she had done so much to prepare the way.
She was the first to set out methodically to
discover the nature of the language through the
barrier of the script. The questions she asked
were simple ones. Was it an inflected language,
using different endings to express grammatical
forms? Was there a consistent means of denoting a
plural? Did it distinguish genders?
Her solutions were partial, but none the less a
real step forward. She was able to demonstrate, for
instance, that the totalling formula, clearly shown
by summations on a number of tablets, had two forms:
one was used for men and for one class of animals;
the other for women, another class of animals, and
also for swords and the like. This was not only
clear evidence of a distinction of.gender; it also
led to the identification of the means by which the
sex of animals is represented (that is, by adding
marks to the appropriate ideograms).
Even more remarkable was her demonstration that
certain words had two variant forms, which were
longer than the simple form by one sign. These are
now commonly, and irreverently, known as "Kober's
triplets". She interpreted them as further evidence
of inflexion; but they were destined to play an even
more important role in the final decipherment.
I do not think there can be any doubt that Miss
Kober would have taken a leading part in events of
later years, had she been spared; she alone of the
earlier investigators was pursuing the track which
led Ventris ul timately to the solution of the problem.
The Recognition of Variant Forms and
the Distinction of Separate Signs

(Quoted, p. 38)
E. L. Bennett, Jr., working on new material, proceeded with sound sense and caution. 0 . ' His outstanding contribution is the establishment of the
signary: the recognition of variant forms and the
distinction of separate signso How difficult the
task is only those who have tried can tell. It is
easy enough for us to recognize the same letter in
our alphabet as written by half a dozen different
people, despite the use of variant forms. But if
you do not know what is the possible range of letters, nor the sound of the words they spell, it is
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

impossible to be sure if some of the rare ones are
separate letters or mere variants. This is still
the position with regard to Linear B. The characters no. 18 and 19 (see the table at tne end of
this book) occur only a few times; are they variants
of no. 17 or not? It is to Bennett's credit that
few such problems remain; diligent comparison enabled him to set up a table of variants which made
it clear in the case of all but the rarest signs
what was its possible range of variation. By con~
trast, it is one of the weaknesses of Scripta Minoa
1! that different signs are sometimes confused, and
variants of the same are treated as distinct.
Orderly Analysis

(Quoted, p. 39)
With the publication of The Pylos Tablets in 1951
the scene was set for the decipherment. Orderly
analysis, begun by Miss Kober and Bennett, could now
take the place of speculation and guesswork; but it
requi red clear judgment to percei ve the right methods,
concentration to plod through the laborious analysis,
perseverance to carryon despite meagre gains, and
finally the spark of genius to grasp the right solution when at last it emerged from the painstaking
manipulation of meaningless signs •••.
(Quoted, p. 40):

•

There is an obvious resemblance between an unreadable script and a secret code; similar methods
can be employed to break both. But the differences
must not be overlooked. The code is deliberately
designed to baffle the investigator; the script is
only puzzling by accident. The language underlying
the coded text is ordinarily known; in the case of
a script there are three separate possibili ties. The
language may be known or partially known, but wri tten
in an unknown script; this, for instance, was the
case with the decipherment of the Old Persian inscriptions by the German scholar Grotefend in 1802;
the cuneiform signs were then quite unknown, but the
language, as revealed by recogni tion of proper' names,
turned out to be largely intelligible through the
medium of the Avestan texts. Secondly, the script
may be known, the language unknown. This is the
case of Etruscan, which is written in a modified
form of the Greek alphabet that presents little
difficulty to the understanding of its sounds; but
no language has yet been found sufficiently closely
related. to throw any light on the meaning of the
words. Thus in spite of a large collection of inscriptions our knowledge of Etruscan is still very
elementary and uncertain. Lastly, we have the situation which confronted the decipherers of the Minoan
script [Linear B], an unknown script and an unknown
language. The fact that the language subsequently
proved to be known in irrelevant; that fact could
not be used in the first stages of the decipherment .
(Quoted, p. 41):

is now generally known that any code can in theory
be broken, provided sufficient examples of coded
texts are available; the only method by which to
achieve complete security is to ensure continuous
change in the coding system, or to make the code so
complicated that the amount of material necessary
to break it can never be obtained. The detailed
procedures are irrelevant, but the basic principle
is the analysis and indexing of coded texts sothat
underlying patterns and regularities can be discovered. If a number of instances can be collected,
it may appear that a certain group of signs in the
coded text has a particular function; it may, for
example, serve as a conjunction. A knowledge of
the circumstances in which a message was sent may
lead to other identifications, and from these tenuous gains further progress becomes possible, until
the meaning of most of the coded words is known.
The application of this method to unknown languages is obvious; such methods enable the decipherer to determine the meaning of sign-groups without
knowing how to pronounce the signs. Indeed it is
possible to imagine a case where texts in an unknown language might be understood without finding
the phonetic value of a single sign.
The fi rst step is of course to determi ne the type
of system employed and, in the case of Linear B,
this is not so difficult as it seems at first sight.
There are only three basic ways of committing language to writing, and all known graphic systems use
one or a combination of these.
The simplest method is to draw a picture to represent a word; these pictograms are then often simplified until they become unrecognizable, but the
principle remains that one sign represents one word.
This is called "ideographic" writing, and it has
been carried to the high-est stage of development by
the Chinese, who still write in this way, although
the Communist government is now trying to introduce
reforms. For instance: ... is "man"; ... is "woman"; non-pictorial concepts have of course to be
expressed by oblique means.: thus ..• is "big" it is a picture of the fisherman telling you how
big the one was that got away!; or ... "eye" (much
modified) is equipped with a pair of legs ... to
mean "see".
The significant fact about ideographic systems
is that they require an enormous number of signs to
cope with even a simple vocabulary. Every literate
Chinese has to be able to read and write several
thousand different signs, and the large dictionaries
list as many as 50,000. Even in English we still
use ideograms' on a restri cted scale. The numeral s
are the most conspicuous example: 5 is not a sign
for the word "five", but for the concept of five;
and one can often see abbreviations like Charing X
for "Charing Cross".
Linear B Basically a Syllabic System

In the last case decipherments have usually been
judged to be possible only when they could start
from a bilingual text. The Egyptian hieroglyphs
began to yield their secret only when the discovery
of the Rosetta stone, with the Egyptian text repeated in Greek, made it possible to equate the
royal names in the two versions. No such document
exists for Minoan; but it was useless to sit back
and wait for one to appear.
Any Code can in Theory be Broken

(Quoted p. 41)
Cryptography [cryptanalysis] has contributed a
new weapon to the student of unknown scripts. It
COMP'UTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

(Quoted, p. 43)
Equipped with this knowledge we can turn to our
Linear B texts. These consist of groups of signs
separated by small vertical bars; the length of the
groups varies from two to eight signs. Accompanying these in many cases are other signs which stand
alone followed by a numeral; many of these are recognizable pictograms. It is easy to guess that
single signs standing alone are probably ideographic, that is, representing a whole word; those used
in groups are likely to be either syllabic or alphabetic. A count of these signs shows that they
number about eighty-nine - the exact total is still
disputed, because some are very rare, and it is not
23

yet clear whether certain forms are separate signs
or variants of others.

proof of the break, remain for a while isolated;
only gradually does the picture become filled out.

But the number is significant; it is far too
small for a wholly ideographic system, and it is
too large for an alphabet. It must therefore be
syllabic, and a fairly simple form of syllabary like
Cypriot or Japanese, not the more complicated systems of the cuneiform script. This elementary deduction was neglected by many of the would-be
decipherers.

In June 1952 Ventris fel t that the Linear B script
had broken. Admittedly the tentative Greek words
suggested in Work Note 20 were too few to carry conviction; in particular they implied an unlikely set
of spelling conventions. But as he transcribed
more and more texts, so the Greek words began to
emerge in greater numbers; new signs could now be
identified by recognizing a word in which one sign
only was a blank, and this value could then be
tested elsewhere. The spelling rules received confirmation, and the pattern of the decipherment became clear.

(Quoted, p. 46):
Thus in many cases it was possible to deduce the
general subject-matter of the tablets before a
single syllable could be read; almost without exception it was clear that they were lists, inventories. or catalogues. For instance, a list of
single sign-groups ("words"), each followed by the
ideogram ~~N and the numeral I, was clearly a list
of men's names, a muster roll or the like. If the
names were followed by WOMAN I, then they sometimes
had added small numbers of children, the word for
which had been pointed out by Cowley. On the other
hand, where a word was followed by ~~N and a number
larger than one, and this collocation was repeated
on a number of different tablets, the word was
likely to be a descriptive title or occupational
term, like "cow-herds", "tailors" or "men of Phaistos". A similar series of words could be deduced
[or women. If a word is regularly associated with
a particular ideogram, it is likely to be the name
of the obj ec t denoted by tha t ideogram; bu t if there
are several varying words associated with the same
ideogram, then they may be epithets denoting the
various types.
(Quoted, p. 46):
Thi s method of deducti on, si nce it depends chi efly
on studying the same words in different combinations, is often called "combinatory". Its usefulness is not exhausted at thIs stage, but it does
even at the outset lead to some valuable conclusions about the meaning or sort of meaning possessed
by certain words. At a later stage these can also
act as a check on the correctness of a decipherment,
because they are completely independent of the syllabic values. If a word so identified as an occupational term turns out, when transcribed phonetically,
to mean "cow-herds", this confirms the interpretation. On the other hand, interpretations which do
not agree with this preliminary classification are
at once suspect, due allowance being made for errors.
The Science of Cryptanalysis

(Quoted, p. 67)
Cryptography [= cryptanalysis] is a science of
deduction and controlled experiment; hypotheses are
formed, tested, and often discarded. But the residue which passes the test grows and grows until finally there comes a point when the experimenter
feels solid ground beneath his feet: his hypotheses
cohere, and fragments of sense emerge from their
camouflage. The code "breaks". Perhaps this is
best defined as the point when the likely leads appear faster than they can be followed up. It is
like the initiation of
chain-reaction in atomic
physics; once the critical threshold is passed, the
reaction propagates itself.

Only in the simplest experiments or codes does
it complete itself with explosive violence. In the
more difficult cases there is much work still to be
done, and the small areas of sense, though sure
24

(Quoted, p. 71):
Secondly, the mere fact of being able to translate the tablet ["At Pylos: slaves of the priestess
on account of sacred gold: 14 women"] does not
automatically answer all the questions. Why were
these women slaves of the priestess? Which priestess? What was the sacred gold? What was the state
of affairs or the transaction that this tablet was
meant to record?
All these are questions which we cannot answer;
the facts were known to the writer of the tablet,
and he did not expect it to be read by anyone who
did not have the same knowledge; just as many of us
make jottings in our diaries which convey a clear
message to us, but would be meani ngless to a stranger
ignorant of the circumstancei in which they were
written.
This problem is still with us, and will always
remain; we cannot know all the facts and events of
which the tablets are an only partial record. We
have to examine them as minutely as we can, to compare them with similar documents elsewhere, to check
them against the archaeological evidence. Imagination may help to fill in the gaps, and in Chapter 7
I shall attempt to look beyond the texts at life in
the Mycenaean world; but it is no good pretending
we know more than we do.
A Definitive Interpretation

(Quoted, p. 84)
[Professor M. S. Ruiperez wrote:] Although it may
be susceptible of further refinements and corrections the interpretation .•. (which comes to crown
many years of tenacious effort by the young English
architect Mr. Michael Ventris) unites -- let us say
it at once -- all the guarantees which can be demanded (reading of whole phrases with meaning suited
to that expected from the ideograms, reading of
known place and personal names, perfect coherence
in orthography and grammar) and must in consequence
be regarded as definitive.
(Quoted, p. 85):
For this [changing Dr. Platon's mind] I canclaim
a small share of credit. In the spring of 1955 I
was able to spend a week in Crete working on the
Knossos tablets. In the course of conversation, Dr.
N. Platon [the director of the Iraklion Museum] told
me that since Bennett left the year before, he had
found in the museum storerooms some trays containing fragments of tablets; they had been exposed to
the weather when the museum was damaged during the
war, and he thought they would be useless. They
were certainly in a poor way; some had crumbled to
dust or disintegrated at a touch. But I was able
to salvage a large number of pieces that were reaCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Table 1

sonably hard. Time prevented me from making a
proper job of it, and it was left fDr Ventris to
finish later in the year.

COMPARISON OF THE IMPORTANCE OF FACTORS

•

But I had one great stroke of luck. I found a
largish piece which was the left-hand end of a twoline tablet; the break showed plainly half of a
horse's head - the ideographic sign for "horse".
Now horses appear in the Knossos tablets only in
the records of the chariot force, which have a
quite different form, and in an isolated tablet
showing horses and foals -- a famous tablet on
which Evans had identified, and discarded, the word
for."foal". The left-hand edge of this was missing;
was this the piece? I cleaned it hurriedly and carried it downstairs to the glass case where the tablet was on exhibition. I laid it on the glass; it
looked a good fit. Platon came and opened the case,
and the join was sure. A happy discovery; but there
was something on this fragment which shook Platon's
scepticism, for we now had the introductory words
for each Ii ne, and they read: i -go "horses" and
o-no "asses". Again Blegen's question could be
asked: is coincidence excluded? What are the
chances that two series of equine heads will be inttoduced by words exactly corresponding to the Greek
for horses and asses? Such probabilities are beyond mathematical analysis; we can only have recourse to the guidance of common sense. Again difficulties have been raised by our critics: why are
the asses not more markedly distinguished from the
horses in the drawings? Perhaps the simple answer
is that the scribe having written the appropriate
words did not feel it worth the effort. It is also
probable that there was a standard ideographic sign
for "horse", but none for "ass"; what could be more
natural then to employ the same sign but with the
phonetic indication to show the difference? (End
of Quotations)
These many quotations from "The Decipherment of
Linear B" are however not a good substitute for the
book. The book is very interesting, a fascinating
detective story from real life, excellently written,
inspiring in its reporting on Michael Ventris, and
is highly recommended. PLEASE GET IT AND READ IT!
Principles in Decipherment of Computer Programs,
Contrasted with Principles in
Decipherment of Ancient Writing

A number of factors have been described or mentioned in the foregoing account of the decipherment
of Linear B. In Table 1 we present a list of many
of these factors, and briefly contrast their importance in the decipherment of ancient writing and of
computer programs.

One of the interesting questions is "What are the
kinds of characters that a computer program contains?
Are they ideographic, syllabic, or alphabetic?"
They are not alphabeti c (even though the symboli c
form of machine language is written with letters,
digits, and other symbols) because these letters
and symbols (or meaningful sound units) do not express the phonemes of a spoken language that expresses computer programs.
They are not syllabic, because the characters of
a computer program do not express the syllables of
a spoken language that expresses computer programs.
The characters of a computer program are ideographic. They are ideograms under conditions where
the ideograms have to be combinations of letters
and other symbols on the typewriter. Theideographic
signs of a computer program (spelled in letters,
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

(3)
Decipherment of:
Ancient
Computer
Writing
Programs

Needed

2. The flair for learning languages

Needed

Probably not
needed

3. Astoni shingly rapid
thinking processes

Needed

Can largely be
delegated to
the computer

1. The urge todiscover

secrets

4. The power to see or- Greatly
der in apparent confu- needed
sion, to see structural regularities
underneath a facade

Greatly
needed

5. The existence of
~dequate material

Needed

More material
can be manufactured

6. The availabili ty of
adequate material

Needed

More material
can be produced

7. Intelligent guesswork (the "probable
words")

Some is
needed

8. The power to recognize the nature of
the language as seen
through the barrier
of the script

Much is
needed

9. The recognition of
variant forms of the
same sign

Result of
hard work

No problem
at all

10. The dis tingui shing
of-separate signs

Result of
hard work

Usually no
problem at all

11. Orderly, methodical analysis

Much is
needed

Much is needed,
and the computer can take
on the heavy
load

12. Ideographic charac ters

Entirely ideoPossibili ty:
many thousands graphic
of different
characters

13. Syllabic charac ters

None
Possibility:
about 70 to 150
different
characters

14. Alphabetic charac ters

None
Possibility:
about 15 to 45
different
characters

15. The power to discriminate between
what a text is likely
or unlikely to contain

Much is
needed

Only a small
problem because of the
operating
instructions
25

digits, etc.) are an outgrowth of the ideographic
signs of mathematics. They are spelled in common
symbols and mixtures of them, in the same way as
ideograms in, say, trigonometry are spelled, such
as SIN, COS, TAN, COT, SEC, and CSC. The reason
was that mathematicians could not think up satisfactory arbi trary signs like ".;- (for" square root"
or "root") and 00 (for "infinity"), to designate
all that they wanted to talk about.
Unfortunately, in present years, the ideographic
signs of a computer program are limited in usage to
one or a few persons, the programmers of that particular program. Consequently, the evolutionary
processes of language cannot work on them well; and
consequently, there are very many different systems
of ideograms, usually differing from each program
to the next; and so it is very difficult to keep
them all in mind.

PROBLEM CORNER
Walter Penney, cOP
Problem Editor
Computers and Automation
PROBLEM 725: STUCK-UP STICK-ONS

"Someone gummed things up this time," said Joe in a
tone of exasperation, "and I mean that literally."
"How come?" asked Pete.
"Someone made up the instructions for this flowchart
by typing them on those stick-ons. I think some of the
instructions got stuck on the wrong boxes." Joe pointed
to the chart on his desk.

However, because of the power of the computer,
once a good ideographic system for expressing the
underlying language of working binary computer programs is developed, the computer should be usable
to produce the translation of each binary program
into the good ideographic system.
In the determi nati on of "what a text is li kely
to contai n", a computer program is agai n a much more
favorable case than ancient writing. The operating
instructions imply what the program does. For example, if you can operate a program so that it will
read tape, then the program must contain some instructions that will read tape. Etc.

In applying "orderly methodical analysis" and
"intelligent guesswork", the power of the computer
is available to implement guesses, test them rapidly, and examine and analyze the results rapidly.
Probably the most important difference between
the decipherment of ancient scripts and the decipherment of working computer programs is "the existence and availability of adequate material", to work
with in decipherment. In deciphering ancient writing, we are at the mercy of luck. Nothing we can
do easily and certainly can increase the amount of
material. Digging in likely archeological sites may
increase the material, but that is far from certain.
In deciphering a working computer program, however, we can operate it, on example after example,
on exercise after exercise, and thus increase the
amount of material available for decipherment as
much as we wish.
This is such an enormous advantage that we can
confidently assert that the deciphering and the
documentation of a working computer program should
in all cases be possible. So the problem reduces
to deciphering it as efficiently as possible.
References

"What makes you think some of the instructions got
stuck on the wrong boxes?"
"Well, this is supposed to be' a flowchart to compute e.
I've tried to go through the steps, but all I get is zero divided by zero."
What is wrong?

1. Chadiwick, John / The Decipherment of Linear B:
Second Edition / Cambridge University Press, .
32 East 57 St., New York, N.Y. 10022 / second
edition, 1967, softbound, 164 pp
2. Berkeley, Edmund C. / Computer-Assisted Documentation of Computer Programs, Vol. 1 / Information International Inc., Boston, Mass. (available from Berkeley Enterprises Inc., 815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. 02160) / 1969,
softbound, 128 pp.
3. Berkeley, Edmund C. / Computer-Assisted Documentation of Computer Programs, Vol. 2 / Berkeley
Enterprises Inc., 815 Washington St., Newton~
ville, Mass. 02160 / 1971, softbound, 112 pp

Solution to Problem 724: Chafing at the Bit

The equivalents selected for 0 to 7 could be respectively:
0, 1 0, 1 0, 0 1 1, 1 1 1, 11 0, 11 0 1 0, and
11 0 1 1. This will lead to an average of 2.6 bits per experiment yet will allow a stream to be separated into indiVidual vaJues without ambiguity.

Readers are invited to submit problems (and their
solutions) for publication in this column to: Problem
Editor, Computers and Automation, 815 Washington St.,
Newtonville, Mass. 02160.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

•

1.·.··J.·.·. :. 1J

Start with ACM 72.

Walter Carlson is President of ACM
through this May. In a long career in
the information business he's formed
some pretty savvy conclusions on
what it takes to bring fresh thinking
into organizations.
"We're going through a tough period,"
says Walter. "Every company I know
is running lean and hard-looking for
ideas to build on and expecting more
from its computer people. The best
way I can think of to get new ideas
and sharpen skills is to attend-or
send people to- an ACM technical
conference, where people exchange
ideas face-to-face.

"ACM 72 will be held August 14-16 in
Boston. John Donovan has built a
superb technical program. We'll have
tutorial sessions to bring anyone upto-speed who doesn't feel comfortable
with a specialized topic. Plus debates,
mini-tutorials, workshops, joint
sessions and a number of other
innovations that bring people together
on the nitty-gritty of this business.
"This will be the Silver Anniversary
Conference for ACM. In addition to
our program on current technologies,
we'll have the people who formed
ACM 25 years ago talking about the
ideas that created our industry. Some

Association for Computing Machinery
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10036
I would like to consider ACM and
ACM 72. Please send more information.

If you're an ACM member, plan to be
at ACM 72. If you're not a member,
jOin us there and convert part of your
admission fee to annual dues. If
you're a data processing executive
who's looking for new ideas, send
some of your people and encourage
them to join ACM.
Send in the coupon for more
information today!

ac
Association
for Computing
Machinery

Name
Position
Address

City

of the original concepts discarded
long ago are coming back now.
Microprogramming, for example. It
should be a great conference."

State

Zip

C·a

FORUM
MISSING ISSUES OF
"COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION"
1. From Stanley Jaffin
211'North Piedmont St.
Arlington, Va. 22203

Thank you for sending me one more copy of the
February 1972 issue to replace the one that I as a
subscriber never received.
During the last five weeks, a copy of the February issue of C&A, in a special envelope, was delivered. The other copy mentioned in your letter will
be returned as per your request. The regular copy,
sent under your normal mailing label, normally delivered before the end of the second week of its
respective month, has never surfaced.
Perhaps a note of explanation is in order.
The past year has seen the customer-directed service of many of the well-known publications in the
fields of management, information technology, etc.,
drop off into oblivion. Included in this definition
are those who do not acknowledge renewals, do not
make an attempt to resend missing issues, and those
that bill for phantom subscriptions. Their names
would read like a Who's Who of the professional literature field. Oddly enough, the pages of their
publications are full of exhortations to the readership to act like "professionals" in the management
of their computer systems, and to be ever mindful of
what possible bugs are doing to the customers.
Apparently, their staffs cannot comprehend their own
articles. I can see C&A isn't one of them. I regret any inconvenience-ihis matter has caused. Unfortunately, missing issues, subscriptions, etc.,
are a very sore issue for me.
In the past four years C&A has taken many steps
for the better. It is refreshing to find a publication no~ beating the same horses to death every
month.
Of course, no one can match C&A's breadth of coverage of events outside the normally accepted areas
of information technology. Other publications feel
safe attacking only IBM, bureaucracy, and other conventional ogres.
There is a certain amount of courage in taking a
sLand that loses subscribers. Few magazines have
that courage.

2. From the Editor

Starting in October and November we found a
steady stream of complaints from our subscribers in
our incoming mail: two and three letters written
with no response; failure on our part to understand
some detail of payment; rebilling on subscriptions
renewed a month before and earlier still; etc.

We promptly discontinued with that computerized
fulfilment service and changed to another one, which
had a much larger staff of personnel to deal with
subscribers' requests and needs. The change became
effective with January and February. We hope very
much that grounds for complaints will be far less.
The second fulfilment service and we agreed that
irrespective of any information in the files, if
there seemed to be a reasonable chance that the subscriber was right, we would immediately send any
missing issues, and immediately reply, and we would
unravel the records later.

We appreciate your nice remarks about the courage
of C&A.
We happen to believe that professionals in the
field of information engineering should be professional -- and acknowledge their responsibility for
the pursuit of truth -- truth in input, truth in
output, and truth in processing information.
We also believe that the issue of reliable information is becoming so important for humanity that it
affects the survival of humanity on our spaceship
Earth.

Unsettling, Disturbing, Critical
computers and Automation, established 1951 and
therefore the oldest magazine in the field of computers and data processing, believes that the profession of information engineer includes not only
competence in handling information using computers
and other means, but also a broad responsibility,
in a professional and engineering sense, for:
The reliability and social significance of
pertinent input data;
The social value and truth of the output
results.
In the same way, a bridge engineer takes a professional responsibility for the reliability and
significance of the data he uses, and the safety
and efficiency of the bridge he builds, for human
beings to risk their lives on.
Accordingly, Computers and Automation publishes
from time to time articles and other information
related to socially useful input and output of data
systems in a broad sense. To this end we seek to
publish what is unsettling, disturbing, critical
-- but productive of thought and an improved and
safer "house" for all humanity, an earth in which
our children ~nd later generations may have a future, instead of facing extinction.
The professional information engineer needs to
relate his engineering to the most important and
most serious problems in the world tOday: war,
nuclear weapons, pollution, the population explosion, and many more.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

ODE IN CELEBRATION OF RFPs
Michael Lipp
Bogota, N.J.

To the Editor:
There I was with the 500th "request for proposal"
in front of me, having to prepare my 500th response.
But poetry emerged ahead of proposal:
We Are Pleased
At such time as several vendors
have been selected -Per our conversation -we are looking forward
to looking forward
to looking forward.
We are using the supported monitor.
We envision making changes.
Our application is acquisition,
and we are looking forward.
Attached is our attachment.
It is specifically preliminary
The specifications are also preliminary,
specifically preliminary,
and general, too.
So we are looking forward.
If it did crash, recovery may not be tolerable,
so we are looking forward.
Our evaluation will include
specifications in general and, specifically,
redundancy.
Our primary reason for this venture
is collection -- to any great degree.
Consequently we require
response,
extremely short and fast response.
This phase is considered minor.
In the interim we generally develop
a preliminary feel for scope.
In the interim please respond.
In the interim the magnitude
of our application is acquisition.
And we are looking forward.

We are pleased and thank you,
Thank you for this opportunity,
Thank you for your response,
And we'll be looking forward
to hearing from you,
to your response,
from our response.
And in the future.
And we are pleased
to thank you
for looking forward
to our response.

On The Legal Side:
COMPANY NAME SELECTION
Milton R. Wessel, Attorney
New York, N. Y.

I recall sitting with a client in an underwriter's
office four years ago, and being told that the underwriter could market 100,000 shares at $5 a share of
!QY company -- no matter how speculative and whatever
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

the earnings, net worth or what-have-you -- provided
the company's name at least remotely suggested the
computer business. No wonder the directories of EDP
organizations are so filled with companies whose
trade names contain the prefix "Compu-" and the word
"Data" .
But times have changed. The financial world no
longer responds automatically and enthusiastically to
an EDP name, finally acknowledging that true economic
value must be predicated on the fundamentals of product, earnings, sales, growth, market, liquidity and
the like. Selection of EDP company names and product
trademarks -- if ever justified on any other basis -should now certainly be predicated solely upon marketing essentials, of which the most important will
always be distinctiveness.
An organization which selects at its inception a
name which is purely descriptive runs the risk of not
having a protectible. name. So does the company which
picks a name which is exciting and localli useful,
but which will not stand the test of distinctiveness
in expanded future geographic or product markets.
Yet but a glance at any listing of EDP organizations,
such as are included in the several stock exchange
and over-the-counter lists published in The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Times and elsewhere
(particularly the regional lists), reveals that many
industry names continue to be employed without apparent regard to distinctiveness. One service center
directory lists fifteen company names beginning with
the prefix "Com" (eleven of which are the word "Computer"). Tne National Quotation Bureau in fact lists
so many similar names that over-the~counter traders
even make mistakes.
Already there have been litigated controversies
based on alleged likelihood of confusion (Advanced
Techniques Corporation v. Advance Computer Techniques, Inc., United Data Processing Services v. United Computer Systems, Inc., and Comsat v. Comcet) and
administrative determinations denying registration to
names as merely descriptive ("Scientific Data Systems"). The burden of going through such lengthy and
expensive proceedings alone should be more than enough
to justify name selection on a different basis.
It's time to get back to fundamentals. A corporate
name or trademark should be selected -- or changed -so as to distinguish and identify a product or service, without confusion now or in the event of future
expansion, geographically or to new products.
Purely descriptive names should be avoided like
the plague, and trademark and corporate name searches
in Washington and all toe applicable state and local
jurisdictions should be a routine part of the selection and use of any name.

ADVERTISING INDEX
Following is the index of advertisements. Each item contains:
name and address of the advertiser / name of the agency, if
any / page number where the advertisement appears.

ACM, 1133 Ave. of Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036 /
Corporate Presence, Inc. / Page 27
COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION, 815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. 02160 / Pages 2, 3
GML CORPORATION, 594 Marret Rd., Lexington, Mass.
02173 / Page 52
MICROFILM PRODUCTS, INC., 40 West 15 St., New York,
N.Y. 10011 / S. Frederic Auerbach Co., Inc. /
Page 18
29

Who's Who in Computers and Data P~ocessing
A CONTINUING PUBLICATION:
FIFTH EDITION AND SUPPLEMENTS
:> SIXTH EDITION

Who's Who in Computers and Data Processing is
published jointly by Quadrangle Books (a New York
Times Company) and Computers and Automation.
In view of the financial depression in the computer field, the Who's Who will until further notice
be published as the FIFTH-EDITION plus a number of
SUPPLEMENTS.
The annual subscription rate is $49.50; it includes at least two updating supplements per year,
AND the Fifth Cumulative Edition, 1970-71, hardbound,
3 volumes, over 1000 pages, over 15,000 capsule biographies. Persons who already have the Fifth Edition
may subscribe at $22 per year until the Sixth Cumulative Edition is scheduled.
If you wish to be considered for inclusion in the
Who's Who (or if information for you has been previously published and requires updating), please complete the following entry form (or a copy of it), and
send it to us.
WHO'S WHO ENTRY FORM
(may be copied on any piece of paper)
1. Name? (Please print)~~________________________
2. Home Add_ress (wi th Zip)? _______________
3. Organization?~~~~~-----------------------4. Its Address (with Zip)? ______________
5. Your Title? _____________________________________
6. Your Main Interests? ________~~--~~------~~
- Applications ( ) Logic
Sales
Business
( ) Management
Systems
Construction ( ) Mathematics
Other
Design
( ) Programming
(Please specify)
Year of Birth? ______~---------------------Education and Degrees?~~~---------------Year Entered Computer Field? ____________________
Your Present Occupation?~--~~----~--~----Publications, Honors, Memberships, and other
Distinctions? __________~------------------~
~~----~~--------------~(attach paper if needed)
) Yes ( ) No
12. Do you have access to a computer?
a. If yes, what kind of computer?
Manufacturer?
Model?
--------------------------------------b. Where is it installed:
Organization? _______________________________________
7.
8.
-9.
10.
11.

Address? __________~--~~~~~----~--~~~~--c. Is your access: Batch? ( ) Time-shared? (
Other? ( ) Please explain:
d. Any remarks? _____________________________________
13. In which volume or volumes of the Who's Who -(a) Have you been included?
~see
~
(b) Do you think you should be included? tbelowj
Vol. 1:
Vol. 2:
Vol. 3:

Systems Analysts and Programmers
Data Processing Managers and
Directors
Other Computer Professionals

(a)
(--)

(b)
(-)

Townsend - Continued from page 11

within the organization to better enable the manager
to identify any employees that were not complying
with the intent of the program. The number of instruments overdue from loan was reduced 65% during
the first 19 months the report was distributed.
System Operation

Prepunched card sets are filed by instrument noun
in book leaf kardex for each instrument assigned to
an Instrument Control Station. For example, a request for a Hewlett Packard, Model 614, signal generator is processed by locating the instrument loan
card in the kardex by noun, manufacturer and model
number (photo U2). The appropriate prepunched loan
card is removed and presented to the requesting employee to sign and enter his employee number, telephone, organization and building (photo u3). The
attendant then places the loan card in the Remote
Data Input (RDI) terminal. The variable levers are
set to reflect the borrowing employeeVs number and
the promised return date. A token is permanently
assigned to the terminal which identifies the submitting station and building. The terminal is then
activated to process the prepunched tab card data,
variable- lever information and token information
(photo U4). The data is gathered on daily journal
tapes ~hich are processed weekly against two master
files. 1) The instrument identification data input
from the prepunched tab card is matched with the
company property master file to assure proper instrument identity. 2) The employee number is
matched with the company payroll file to properly
establish the borrowing employee's name anq drganization. From these two master files and the terminal
data, the Instrument Pool Data System (IPDS) master
file is updated with the weekvs activity and the
weekly and bi-weekly reports are published for distribution and use the following Monday.
Monthly system audits are conducted, using statistical sampling techniques, to verify overall system accuracy and utilization figures. These audit
checks are used to maintain system discipline and
establish awards for Zero Defects performance. Results of each monthly audit are distributed to all
personnel within the Instrument Pool.
Looking Forward

Feasibility studies are currently being conducted
in relation to on-line input, inquiry and response.
The ability to establish utilization parameters for
exception reporting to be used in retir-ement and
procurement analysis is also being considered.
Unfortunately, the need for these capabilities
has a relatively high dollar cost in relation to
terminals, computer programming and the normal cost
constraints of an on-line system.
Conclusion

14. Do you subscribe to Computers and Automation?
( ) Yes ( ) No
15. Associates or colleagues who should be sent
Who's Who entry forms? Name and Address?

(attach paper if needed)
When completed, please send promptly to:
Who's Who Editor, Computers and Automation,
815 Washington St., Newtonville, MA 02160
30

The implementation of the IPDS has produced the
following results for LMSC in the past four years:
1) Increased instrument pool inventory utilization from 56% to an average of 87%.
2) Reduced the inventory from 20,000 to 12,000
with no loss of effectiveness.
3) Resulted in the highest retirement activity
in the history of the company.
4) Accounted for calibration savings in excess
of 780,000 hours.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

HOW FIENDISH CAN YOU GET?

by Helsinqen Sanomat, Helsinki, Finland; Ian Low, "New
Scientist", Jan. 20, 1972; Judy Bellin, Women's Strike
for Peace, New York, N. Y.; Congresswoman Bella Abzug,
House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

'j!\

more atrocious, more refined, and more cunning form of warfare is being intensified. "

Outline

1. Less Visible War against Civilians, with IBM
Computerized Guidance
by Helsingen Sanomat
2. Lethal Technology
by Ian Low
3. Total Body Radiation on Human Beings for the
Pentagon
by Judy Bellin
4. Biological Weapons
by Judy Bellin
5. A Lawbreaker, Guilty of Contempt of Congress
by Congresswoman Bella Abzug
6. Why No Wide Publication?
by Edmund C. Berkeley
1. Less Visible War Against Civilians with
IBM Computerized Guidance
Helsingen Sanomat
Helsinki, Finland

The war in Indochina is changing -- it is becoming a silent war. The battlefields are shaking less
because the big bombs have given way to small, harmful splinter bombs, to steel bullet bombs and fragment bombs. It has become a war personified by
small mines camouflaged by leaves or sand; they
wound rather than kill. And the newspapers are covering it less because there seems to be less happening.
This has been the major goal of Vietnamization:
to forestall defeat implicit in a peaceful settleCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

ment by making the war less visible, allowing it to
be carried on quietly into 1973 so that Mr. Nixon
does not have to run for re-election as the only
American president to have lost a war. Costs have
been cut, troops are being withdrawn and American
casualties have been reduced to make the Vietnamization plan look respectable to the American people
and to the world. But behind the misleading statistics lies a new and equally destructive Vietnam War
controlled from the White Igloo.
The White Igloo sounds as peaceful and innocent
as an Eskimo hut on polar ice. But it is a cover
name for something far more complicated -- automated
warfare planned and carried out bX electronic machines. One U.S. Senator called it a "seismic and
acoustic Christmas tree", another picturesque term
which doesn't quite suit this system which is responsible for massive, blind-folded air strikes in
Laos and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The White Igloo operates without troops. Acoustic and seismic "sensors" and "reconnoiters" are
built inside long poles which are dropped from
planes in great quantities. They implant themselves upright in the ground. A radio transmitter
and receiver is dropped by parachute; it may settle
in a tree or shrub after which the chute self-destructs so that the radio will not be easily found
by the enemy. The poles then receive sounds and vibrations from the environment which are relayed via
the radio to a reconaissance plane which circles at
very high altitude overhead.
The messages are forwarded to a control center in
Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, where they are fed into
computers. Professional "target-seekers" determine
the source of the messages; if they conclude that
they originate from hostile troops, an air attack
order is issued.
31

An IBM machine (Type IBM 360-65) analyzes the
source of movement, indicating its numerical
strength, speed and position. It is not of course
misled by camouflage, darkness, fog or cloud cover.
The control center orders an attack against the
area. The order goes to airbases in Thailand or
South Vietnam or to the aircraft carriers which circle the Vietnamese coast. IBM machines in the airplanes receive the attack signal, and they automatically fly directly to the target, unerringly dropping their bombs. General Evans, one of the directors of the White Igloo system, has noted that the
splinter-bombs used in this type of procedure have
achieved "excellent results".
Hundreds of different weapons have been created
to fight the automated war in Indochina. There are
laser and TV-guided bombs that find their own targets. There is the Starlight Scope, a powerful
light source that destroys the camouflage of night.
There are binoculars that can see the trademark of
a golf ball at over a thousand yards.
There are devices that react to the secretions
and temperature changes of the human body. And
automatic rapid-fire guns that fire 5000 shots per
minute, mowing down everything like a scythe. There
are magneticd~vices that register all metallic
items and relay their messages to the IBM machines,
dozens of miles away. And there are weapons specifically designed to mutilate human beings without
causing property losses: they can crush a person's
leg but don't damage automobile tires.
There are grapeshot bombs, which bounce up to
chest-level before they explode, releasing a round
of 500 shots. Their bullets are a little bigger
than those of a hunting gun and are obviously designed to kill, as they necessarily hit vital organs -- except when a small child is struck by this
spray of bullets at a distance, in which case he
will likely carry them around for the paralyzed remainder of his life.
Round bullets are considered too humanitarian for
certain purposes, and are often replaced by small,
sharp-edged splinters (which inflict severe wounds
and are more difficult to remove). Plastic and
fiber bullets which escape X-ray detection are now
being used.
There are cobweb bombs, which are dropped from
airplanes. Upon hitting the ground, they send out
lO-yard-Iong feelers called "reconnoi terers" in
every direction. When the reconnoiterers hit something, the bomb explodes.
American war theoreticians have calculated that
it is better psychological warfare, and better public relations at home, to disable people rather than
kill them. A dead person is buried and forgotten;
but an invalid has to be taken care of, perhaps for
the rest of his life. When disabling weapons are
used in large quantities, the Vietnamese must devote
their energies to caring for the wounded.
It is not easy to fight these technical monsters.
The Vietnamese guerrillas have managed to confuse
the computers in several ways: for instance, they
have hung bags of human urine on trees to confuse
devices that record the location of human secretions.
The automation of the war in Indochina is still
in its early stages, but improvements are rapid and
continuous. We are facing a revolution in war tech-

nology the consequences of which are impossible to
estimate. The peoples of Indochina must be saved
from the agonies of the new "electronic battlefield".
2. Lethal Technology

Ian Low
"New Scientist", Jan. 20, 1972

While the rest of the world is beginning to hope
that the Vietnam war may at last be ended -- President Nixon may have found, as Eisenhower did, a winning slogan in "Bring the boys home" -- there is evidence of grisly developments in military technOlogy
for which no tactical or strategical reason seems
valid. It looks uncommonly like brutality for its
own sake.
A letter in Le Monde (15 January) from Professor
Andre Roussel, deputy director of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, refers
to some of the things going on in Vietnam and the
misgivings they aroused at an international conference on medicine in the Vietnam war, held in Paris
at the end of last year. Both American and Vietnamese doctors who attended referred to the daily use
of a variety of bombs -- napalm, magnesium, and a
device containing a mixture of phosphorus and aluminum which, according to Professor Roussel, "leaves
monstrous wounds". The anti-personnel bombs have
progressed from those which, bursting several feet
above the ground, scattered hundreds of steel missiles the size of billiard balls. These penetrated
the body and ricocheted, reaching several organs in
turn. The most recent model, however, uses plastic
missiles which defy detection by radiography so that
it is virtually impossible for the surgeon to remove
them.
Professor Roussel also refers to the "earthquake"
bomb used to clear ground for helicopters to land.
It also has the effect, however, of dislocating the
bone in the inner ear, producing deafness in adults,
and leaving young children deaf and dumb. A form of
booby trap bomb parachutes to earth where it sends
out, in different directions, eight threads of nylon
each about 8 metres long. The threads are almost
invisible but the least disturbance of one of them
causes the bomb to explode. Roussel is also disturbed by an ethical development among doctors. He
claims that psychologists -- half doctors, half combatants, called "aid men" -- are being sent on missions to carry out psychological warfare.
As Roussel says, it is unimportant that land
forces are being withdrawn if a "more atrocious,
more refined, and more cunning form of warfare goes
on and is even intensified".
3. Total Body Radiation on Human Beings for the Pentagon
Judy Bellin

Women's Strike for Peace
New York, N. Y.

The Pentagon has paid the University of Cincinnati $850,000 to test the effects of total body radiation on troops in a possible atomic war.
Terminal cancer patients were selected as guinea
pigs and the sinister experiments have continued for
the past 11 years. The Washington Post reported
that the patients were not told of the Pentagon
funding or the main purpose of the research. Senator Edward Kennedy has demanded a full report from
Defense Secretary Laird.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

In addition to guaranteeing certain death, the
hideous radiation treatments heighten the agony of
the victims, causing nausea, vomiting and severe
depression.
4. Biological Weapons
Judy Bellin
Women's Strike for Peace
New York, N. Y.

In November 1969 Nixon announced that the US
would never use biological weapons in war and would
never be the first to use lethal gas. Existing
stocks of chemical and biological (CB) weapons and
ingredients for their manufacture were to be destroyed; such CB "research" facilities as Fnrt. Detrick would be converted to civilian use. This fall
the US and the USSR co-sponsored a UN resolution
(as well as a draft treaty at Geneva) banning the
production and stockpiling of biological weapons
(but not their use!) -- reference to chemicals such
as the defoliants and nausea agents used in Vietnam
were discreetly omitted.
The following facts would suggest that instead of
decreasing, US plans for CBW are escalating:
-- The 1972 military budget provides for doubling US
purchases of CBW weapons (from $25.3 million in 1971
to $50.8 million in 1972).
Weapons destruction was not very meaningful: at
Rocky Mt. Arsenal it involved "some obsolf'te types,
not compatible with tOday's high-performance aircraft," and at Pine Bluff Arsenal it meant destruction only of obsolete (WWII) nerve gas -- the arsenal will continue to study such weapons as the
M36E2 cluster, an incendiary anti-personnel weapon.
-- The US Army chemical center at Ft. McClellan,
where officers (including those from Greece and S.
Arabia) are trained, continues to use a manual on
how to spread germ warfare. Although the course
now claims to train for defensive purposes only,
civilian protection is almost ignored -- in fact, it
is suggested that this may be impossible in any
case.
-- The Defense Marketing Survey (an industry newsletter) reported April 1971: "Despite public anno~ncements to the contrary, the military agencies
are not discontinuing CBW research. Work in these
areas is continuing at funding levels equal to or
exceeding those prior to the "public relations" announcements of cessation of these efforts. CBW research is merely being conducted in a different environment, and ... with less public attention."
-- American Report, 9/17/71, said that new contracts will include the manufacture of nerve gases,
incapacitating, riot control and harassing agents,
defoliants, herbicides, and biological agents, including anthrax, Rocky Mt. spotted fever and tularemia.
-- Last fall the Army started construction on a new
$27 million facility on the grounds of the Presidio.
45% of its funding has been authorized for CB "de_
fense" research. The Army insists this research
will be solely for treatment purposes, but the Institute's design is based on that of Fort Detrick.
Did the Army perhaps turn Ft. Detrick over to civilian CUSPHsi use because it was outmoded, and in order to build itself a new facility in safer surroundings?
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

5. A Lawbreaker, Guilty of Contempt of Congress
Congresswoman Bella Abzug
House of Representatives
Washington, D. C.

"When the President recently signed the $21.4
billion Military Procurement Act, he said that because he didn't agree with one section of that law
he would ignore it . . . .
"I submit that by his words and his actions
President Nixon, who represents himself as a lawand-order advocate, is actually himself a lawbreaker, gui lty of contempt of Congress."
(Address to the National Youth Caucus at Loyola
University, December 4, 1971)
6. Why No Wide Publication?
Edmund C. Berkeley
Editor, Computers and Automation'

Why is information about atrocities of these
kinds not widely published and distributed throughout the newspapers and media of the United States?
So that Americans with a sense of common decency can
roar their protests?
There seem to be two answers. One is the cooperation of the American press with the American Establishment. The other is failure of Americans to
be as concerned about Asian civilians and American
cancer victims as they are concerned about drafted
American soldiers. This is a moral failure.

ADVANCED NUMBLES
Neil Macdonald
Assistant Editor
Computers and Automation
We regret that an error occurred in the April Advanced
The problem should have read:

Numble No. 72401.

ADVANCED NUMBLE NO. 72401

Find one solution to: ONE x TEN = SEVEN
We wish to thank those who wrote to us pointing out
that the Numble as published had no solution. You are
correct. The solution to the correct Advanced Numble
No. 72401 will be published next month for those who
wish to try their hand again.
Solution to Advanced Numble 72402

E=4
H=9
0=8

R=O
T = 1
W =3

TWO

x TWO

138 x 138

=
=

THREE
19044

We invite our readers to send us solutions, together with
human programs or a computer program which will produce the solution.
33

DALLAS: WHO, HOW, WHY? - Part III
Mikhail Sagatelyan
Moscow, USSR

"The fact that an enormous quantity of documents having a bearing on the crime
[of assassinating President Kennedy} were classified for a period of 75 years by
the Warren Commission without a word of explanation ... evoked grave suspicion.~'

Ten months later, early morning on September 25,
1964, in a long corridor of the Executive Office
building which neighbours on the White House, several hundred American and foreign correspondents
queued up for the just released Report of the Warren
Commission. It was a thick volume consisting of 888
pages. Press reports were embargoed until Sunday
evening, September 27, 1964, so reporters had twoand-a-half days to sift through the findings and
compose their copy. So much has been written since
about the Warren Report and about the official version of the "crime of the century" that there is no
need here to recapitulate the whole thing in detail.
I will limit myself to a brief resume of the main
points made in the Warren Report: Lee Harvey Oswald
was acting on his own initiative, so was Jack Ruby.
and neither killing in Dallas was the result of a
conspiracy -- either American or foreign.
Without giving their readers an opportunity to
actually familiarise themselves with the contents
of the Report, the American mass media of information in its majority unleashed a flood of commentaries and articles frankly designed to persuade the
reader to accept the Report as definitive and indisputable. Here are some indicative examples.
Walter Lippmann, writing in The New York
Herald Tribune on September 29, 1964, expressed his
conviction that future historians would uncover nothing that might cast a shadow on the absolute honesty
and integrity of the seven members of the Commission
and their findings. No one, at home or abroad, Lippmann stated, should question the validity of their
verdict.
In The Washington Post and Times Herald, Marquis
Child wrote on the 28th of the same month that the
Report was a monument to the painstaking sifting and
analysis of facts, rumours, suspicions and wild surmises examined by the Commission. It would not satisfy those who insisted on a conspiracy. For the
ultra-leftists, Lee Harvey Oswald was a pawn in the
hands of the right. The ultra-right declared.it was
a plot hatched in Moscow or Havana. But the thorough
investigation must convince the honest, Childs maintained, that the killer was a loner.
In an editorial,The New York Times wrote on the
same day that the facts presented by the Commission
(Parts 1 and 2 were published in the March and April 1972
issues respectively, of Computers and Automation. Reprinted
from Sputnik, published by Novosti Press Agency, Moscow,
USSR.)
34

destroyed the ground from under the feet of those
who alleged there was a conspiracy.
I was not able to follow everything that the eminent columnists had to say on the subject subsequently, but two years later The New York Times ran
an open letter addressed to Earl Warren which asked
whether Kennedy was not destroyed as a result of an
organised attempt to change the political course of
the United States and whether or not it was true
that within the national political and military
power structure there was a functioning internal opposi tion which had attempted to gain its ends through
the murder of the Chief Executive and that there was
a conspiracy not only directed against the person of
John Kennedy, but also directed against his attempts
to end the cold war.
But to return to the Report. Two characteristic
peculiarities catch the eye upon an attentive reading of the main conclusions.
In the first place, the Warren Commission tried
to combine a truth -- there was no "communist plot"
-- with an untruth -- there was no conspiracy of any
kind. These two artificially combined conclusions,
one well-founded and the other more than questionable, were served up to America and the rest of the
world on one plate, in the hope they would be swallowed together.
The psychological sleight-of-hand worked like
this: since it was easy to prove that neither Oswald
nor Ruby were "foreign agents", then by a sort of
psychological inertia, the strength and force of
those proofs could be used to lend credence to the
Commission's finding that Oswald and Ruby were both
operating alone and that they were "psychologically
unbalanced". The Commission also stated that in committing their crimes (and it must be noted that Oswald's guilt was not proved by the Commission) the
men were governed by purely personal and emotional
motives and reasons. In short, in the Report everything appeared to be clear and simple -- there was
no conspiracy either on the part of right extremists
or on the part of communists.
Secondly, the formulations and presentation of
the conclusions reached by the Commission were somewhat odd. In the opening paragraphs where the Commission promises to reveal the "whole truth" and
boasts about the thoroughness of its investigation,
the language is concise and assured. But in the
conclusions, when such questions are touched on, for
example, as Oswald's connections with the FBI and
the CIA, then the language suddenly loses its crispness and becomes convoluted. This is how the ComCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

mission dealt with OswaldQs connection with the FBI
and the CIA: "Judging by the facts available to the
Commission •.• ".6 And at the end of the paragraph:
"All of the contacts of these bodies with Oswald
were established in the routine carrying out of
their duties.,,7 Is this a denial?
With respect to others being involved in the actions of Oswald and Ruby, the Commission reported
that if such evidence existed, it was not available
to investigating bodies of the United States and
the Commission knew nothing of such proofs.
So what remained inaccessible to the Warren Commission and investigating bodies? A check on the
files of the FBI and CIA in order to establish
whether or not Oswald and Ruby were in fact agents
of one or the other of these organisations? It
seems to. So then what "independent investigation"
could there be?
In fact, out of the 26 supplementary volumes
(they were published much later than the Report), it
is possible to pick out scores if not hundreds of
absolutely convincing facts which refute the Warren
Commission's claim of impartiality of investigation.
Here is only one glaring example.
In the Report it is stated that as a result of
Oswald's request to allow him to return with his
wife to the United States, on May 9, 1962, by request of the State Department, the US Immigration
and Naturalisation Service agreed to temporarily
waive the limitation imposed by law which prevented
the issuing of an American visa to a Russian wife until she had left the Soviet Union. The Commission
revealed another interesting fact: it seems that
the American Embassy in Moscow paid out $435.71 to
Oswald to pay for plane tickets to the United
States.
Why were such exceptions made for a man who
called himself a "communist" and who at one time had
renounced his American citizenship (although he prudently took no legal steps to do so)? Why existing
immigration laws were waived in order to allow his
wife -- a Soviet citizen -- to enter the States and
why government funds were allotted to pay their
fares, the Report did not explain.
On the whole, the triumphant fanfare that greeted
the Warren Commission Report proved in the final
count futile. The only section of the "investigation" which sounded convincing was the part that
stated that communists, American or foreign, had nothing to do with the assassination of John Kennedy.
Everything else was open to doubt. The fact that
the enormous quantity of documents having a bearing
on the crime were classified for 75 years by the
Commission without a word of explanation also
evoked grave suspicion.
Abroad the Report was not accepted. Within a
week of its publication, The New York Times was
forced to admit that the conclusion that President
Kennedy's assassination was the work of one man not
belonging to any conspiracy had met with widespread
scepticism and frank disbelief in many newspapers in
many countries. Rather typical of the reaction
abroad to the Warren Commission Report was Guy Mol~et's, General Secretary of the French Socialist
Party. He suggested that someone in the United
States had found an "invaluable" killer -- he was a
Communist, a Marxist and a Castro:ite all rolled
~nto one.
It was simply too good to be true. They
were not very original in their fantasies, Mollet
went on to say. It had all been done by Hitler beCOMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

fore them and the whole business reminded one of the
Reichstag fire •..
The American reaction to the Heport was more
complex. In the beginning quite a few fell for the
psychological sleight-of-hand -- the "neither left
nor right" approach. However their acceptance of it
lasted only the length of time it took various American writers, professors and journalists to study the
Report themselves, reach their own conclusions and
challenge the Commission's findings. When they did,
they repudiated only those conclusions that insisted
there was no internal conspiracy of the right. I
have in mind the works of Mark Lane, Thomas Buchanan,
Joachim Yosten and a whole number of other American
writers. The vast majority are known to the reader
and I shall not repeat their crushing analyses of
the report, the accusations of suppressing and falsifying evidence, ignoring vital information, etc .. directed at the Commission.
However, mention must be made of William Manchester's book, Death of a President, (now available in
Russian) which came out in 1966. Manchester performed a Herculean task of gathering statements from
witnesses. Everyone he requested for an interview
agreed to meet with him except for two people -- Lyndon Johnson and Oswald's widow, Marina, who was jealously guarded by the FBI. Marina Oswald was quick to
refuse to see Manchester -- it was obvious that the
FBI had simply forbidden her to do so. But Johnson
was another story. At least twice he promised to see
the writer and both times at the last moment avoided
an encounter. "He found he could not bear to do so,"
Manchester explains rather suggestively (just as he
could not bear to talk to Rose Kennedy). Finally
Johnson agreed to reply in writing to submitted questions. However, he replied by no means to all of the
questions raised, Manchester points out in his book.
Precisely what questions were ignored by Johnson,
Manchester does not say. This, along with the obvious
fact that much in Death of a President is only hinted
at, left unsaid. and what is said sometimes contradicts the real content of the book (for instance the
author's avowal that he agrees with the findings of
the Warren Commission) is not hard to understand:
Manchester was writing his book at a time when Johnson was still President. Nevertheless, Death of a
President had considerable influence on the American
evaluation of the Warren Report.
Two years after the Report was published, the
Louis Harris Institute of Public Opinion conducted a
national poll. The results were reported in the
press and must have caused uneasiness in some quarters in Washington and Dallas. Three out of five
Americans did not accept the main tenet of the Report
that the assassination was the work of one man and
were inclined to think the killing was part of a wide
conspiracy. The majority believed that the Report of
the Warren Commission did not contain the whole story.
Figures were given: 46 per cent thought the assassination of Kennedy was part of a wide-spread conspiracy; 34 per cent thought it was the work of one individual; 20 per cent doubted the trustworthiness of
the Report but had no firm opinions as to underlying
motives. Therefore, 66 per cent of those questioned
disbelieved the validity of the conclusions presented
by the Commission.
It should be noted that the same poll revealed
that in spite of the attempted brainwashing as to a
communist conspiracy, few Americans had accepted it.
In reply to more detailed questions as to who precisely was behind the Kennedy assassination, only two
per cent said "Oswald and the Russians" and only one
per cent -- "Castro". Two per cent had the temerity
35

to assert: "Lyndon Johnson."
A little while later the same Harris Institute
conducted another poll on the same subject. The results were still more depressing for both Johnson and
the Warren Commission. The percentage of those who
thought the Report was false had risen to 72. Ten
per cent simply doubted it but could not give (or did
not wish to give?) any reason. Only 18 per cent
stated that the Warren Report had fully illuminated
the killing in Dallas.
When I was in Oklahoma once, I saw an old grave
in the local cemetery that had survived from cowboy
times. On a simple tombstone the words were carved:
"Sam Jones. Hanged by mistake. 1896." I was reminded of that stone when I read the results of the
polls. In their own way, they are a tombstone in
the cemetery of history: "The Warren Commission Report. Composed with evil designs. 1964."
That is why loud and insistent demands were
raised in the United States for a new investigation
of the circumstances of John Kennedy's assassination. Among others, Life Magazine, The Saturday
Evening Post, Look Magazine and several important
weeklies called for a new inquiry. Pressure was
also exerted on Earl Warren to personally reply to
the numerous accusations levelled by the public.
How did the government react to these demands?
For one thing, through journalists close to the Administration it spread the following explanation of
the demands for a re-examination of the "Kennedy
Case": it was all part of Robert Kennedy's political game; he was preparing to fight Johnson in 1968
for the presidential nomination and was not above
exploiting his brother's death for his own ends and
had therefore raised the fuss around the Warren Report.
Such an explanation had a certain validity. However, it in no way invalidated the just demands for
a new inquiry. Notwithstanding personal political
ambitions, Robert Kennedy did not erect the symbolic
tombstone over the Warren Report. The American
people did it themselves.
Subsequently the government replied to the appeals to re-open the case and replied directly. At
a regular White House press conference Johnson announced that he had no grounds to question the findings of the Commission. The same thing was said
earlier bY,J. Edgar Hoover,director of the FBI,
only a little more crudely.' There was no evidence,
he said, of Oswald having had an accomplice or accomplices. The head of the FBI did not stop there.
He told off the millions of doubting Americans and
demanded that they show a little more respect for
the available facts.
'

In Moscow, shortly after the Warren Report came
out, the chief editor of one American weekly said to
me:
"It doesn't seem to me that the Russians should
criticise the Warren Report. It's no good for you
or us or for anyone who'd like to see tensions relaxed between Washington and Moscow ..• "
In answer to my "how so?" the American at first
tried to get away with generalisations about "inevitable worsening of Soviet-US relations in such a
case, even if you're not to blame, but still it
would entail a deterioration". At last he became
irritated with my "denseness" and said: "For some
real big shots in our country the whole subject is
like waving a red rag at a bull ..• "
"But what you're saying is pure blackmail!" I
finally exploded.
"It may be, it may very well be so ... But bear
in mind that it's not my blackmail, I only raised
the whole thing in order to explain the situation.
Believe me, personally I'd be very happy if things
were otherwise .•. "

Another foreign colleague who knew Russian and
Russian literature quite well, suddenly recalled
Griboyedov when we started discussing the Warren
Commission Report:
"How does he put it?" he said with a thin smile.
"He says, 'What a commission, oh Lord Creator!' Well,
the creator is Lyndon Johnson. He's the one who
must answer for it. But no one wants to put the
questions: the Americans are a bit afraid -- after
all, he is the~President! And then they're ashamed
for their country. We allies -- don't dare: But
what a wonderful title for an article: 'What a commission, oh Lord Creator!' Only a question mark at
the end. Followed by dot, dot, dot. Not bad, eh,
Mike?"
The Thorny Path of Jim Garrison

There probably isn't a newspaper reader in the
world who doesn't know the name of Jim Garrison,
District Attorney of New Orleans. He is better
known than all the authors of all the books on the
killing in Dallas put together. Why is that? In
the first place, because he, like they, wished to
raise the c,urtain on the mystery surrounding the
death of John Kennedy. Secondly; and more importantly, the New Orleans District Attorney is the
first and so far the only person i~ a position of
authori ty in the Uni ted State,~, who has at tempted to
carry out a new investigation of the crime. Various
writers have only demanded such an investigation~
Jim Garrison pursued it.

The Warren Commission Report, the' criticism of it
by competent American investigators, the reaction to
the criticism on the pirt of the White House and the
FBI (other government departments preferred to say
lno-ihing):Led to a situation where people allover
the world were beginning to ask themselves questions
of this kind: why does the President ignore the
opinions of the American people? What threat to
himself does Johnson envisage in the attempt to investigate the "Kennedy Case" more fully, unless he
himself is mixed up in it or powerful political
forces not subject to his control?

Who is this Jim Garrison? An American 20th-century Don Quixote, fearlessly challenging official
Washington windmills? A smart politician hoping to
make capital out of a burning issue? Or perhaps a
shrewd, calculating one, acting in the interests of
some grouping which wishes to settle accounts with
its enemies and the tragedy in Dallas presents an
excellent opportunity? And finally, did his investigation and subsequent court case in any way help
to uncover the truth? Did it bring us any closer to
the sources of the conspiracy?

But facts incriminating the President and significant episodes continued to crop up, including thousands of miles from the shores of America.

In October 1966 -- in other words, at a time when
demands that the Lyndon Johnson administration reopen the inquiry into the circumstances of John Kennedy's assassination were at a height -- Russell B.

COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Long, Democratic Senator from Louisiana, expressed
his grave doubts to Garrison about the Warren Commission's'conclusions thai Lee Harvey Oswald was a
lone assassin. The-Senator pointed out that before
the shooting in Dallas Oswald had lived in New Orleans for several months and his activities there
could bear investigation. Senator Long added that
Garrison could count on his support •••
The Qistrict Attorney certainly wasn't acting on
his own.. Behif1,d him there was a special committee
composed of over 50 prominent New Orleans businessmen led by the millionaire Roli. This committee
raised additional finances over the meagre official
budget of the D.A.'s office in order to cover the
far-ranging investigation which Garrison launched
shortly after his conversation with Senator Long.
Garrison was also supported in his endeavour by
Cardinal: Cushing of Boston, close friend and fatherconfessor to the Kennedy family. "I think they
should follow it through," the Cardinal said of the
New Orleans probe. "I never believed that the assassination was the work of one man."
Garrison maintained that Robert Kennedy approved
of his investigation.
And so, in the fall of 1966, without any publicity, the New Orleans District Attorney's office
opened an investigation into the circumstances of
the assassination of President Kennedy.
On February 17, 1967, the New Orleans States-Item
reported the fact. Several dozen reporters from New
York, Washington, Chicago and a number of foreign
correspondents immedIately. converged on New Orleans.
By February 19 the press was quoting Garrison:
We have been investigating the role of the
city of New Orleans in the assassination of
President Kennedy, and we have made some progress -- I think substantial progress
what's more, there will be arrests.
I won't go into details concerning the people arrested by Garrison, the charges levelled against them
and the court findings. All that has been thoroughly
publicised. I just want to tell briefly the story of
the New Orleans case.
Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, was accused
of being party (under the name Clay Bertrand) to
preparations to assassinate President Kennedy. The
plotters included David Ferrie, & former civil aviation pilot, Lee Harvey Oswald and a number of others
who met in Ferrie's apartment in the presence of witness Perry Russo. The charge, as Garrison reiterated
more than once, was painstakingly documented.
On March 14, 1967, a preliminary hearing was held
in New Orleans to determine whether there was enough
evidence against Shaw to bring him to trial. On
March 17, after a four-day hearing, the three presiding judges ruled there was sufficient evidence
to hold Clay Shaw for trial.
All the sessions of the grand jury were held in
camera and it heard Garrison's evidence against Clay
Shaw and hisacco.mplices (most of whom were dead -Oswald, Ruby and Ferrie). The American press believed that Garrison would lose'his case since members of the grand jury were in possession of the
Warren Commission Report which stated that both Oswald and Ruby were operating on their own initiative. As far as the press knew, the District Attorney had only one witness -- Perry Russo.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

And then, on the 22nd of March, after examining
the evidence against the accused, the grand jury
concluded that there was .~ conspiracy directed
against President Kennedy, that Clay Shaw was a participant, that the evidence was overwhelming on this
score, and that the trial must proceed. This decision of the grand jury created a sensation: an American .£Q!!!.!. had in fact repudiated the Report of the
Warren Commission both as a document and as an official verdict. The sceptics had miscalculate~ Jim
Garrison was triumphant ••.
After innumerable delays and postponements insisted upon mainly by the defence, the trial took place
at last in February 1969. Clay Shaw was acquitted.
Obviously, unlike during the closed grand jury hearings, the prosecution witnesses did not sound very
convincing. The District Attorney himself seemed to
have lost interest in his case and turned up at only
two or three sessions.
What had happened? Why was Garrison's case lost?
Why, after putting so much effort and energy into
investigating the "crime of the century" did the
D.A. cool off? And finally, does the fact that the
case was lost prove that there was no conspiracy and
that the Warren Report was correct? Not at all.
All the investigations and preparations for the
·trial serve as vivid, ff indirect, proof that the
charges were based on truth. The justice o~ this
conclusion will be seen if one examines the obstacles that were placed in the way of the District
Attorney. The very fact that Garrison had such a
difficult time of it is in itself convinciug proof
that he was on the right track and had arrived at
the truth.
As already mentioned, on February 17, 1967, the
world learned that an investigation into the Kennedy
assassination was underway in New Orleans. The next
day the White House made public a document drawn up
by a special commission which called on the nation
to fight the crime syndicate, Cosa Nostra. The document contained quite a number of breath-taking sensations and exposures. Is it possible that the publication of the document on the day following the
news from New Orleans was pure coincidence? Of
course. But the practice of killing one undesirable
sensation with the help of another or other sensations is so widespread in America that the coincidence puts one on guard, to say the least. Whatever
the case, it proved impossible to deflect, attention
away from New Orleans. After Garrison's investigation became known, events moved swiftly and evoked
mounting interest throughout the world.
On February 19 Jim Garrison told reporters that
the Warren Commission was wrong and that he would
prove it.
Washington made no comment. Not a single highly
placed official had a word to say in the two weeks .
following the New Orleans announcement. However, in
the very first days after the press reports appeared,
someone's mysterious hand made itself felt. On the
evening of February 18, 1967, in one of New Orleans'
numerous bars, the District Attorney met a former
employee,of Batista's secret police, the counterrevolutionary exile, Seraphino Eladio del Valle.
Garrison showed del Valle a picture of Oswald to-.
gether with "an unidentified man". That is how the
photograph was called in the Warren Report where it
is listed under No. 237. Del Valle recognized the
"unidentified man" right away -- it was one of the
leaders of the Cuban counterrevolutionaries in the
37

United States, one Manuel Garcia Gonzales. Del Valle agreed to arrange a meeting between Garrison and
Gonzales. On the evening of February 20 both Cubans
disappeared. Three days later the mutilated body of
del Valle was found -in a'n abandoned car in Miami.
Gonzales simply disappeared from Louisiana.
On February 22 David Ferrie was found dead in his
apartment. Traces of cyanide were discovered on
fragments of a broken tumbler. The police hesitantly presumed suicide. In any case, with the death of
Ferrie, Jim Garrison lost a vital witness for the
prosecution, a connecting link between Clay Shaw
and Lee Harvey Oswald.
The day after the body of Ferrie was discovered,
Jim Garrison stated that Ferrie had been the key to
many mysteries surrounding the killing in Dallas and
then incautiously added that he feared for the safety of others involved before the investigation was
completed. On February 24, Jack Martin, a New Orleans private detective who had gathered significant
information concerning the assassination for the
District Attorney, left the city for an unknown destination, leaving word with a friend that he did so
for reasons of "personal safety". At the end of
February another leader of the Cuban counter-revolutionaries disappeared whom Garrison believed to be
directly connected with the conspiracy.
Only then did Washington break its silence. The
new Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, and President
Johnson himself made statements.
In a brief interview given to the press, Clark
stated that he was aware of Garrison's investigation
and did not consider it had any foundation. According to evidence possessed by the FBI there was no
connection between Clay Shaw and the assassination
in Dallas, he said. In reply to persistent questioning on the matter by reporters, Clark again confirmed that Shaw had been checked out in this connection and cleared of suspicion.
The same day at a White House press conference,
a reporter asked President Johnson about his attitude to the New Orleans investigation in view of the
fact that it set out to demolish the Warren Report
and considering that Johnson had recently stated he
saw no reason to doubt the conclusions reached by
the Commission.
Johnson replied he saw no reason now to repudiate
any of his earlier statements.
Thus both the Attorney General and more cautiously, the President, had spoken up for Clay Shaw. Only
three months later, on June 3, the Department of Justice was forced to admit that Mr. Ramsey Clark had
lied on March 2: the FBI had never questioned or investigated Clay Shaw in connection with the assassination of John Kennedy. Washington's battle with Jim
Garrison had taken a scandalous turn: in an effort
to preserve some credibility on the part of the public in the Warren Report, the Attorney General had
resorted to an outright lie.
On March 2 another attempt was made to thwart
Garrison's inquiries. The New York radio reporter
of the Hearst World International Service announced
that Garrison intended to prove that the assassination of President Kennedy was carried out on Fidel
Castro's orders and that the real reason for Oswald's trip to Mexico was not to obtain a Cuban
visa, but in order to receive instructions from the
Cuban embassy_ The American press picked up the
statement and began to comment on it.

At the back of the whole provocative manoeuvre,
lay the desire to undermine faith in the "Clay
Shaw case". Well aware that by 1967 almost no one
in America or abroad accepted the "Communist conspiracy" version, the enemies of the New Orleans District Attorney counted on the fact that if people
thought that that red herring was the purpose of
Garrison's investigation, they would lose interest.
However, it didn't work. Jim Garrison denied the
Hearst allegations as to the trend of his investigations and flatly announced that no foreign state was
involved in the assassination of John Kennedy. When
the whole truth became known, he went on, a lot of
people, including the President of the United States,
were going to lose some sleep.
On top of everything, Garrison was seeking another witness who could shed light on the conspiracy. His name was Gordon Novel and he was the owner
of one of the biggest bars in New Orleans. However,
having been warned, he sold his business and disappeared on the eve of his impending arrest. After a
considerable search, Garrison's men located Novel in
Columbus, Ohio. In response to a request from New
Orleans, the local authorities at first detained
Novel. Then the real fun started.
In reply to the official request for Novel's extradition made by the State of Louisiana in order to
have him appear before the grand jury in the trial
of Clay Shaw, the Governor of Ohio stated that Novel
would be handed over only i f the New Orleans D.A ..
office gave a written affidavit that Novel would not
be questioned about "events connected with the assassination of President Kennedy"!
Gordon Novel was a key witness in the Clay Shaw
case because he was a CIA agent. This is not surmise or logical guesswork on the part of Garrison
and his investigators. Here is the proof. On May
23, 1967, Novel's lawyer, Stephen Plotkin, was
forced to admit that "(his) client served as an intermediary between the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans in
New Orleans and Miami prior to the April 1961 Bay of
Pigs invasion".
The same day the Associated Press reported that
when Novel first fled from New Orleans, he
headed straight for McLean, Virginia, which
is the Central Intelligence Agency suburb.
This is not surprising, because Gordon Novel
was a CIA employee in the early sixties.
This did not represent the whole truth. In Novel's abandoned flat in New Orleans, a valuable document was found thai testifie~,to the fact that Novel had not only been a CIA agent in the past, but
remained one up to the time he fled the city. The
paper, written in Novel's hand (which handwriting
experts testified to), was a draft of a report made
by Novel to his CIA superior, "Mr. Weiss". It is
an interesting fact that Novel's attorney also admitted later that: "Everything in the letter as
far as Novel is concerned is actually the truth."
Here are the highlights of the draft report:
I took the liberty of writing you direct and
apprising you of current situation expecting
you to forward this through appropriate channels. Our connection and activity of that
period involved individuals presently about
to be indicted as conspirators in Mr. Garrison's investigation.
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

Novel goes on to warn that Garrison's probe was
threatening to expose his ties with the Double-Check
Corporation in Miami and therefore it was essential
to take necessary counter-measures through military
intelligence since Novel himself, his associates and
lawyers, had run out of legal loopholes to forestall
the District Attorney.
Knowing enough about the ways and means resorted
to by the CIA in the case of blown agents whose existence threatens to throw light on the super-secret
operations of the "Langley Monster", Novel warned Mr.
Weiss that his death would not be in the interests of
his employers.
Our attorneys and others are in possession of
complete sealed files containing all information concerning this matter.
In case of his disappearance, accidental or otherwise, the files would be made public in different
areas of the country simultaneously.
Apparently Novel's threat was duly noted. His
life was spared and he himself was spared the necessity of giving evidence to Garrison.
Needless to say, Novel's report was couched in
such a way that it does not reveal directly what
actions are under discussion, but it does show that
they are relevant to Garrison's investigation. The
whole world knows that the District Attorney was investigating ~ conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
So after Novel's draft report, is it possible to
doubt that the CIA was involved in some way in the
events in Dallas? Also, Novel's reference to the
Double-Check Corporation is additional evidence of
CIA involvement. Back in 1965, in a book written by
two Washington reporters, Thomas Ross and David Wise,
entitled The Invisible Government, the Double-Check
Corporation was unmasked as a CIA front engaged in
preparations for the invasion of Cuba in April 1961.
And now Double-Check had turned up in Dallas~
To anyone who followed the press, it became obvious that notwithstanding the law, Washington was
interfering with the District Attorney of New Orleans and the President was maintaining a discreet
silence with regard to the curious doings surrounding the case.
It is my deepest conviction that the facts concerning overt and covert obstacles placed in the way
of Garrison provided the lacking weight on the scales
of public opinion in the United States and abroad and
sent the Warren Commission Report plunging to oblivion and conversely strengthened the feeling that
Lyndon Johnson was behaving in a manner that suggested he was in some way mixed up in the Dallas crime.
That is why the actions (or inaction) of the Federal authorities, when they became known to the public, did not discredit the New Orleans District Attorney, but on the contrary, gave added substance to
his inquiries.
The trial in New Orleans continued, as did the attempts of the Federal authorities to end it. A considerable section of the press accused Garrison, as
he put it, of "every kind of unethical practice except child molesting" and he added with black humour,
"I expect that allegation to come shortly ••. " Garrison received many death threats by letter and. telephone. He kept a gun beside him at all times and
hung on. "On my tombstone," he joked, "may be inscribed: 'Curiosity killed the D.A. It, At one point
COMPUTERS and AUTOMATION for May, 1972

he confessed that he was glad he had not known of
the troubles in store for him when he launched his
investigation. If he had, he might have had second
thoughts, but as it was, he had no regrets.
So, after clearly demonstrating that Garrison's
investigation was impeded, to put it mildly, let us
now turn to the question of what new facts he was
able to uncover. He told about them himself as soon
as he realised that his best defence against both
physical reprisals and newspaper slanders lay in
making whatever information he possessed, public.
The following is the gist of two or three lengthy
interviews given by Garrison with the absolute understanding that he had corroborative proof in the
form of documents, photographs or statements by witnesses for each fact presented.

Q: Who was Lee Harvey Oswald and what was his
role in the assassination?
A: Oswald was a CIA agent. He was recruited
while still a US marine. He was sent to the Soviet
Union by the CIA with two main tasks: to spy and to
disinform. Oswald arrived in Moscow with data concerning the American radar network around and in
Japan. He underwent special training on a US military base at Atsugi preparatory to his trip to the
Soviet Union. He studied Russian and "communist
theory" and was allowed to subscribe to Pravda. This
is why, having failed in his mission due~e vigilance of Soviet counter-intelligence, Oswald was not
prosecuted on his return to the USA for giving secret
information to the Soviet Union. By request of the
CIA, the American embassy in Moscow paid the plane
fares to America for Oswald and his wife. Despite
existing American laws, the CIA also arranged to have
an entry visa issued to Oswald's Russian wife.
After returning to the United States, Oswald received a new assignment: to take part in the training of a special CIA terrorist group consisting of
Cuban counter-revolutionary exiles. The terrorists
were supposed to land in Cuba and assassinate Fidel
Castro.
The organising of the group took place in the geographical triangle Miami - New Orleans - Dallas.
They were trained in a special school on the shores
of Lake Ponchartrain near New Orleans. Jack Ruby,
David Ferrie and Gordon Novel were all there. Ruby
was also a CIA agent, Ferrie and Novel were operatives.
Oswald's assignment was to pretend to be a "communist". With this in mind, he organised a fictitious branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and
distributed leaflets in its name and even spoke on
the radio. However, Oswald made one serious error
which almost cost him the game. He gave as the address of the New Orleans branch of the Committee the
address of a private detective agency which was widely known in the ci ty as the headquarters of ul traright organisations and which served as a cover address for Cuban counter-revolutionary groups. Later
this mistake of Oswald's cost th~ lives of both owners of the detective agency -- they died in mysterious circumstances in 1964, just as did so many others
who knew too much about the killing in Dallas.
In the summer of 1963 the CIA received strict instructions from the Administration to stop its preparations for an attempt on the life of Fidel Castro.
However, the CIA did not carry out the orders, merely
switched objectives. All the above-named participants
in the preparations for terrorism in Cuba, both Amer39

icans and Cubans. were fascist-minded reactionaries
who hated Kennedy. Oswald. who was a right-winger.
as his connections in Dallas and New Orleans testify.
also hated him. Garrison was able to pin-point these
connections of Oswald's. Clay Shaw, under the name
Clay Bertrand. took on the leadership of the conspirators who decided, "for the good of America" that Ken:"
nedy had to be liquidated.
From the very beginning, Oswald was assigned the
role of sacriff~ial goat. though he himself did not
suspect it. He was chosen because of his past contacts with communism - his "defection" to the USSR,
his "work" with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, his
trip to Mexico to make contact with the Cuban and
USSR embassies. At first the plan was to organise
a trip to Cuba for Oswald just before the assassination to make the "communist conspiracy" more convincing.However, due to the vigilance of Soviet and
~uban security organs, Oswald was not allowed entry
to Cuba.
Oswald participated in the conspiracy against Kennedy, but he did not shoot at him.
Garrison was not able to establish what Oswald's
role in the conspiracy was, but he was able to show
that others, not Oswald, fired the shots.
Footnotes

1. Retranslated from the Russian. Tr.
2. ibid.

"THE COMPUTER DIRECTORY AND BUYERS GUIDE"
ISSUE OF "COMPUTERS AND AUTOMATION"
NOTICE
The U.S. Postmaster, Boston, Mass., ruled in Jdnuary
1972, that we may no longer include "The Computer
Directory and Buyers' Guide" issue of "Computers and
Automation", calling it an optional, thirteenth issue of
"Computers and Automation" regularly published in June,
and mailing it with second class mailing privileges.
The plan mentioned previously for publishing the directory as a quarterly with second class mailing privileges has
been disapproved and disallowed by the Classification Section of the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, D.C.
Accordingly, in 1972 "The Computer Directory and
Buyers' Guide", 18th annual issue, will be published in
one volume as a book, and mailed as a book.
The domestic price for "The Computer Directory and
Buyers' Guide" will be $14.50, but regular subscribers to
"Computers and Automation" may subscribe to the directory at $9.00 a year (there is thus no change for
them).
"The Computer Directory and Buyers' Guide" issue
of "Computers and Automation" has been published in
every year from 1955 to 1971, and 1972 will not be
an exception.

(To be continued in the next issue.)

You qre invited to enter our

COMPUTER ART CONTEST
the special feature of the August, 1972 issue of

computers
.and automation
815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. 02160

"Seahorses"
- Dflrbv Scanlon

GUIDELINES FOR ENTRY
I. Any interesting and artistic dr~wing, design or sketch made by
COmputer (~nalog or digital) may be entered.
2. Entries shol.1ld be submitted on white paper in black ink for
best reproduction. Color entries are acceptable, but they may
b~ published in blledcOtnl'l
Note
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