JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I've found an unusual, informal document; a rough, manuscript outline for a consideration on the computing capacities at Fort Detrick, in Frederick Maryland. Fort Detrick is a Medical Command, and was the seat of research for the United States' biological weapons program (1943–69, which is today a part of the U.S. biological defense system), and is today a very large facility (on 1,200 acres) devoted to biomedical research. (It houses the "U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) and its bio-defense agency, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID)", as well as medical materiel management and global medical communications.)
The document ("Computer Requirements/Statistics Branch/Fort Detrick Maryland") is handwritten by the former chief statistician around 1957, and in five tight pages outlines the basic necessities for the needs of computing facilities at the fort. The document mentions two machines in particular, the "409-2" (with is the Remington Rand 409-2, an ENIAC style machine, produced in 1952) and the UNIVAC 120 (which is a release of the 409-2, done in 1953).
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