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The "Does-All" Computer Program, ca. 1962

JF Ptak Science Books 

A. James Dukes. Does-All.  U.S. Army Chemical Corps, Fort Detrick, Maryland.

This 11x8 inch mimeographed/stapled publication does not have a date of publication, but as near as I can determine it was assembled in the early 1960's.  It does mention several computers by name, the last of which,. the LARC, was suggested in 1960. 

39pp(+3pp).  Fine condition. Rare. (No copies located in WorldCat.) $125

There was no program called the "Does-All".  This was an ironic suggestion for the name of a program to illustrate this rather lengthy introduction to computers (hardware and software) written by Mr. Dukes of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps at Fort Detrick. He has a very light pen and a good sense of humor, and writes with a great deal of clarity, and given the time period and his place of business (!) I'd say it was about the funniest intro to compsci that I've seen in the relatively early stuff. Dukes spends the first dozen pages or so on the hardware, with the remainder dedicated to writing programs--the writing is filled with insight and analogies.

Charming, really.  

Notes:

Before it became more of a household name in popular movie culture Fort Detrick started out as Detrick Field (1931-1946), and then became Camp Detrick (1943-1956), and then on to Fort Detrick (U>S. Army Medical Command, plus dozens of other commands based there). When this pamphlet was printed Detrick was the seat of the U.S. bio-weapons program (1943-1969).  

 

 

One of the Earliest Journals Dedicated to the Computer (1950-1962)

Smith, Albert E. and A.J. Neumann. Digital Computer Newsletter. [Washington]: Office of Naval Research, Mathematical Sciences Division. 1 Jan 1950 to July 1962. 15 issues of the 48 published (which ran from May 1949 to 1964), including vols 2 #s1-4, 3 1-3, 4 1, 8 3+4, 9 1+4; 12, 3+4. Pagination: vols 2 1-4 4pp; 3, 2-3 6pp; 4, 1 and after are 20pp, comprising about 125pp total. 10”x8”, offset printed, staple bound. Four issues have the original owner's name stamped on the front cover, otherwise all are Fine.  described as "Very Rare" at a Bonham's auction, though they were selling a complete run, which I think is the "very rare" part. The journal in parts like this is at the very least very scarce. $650/15 issues

This is one of the earliest periodicals dedicated to computer hardware, stating on the cover: "The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a medium for the interchange, among interested persons, of information concerning recent developments in various digital computer projects" 

Here's a list of the majority of the computers and computing centers addressed in the newsletter:

Aberdeen (ENIAC ORDVAC EDSAC), ACE, Adalia, Air Force Arm Center (ARDC), BARK, Sweden, Bell Computer VI, Bendix Digital Comp and Diff Analyzer, Bureau of Ships, BurroughS, CADAC, California Digital Computer, CARDATRON. Circle Computer, CRC101 Digital Diff Analyzer, DATATRON, Deuce, E.M.I. England, ALWAC 800, ECC, EDSAC, ELECOM 125, ElectroData, Elliott Bros, ERA 1101, ERMA, Ferranti. FERUT, FLAC, FLAG I and II, IAS, IBM 350, Institute Numerical Analysis, LARC, MADDIDA, Manchester, Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterda, MURA, NAREC, Naval Air Task Center, Naval Ordnance Supply, Naval Proving Ground, NBS Eastern Automatic Computer, NBS SEAC, NBS SWAC, NRL NAREC, ORACLE, ORDVAC, PENNSTAC, RAMAC 650, RAYDAC, Raytheon, SAGE, SEAC, Stock Exchange Automation Toronto, SWAC, Sylvania Data Processing, Telecommunications Research Estab Computer Toronto, TRANSAC, U.S. Patent Office, U.S. Weather Bureau, UNIVAC, UNIVAC 1103A, Universal Digital Operational Flight trainer, Whirldwind, Zuse IV.

 

The IBM 650, 1960

GROSVENOR, D.D and H.O. Hartley.  IBM 650 Program for Linear Programming.  Statistical Laboratory, Iowa State University; Ames, Iowa:  1960.  11x8.5 inches, 134pp (printed on one side of the sheet, only) offset mimeo, staple bound.  Fine condition.  $500  There are no citings for this work in WorldCat/OCLC. 

Notes on this paper as they appear in "Linear Programming on High Speed Computers", Author(s): J. Rudolf : Journal of Farm Economics, Vol. 42, No. 5, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Farm Economic Association (Dec., 1960), pp. 1439-1444:
"1. Sorting and selection. This problem has to some degree been alleviated by the new linear programming code for the IBM 650 as developed by Hartley and Grosvenor at Iowa State University. In this program the operator has a choice of allowing the 650 to do an iteration for every positive element appearing in the simplex vector. This produces a larger number of total iterations, but the saving in time afforded by not having to look for the largest in an entire set of vectors can actually reduce the total computation time. Also, this program allows the operator to preselect certain iterations, thereby allowing a human to enter himself into the program. This is, however, done at the beginning of the program and therefore the program need not be interrupted, which, as indicated, loses a great amount of time."

"2. Storage. It is in the storage requirements that a great step forward can be made. It is possible to construct a vector (the "eta vector") of numbers which allows the transition from one iteration to the next by a matrix vector multiplication. This has been taken advantage of, again in the Hartley-Grosvenor program from Iowa State, to reduce storage requirements. In these programs the original matrix is on cards or tape and only the eta vectors are stored on the drum. Since the size of these vectors corresponds to the number of restrictions in the problem, one can store a large number of vectors, and thereby record a large number of iterations in the storage capacity of most computers. This advantage is somewhat tempered by the fact that the entire matrix must be fed into the machine through an input-output device for every iteration. Since input-output is very often a limiting factor in high speed computers this presents somewhat of a disadvantage. Therefore, this approach may not be very suitable for the very fast, very large computers."

 

The ALWAC 800 System 1956

ALWACS 800 System.  Logistics Reasearch Inc, Redondo Beach, California, October 31, 1956. Report on the ALWAC 800 system, a never-implemented magnetic drum/logic machine named for the man with the money behind the enterprise, Axel Wenner-Gren (automatic computer). 27 leaves, 1 table, 4 diagrams.  Marked "Strictly Confidential". Offset printed, gvc-bound, plastic cover.  Very good condition. Rare.  $950

"ALWAC 800 series, the first high speed, high capacity electronic data processing system to combine magnetic core storage, magnetic element logic and modular construction applicable to commercial, industrial, and scientific data processing."-- http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102724848

“... In November 1952, Wenner-Gren helped the company to incorporate. He soon controlled the company and renamed it ALWAC (the Axel L. Wenner-Gren Automatic Computer). ALWAC I was used in 1953, ALWAC and ALWAC III  in 1954, ALWAC III-E in 1955. In 1956 and 1957, the model ALWAC III-E was considered a competitor to the IBM 650, having fewer parts and good economy, but no more than 30 units seem to have been delivered.  Soon after this, magnetic drum machines were made obsolete by the introduction of the magnetic core memory. By 1956 the number of employees tripled to over 300 and the company was relocated to an industrial park in Hawthorne, California. The appearance of the transistor in the electronics industry in 1957 was a financial shock for all vacuum tube computer makers and by 1958 ALWAC in Hawthorn closed and its employees, with the help of Wenner-Gren himself, were successful hired by Litton Industries and Autonetics and several smaller electronics companies. The follow-up ALWAC 800 was a failed design that never went beyond prototype, using not only core memory but also magnetic logic...” wikipedia on Wenner-Gren

 

Computer Ephemera, M.I.T., Whirlwind, 1953

Digital Computers and their Applications, Special Summer Program. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Business Operations, Scientific Computations, Business Control. August 24-September 4, 1953.

10”x8” , 6pp, printed on one sheet, tri-folded. With: detached single sheet “Application for Admission to the Special Summer Program”. Very Good condition. Scarce piece of computer/MIT ephemera.  $125

The staff includes the great pioneers M.V. Wilkes and Jay W. Forrester with the summer members working on the Whirlwind I. 

 

An Apparatus for Calculating Efficiency (1883)

C. Vernon Boys, "Meters for Power and Electricity", in Nature, 14 June 1883, vol 28 #711, pp 162-5 in the weekly issue of pp 145-168.  Original self-wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume. Crisp and clean copy. $95  This is from Boys' lecture at the Royal Institution, March 2, 1883.  

C. Vernon Boys (1855-1944) was a British physicist and fine experimentalist and contributed this exemplary instrumentation article which appeared in the journal Nature (14 June 1883), when the no-longer new-ish journal rapid-published the breaking and thoughtful science news of the day every week.  Generally articles in the early decades would seldom range over two pages--of course, the pages were dense, and in two columns, with usually 80 lines per column and ten words per line, so each page could be filled with 1600 words, which is four times the general length of a novel.  In any event Boys' article ran five columns, or about 5,000 words, which is a fairly meaty article.  

From Gaston Tissandier's Popular Scientific Recreations (1883):

Mr. C. Vernon Boys has exhibited and described a very ingenious new 
integrating machine of his invention, and its application as a measurer of the 
electric energy in the circuit of an electric lamp or a dynamo-electric motor. 
Mr. Boys' mechanical integrator belongs to the class termed tangent machines, 
and consists essentially of a small disc or wheel running along the surface of 
a drum or cylinder. When the wheel runs straight along the drum parallel 
to its axis there is no rotation of the latter, but when the wheel is inclined 
to the axis the drum rotates, and the integral is represented by the amount 
of rotation. Continuous action is secured in giving the drum a recipro- 
cating motion along its axis, so that when the wheel has travelled to one end 
of the cylinder it can travel back again. The new integrator is especially 
adapted for measuring forces which are either delicate or variable. It is 
applied by causing the varying force to be measured to vary in a correspond- 
ing manner the inclination of the wheel to the axis of the rotating cylinder.

Some of Boys' papers on calculating and measuring machines include:

• “An integrating machine.” Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 4:199–206, 1881.

• “On a machine for solving equations.”Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 7:355–360, 1885.

• “A new analytical engine.” Nature, 81(2070):14–15, 1909

• “Apparatus for calculating efficiency.” Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 5: 28–35, 1882a.

• “On integrating and other apparatus for the measurement of mechanical and electrical forces.” Proceedings of the Physical Society of London, 5:8–28, 1882b

Rare Block Diagrams for the UNIVAC (1950)

 

The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first commercially-available electronic computer, and the first computer to handle both numeric and alphabetic information, produced by Remington Rand, and  came into working service at the Bureau of the Census in 1951.  It was designed by John Mauchly and Pres Eckert Jr, who also worked together in the design and construction of the first digital computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (the famous ENIAC). The UNIVAC was a Big Boy: 25'x50', with 5,600 tubes, and 18,000 crystal diodes--given its workhorse nature and general success, by 1957 there were 46 UNIVACs in operation. 

The following are working block diagrams of sections of the UNIVAC, produced by some sort of early offset process in 1950, slightly before the computer came to its working life.  I have a number of sections of the computer represented in this way, but not the entire machine--but what is here may be of interest to historians of computer science.

18 sheets representing seven sections of the computer: $1750.

Including:

[Supervisory Control Panel]

• 1.  The Supervisory Control Panel (2 sheets of 3, including center and left third, both undated but assumed to be 1950 like all of the others. [Shown above]

• 2.  Uniservo Control Circuits. 3 sheets of 3.  All dated 8/10/50.

• 3.  Output Synchronizer. 4 sheets of 4.  Dated 8/1/50 through 8/4/50.

• 4.  Input Synchronizer.  4 sheets of 4.  Dated 8/1/50 to 11/9/50. 

• 5.  Control Register.  1 sheet of 1.  6/21/50.

• 6.  High Speed Bus Amplifier and Sample Memory Channel.  1 sheet of 1. 6/21/50

• 7.  Input-Output Control Circuits, 3 of 3 sheets,  8/7/50

 

The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first commercially-available electronic computer, and the first computer to handle both numeric and alphabetic information, produced by Remington Rand, and  came into working service at the Bureau of the Census in 1951.  It was designed by John Mauchly and Pres Eckert Jr, who also worked together in the design and construction of the first digital computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (the famous ENIAC). The UNIVAC was a Big Boy: 25'x50', with 5,600 tubes, and 18,000 crystal diodes--given its workhorse nature and general success, by 1957 there were 46 UNIVACs in operation. 

The following are working block diagrams of sections of the UNIVAC, produced by some sort of early offset process in 1950, slightly before the computer came to its working life.  I have a number of sections of the computer represented in this way, but not the entire machine--but what is here may be of interest to historians of computer science.

18 sheets representing seven sections of the computer: $1750.

Including:

[Supervisory Control Panel]

• 1.  The Supervisory Control Panel (2 sheets of 3, including center and left third, both undated but assumed to be 1950 like all of the others. [Shown above]

• 2.  Uniservo Control Circuits. 3 sheets of 3.  All dated 8/10/50.

• 3.  Output Synchronizer. 4 sheets of 4.  Dated 8/1/50 through 8/4/50.

• 4.  Input Synchronizer.  4 sheets of 4.  Dated 8/1/50 to 11/9/50. 

• 5.  Control Register.  1 sheet of 1.  6/21/50.

• 6.  High Speed Bus Amplifier and Sample Memory Channel.  1 sheet of 1. 6/21/50

• 7.  Input-Output Control Circuits, 3 of 3 sheets,  8/7/50

 

Superior Single-Sheet Guide to Major Characteristics of Leading Computers, 1956

A.J. Perlis and John Carrs  Characteristics of the Small-Scale Computers. 11x8”, 4pp. Product Engineering-Project Design Digest, offprint, “Mid-October”, 1956. The article first appeared in Control Engineering, March 1956. 

This pamphlet looked innocent enough, 12" tall and one folded piece of paper, and published in 1956, but there was a lot more to the simple publication than you'd expect from something so modest. The authors--John W. Carr III and Alan J. Perlis--were heavy hitters, and so I really wasn't very surprised to see what they had done "inside", though I was impressed and happy to see the data. Displayed on the 11"x16" sheet of paper are 15 data points on 14 computers, many of them classic/famous:  the 650 IBM, UNIVAC, Elecom, Alawac.  (Remember that when you're looking at purchase price and monthly rental amounts that the 1956 dollar is equal to about $8.70 in 2015 dollars, so that $3275/month for the 650 would be about $30k.  The $136k for the Datatron is about a million today.)   

  

Computers, Nuclear Warfare, and Afterwards (1964)

UNIVAC, Division of Sperry Rand Corporation, presents INSIGHT.  Carbon copy transcript of a broadcast on Radio Station WGMS, Washington D.C., April 13, 1964.  8 leaves on onionskin paper. Fine copy. Two horizontal folds. $400

This title may sound overly dramatic, but it really isn't. As part of the Mutually Assured Destruction game plan there was an absolute necessity for calculating the leftovers from a nuclear exchange in order to convince the aggressor nation (which of course in 1964 would be the Soviet Union) that in spite of massive destruction the U.S. would be situated to carry out acting as a government/society/military in the post-war world. Part of figuring all of that out would entail a massive amount of bean counting for personnel, materiel, natural resources, and so on in a nearly endless list of stuff that runs the U.S., and then figuring out where it all was, and how it would/could be affected by a nuclear strike at X^X locations, and that with different yields, and weather patterns, and so on, on into the night, of how a nuclear attack of x-capacity would affect the tactical and strategic and social base of the U.S.  So you'd have to gather all of that data, and then lay it all on in X^X scenarios that would all be played out in computer simulations.  

And that is what this interview is all about--explained on the radio to a general listening audience by Joseph Coker, who was at the time chief of the NREC (the National Resource Evaluation Center). All of this made its own crazy sense, and all of it had to be done, running both towards and away from the black hole that did and didn't exist.  

 

This title may sound overly dramatic, but it really isn't. As part of the Mutually Assured Destruction game plan there was an absolute necessity for calculating the leftovers from a nuclear exchange in order to convince the aggressor nation (which of course in 1964 would be the Soviet Union) that in spite of massive destruction the U.S. would be situated to carry out acting as a government/society/military in the post-war world. Part of figuring all of that out would entail a massive amount of bean counting for personnel, materiel, natural resources, and so on in a nearly endless list of stuff that runs the U.S., and then figuring out where it all was, and how it would/could be affected by a nuclear strike at X^X locations, and that with different yields, and weather patterns, and so on, on into the night, of how a nuclear attack of x-capacity would affect the tactical and strategic and social base of the U.S.  So you'd have to gather all of that data, and then lay it all on in X^X scenarios that would all be played out in computer simulations.  

And that is what this interview is all about--explained on the radio to a general listening audience by Joseph Coker, who was at the time chief of the NREC (the National Resource Evaluation Center). All of this made its own crazy sense, and all of it had to be done, running both towards and away from the black hole that did and didn't exist.  

 

“Hand it Over to the Machine” (1878)

 

SPOTTISWOODE, William. (William Spottiswoode, 1825-1883, an English mathematician and physicist, president of the Royal Society from 1878 to 1883, and of the British (Science) Association in 1878 as well.) “British Association”, address on the state of the British Association by the president, in Nature, vol 18, no. 459, occupying most of the weekly issue, pp 403-425 in the issue of pp 401-428. Detached from larger bound volume, but offered with the original wrappers (including 11 pages of advertising, some of which is fantastic). Good/VG condition. $300.00

There's a lot of interest in this review and state of affairs of the sciences and technology, including sections on Mathematics, Literature and Art, Physics Measurements, Manifold Space, Imaginaries, a full page on Non-Euclidean Geometry, and more.

Of particular interest to me is the half-column entry for “Mechanical Methods” (on page 413), which turns out to be “mechanical appliances”, or calculating machines/engines. It starts with an unusual assertion:

“Mr Babbage, when speaking of the difficulty of insuring accuracy in the long numerical calculations of theoretical astronomy, remarked that that “most accurate science” had become “inaccurate and uncertain in some of its results”.

Spottiswoode continues with an explanation and a dig: “It is doubtless, some such consideration as this, coupled with his dislike of employing skilled labour when unskilled labour would suffice, which led him to his invention o the calculating machine”.

The author then makes another—again, to my experience—unusual observation, referring to the replacement of human thinking capacity by a machine:

“The idea of substituting mechanized for intellectual power has not lain dormant...”

It is a very short comment, but I think makes a strong if understated point.

The author then moves onto the “recent” machine of James Thomson (“by its aid it seems an unskilled laborer may, in a given time, perform the work of ten skilled arithmeticians...reduced to the simple process of turning a handle”.

Spottiswoode finishes with a flourish, though it is easy to read through. In telling the story of Michael Faraday, who after muscling through some concept and determining that the next step wopuld be to hammer it all out mathematically, would “irreverently “ say “hand it over to the calculators”, which at that point was a team of human calculators, arithmeticians.

And the finish:

“But truth is stranger than fiction; and if he had lived until our day, he might with perfect propriety have said, 'Hand it over to the machine' ”.

It is a small statement with a lot of possibility. Even though this comes seven years after Babbage gave up the ghost in Marleybone, it still seems remarkably early to be talking about this sort of major impact in the conduct of the sciences, lending part of the process over to machines. The Industrial Revolution is well into it second century by this point, and human effort in all manner of manufacturing has been replaced by machines—except here the active part of the human experience in the creation of ideas is the thing that is becoming “machinized”.