1959 Proceeding- Conference Chair:
- Frank E. Heart
For some time it has been customary to hear complaints about the limited value of large technical conferences. Despite this fact, I represent a group of people who have worked assiduously to arrange this affair. And over 2,300 people have expended considerable effort to attend. It is interesting to inquire seriously as to the reason for so much effort. There are, of course, a number of very cynical answers. However, I would like to offer a less cynical one.
Perhaps it is only a convenient rationalization but I still find the computer field an exciting and stimulating domain. The excitement about the computer arises in much the same way as the excitement about atomic energy; one may almost feel the changes being produced in society. For an applied scientist or engineer, it is usually the applications which lend to a discipline an aura of excitement. Well, then, I believe that many of us are here because of a continued enthusiasm in the possibilities of the computer. The number and importance of the potential applications are still increasing more rapidly than the onset of general boredom.
In the tiny span of years from the first to the ninth EJCC, we have been witness to a wholesale change in the techniques of scientific computation, witness to a revolution in business data handling, and witness to the use of computers for real time control of weapons systems, industrial plants and space vehicles. Surely these events are exciting enough to partially justify our large conferences.
And yet I believe that the most important applications of the computer have not yet been realized. Certainly computer inroads in the business world and the industrial plant have only just begun. However, for me, the most exciting applications are those which threaten to affect all aspects of human progress. I would like to point toward two such potentially pervasive applications --- two impending applications that excite me considerably.
The first is the application of the computer in studying and copying the characteristics of biological systems. This is a doubly potent use of a computer, involving useful feedback, because real gains in understanding biological systems might lead to better computer systems. The first steps in this direction have already been taken. Computers are being used for analysis of electroencephalograph data and will be used to study many other types of clinical data. Computers have been used to permit construction and study of models of neuron assemblages. A whole gamut of pattern recognition techniques is undergoing intensive investigation. People are trying to learn about learning. (Actually, even if we don't get very far, we will have the harmless fun of constructing more and better maze-solving programs and chess-playing programs while trying.)
The second application may be characterized as the library problem. I think that the proper way to measure the importance of this application is to think of it as a new way for people to tap the accumulated knowledge of the recent and distant past. The printing press was one such new way to tap the experience of the past, but now there are difficulties. The large number of printed books and journals, the existence of important scientific communities separated by language barriers and the inadequacies of our present retrieval techniques have seriously restricted our ability to connect pertinent information to pertinent researchers.
The pace of scientific progress might well take a large jump if, upon receiving a new project, a researcher might receive a graded synthesis of all human experience on that subject from the local library computer. Similarly, a lawyer, faced with a new case, would surely like to receive a relevance-ordered listing of all applicable court experience, and a doctor might be willing to trade clinical data and careful reporting in return for ordered estimates of diagnosis. In its present form, the technical journal itself may be facing its last few decades. The library computer concept is quite powerful, and it may some day be expedient for an author to send a new technical paper only to the library, without the continued expenditure of quite so much paper.
So, I don't think the excitement is dying out; I think it is increasing, and I expect that computer conferences will be of interest and value for some time to come.
Proceeding Downloads
Computers of the future
This paper considers the advances required in many related technologies to revolutionize the construction and use of digital data processing systems. In the following discussion we are particularly concerned with the radical change in fabrication ...
Negative-resistance elements as digital computer components
In determining the maximum repetition rate of a given switching circuit, the response of the switching device and the effect of other circuit parameters (including stray elements) must be taken into account. Although the switching speed is ultimately ...
Deposited magnetic films as logic elements
The use of thin magnetic films as storage elements is well known. Several papers on the subject have appeared in the literature, particularly in recent years. Less emphasized, perhaps, is the use of magnetic films as logic elements. The authors' study ...
Solid-state microwave high speed computers
This paper presents results of an effort aimed at developing the principles and technology required to speed the rate of computers up to the order of a thousand megacycles. The approach is based on the use of two types of two-terminal semi-conductor ...
The engineering design of the stretch computer
The Stretch Computer project was started in order to achieve two orders of magnitude of improvement in performance over the then existing 704. Although this computer, like the 704, is aimed at scientific problems such as reactor design, hydrodynamics ...
Design of Univac®-LARC system: I
This talk is a progress report and in many respects a final report on the Univac® --- LARC system which has been developed by Remington Rand Univac. It is a companion not only to another talk on LARC design being given at this time but with an earlier ...
Design of Univac®-LARC system: II
The engineering design of the LARC solid-state computer was a monumental challenge.
Arithmetic and control techniques in a multiprogram computer
In the design of a data processor for commercial applications, the designer is very often striving for better machine performance for little or no increase in cost. In the system design of the Honeywell 800 transistorized data processing system, several ...
The virtual memory in the STRETCH computer
Early in the planning of the STRETCH computer it was seen that by using the latest solid state components in sophisticated circuits it would be possible to increase the speed of floating point arithmetic by almost two orders of magnitude over that in ...
A combined analog-digital differential analyzer
The electronic analog computer, although very useful in solving many problems, and particularly useful in solving dynamic problems described by differential equations, suffers from limitations of accuracy and dynamic range. The digital differential ...
The system organization of MOBIDIC B
MOBIDIC B is an all transistorized, militarized computer mounted in a standard Army trailer. It is a general-purpose, parallel, binary, synchronous, fixed point, and duplexed data processing system.
A universal computer capable of executing an arbitrary number of sub-programs simultaneously
This paper describes a universal computer capable of simultaneously executing an arbitrary number of sub-programs, the number of such sub-programs varying as a function of time under program control or as directed by input to the computer. Three ...
The multi-sequence computer as a communications tool
This is a report on the merging of two fields: communication switching and computers. Recent advances in the computer art make it possible to satisfy the ever increasing communication switching requirements brought on, in part, by computers themselves ...
Realization of Boolean polynomials based on incidence matrices
This paper describes a general algebraic method of finding minimum contact networks for any given Boolean polynomial. Solutions obtained by this method may in general be any kind of connection with any number of contacts for each variable. Furthermore, ...
Applications of Boolean matrices to the analysis of flow diagrams
Any serious attempt at automatic programming of large-scale digital computing machines must provide for some sort of analysis of program structure. Questions concerning order of operations, location and disposition of transfers, identification of ...
SIMCOM: the simulator compiler
In many present-day activities involving the use of digital computers, the need often arises to run programs on a computer other than the one for which they are written. For example, the computer on which a program is intended to be run may exist only ...
Unusual techniques employed in heat transfer programs
A program for the IBM 704 to solve general transient and steady state heat transfer problems is described. The computer program was developed by Evendale Computations Operation in cooperation with the Jet Engine Department, General Electric Company, ...
The automatic transcription of machine shorthand
The recognition of digitalized speech signals is an important data processing problem, still completely unsolved. In fact, speech is the basic input to many data processing problems, and before any processing can take place, the speech signals must ...
Critical-path planning and scheduling
Among the major problems facing technical management today are those involving the coordination of many diverse activities toward a common goal. In a large engineering project, for example, almost all the engineering and craft skills are involved as ...
The automatic digital computer as an aid in medical diagnosis
The idea to be presented here is that an automatic digital computer can provide great assistance to the medical diagnostician by rapid calculation, based upon symptoms and physical findings, of the relative probability that a certain disorder fits that ...
An advanced magnetic tape system for data processing
It is a truism that for any but the smallest digital data processing systems major attention must be be given to the provision of an adequate magnetic tape transport, reading and writing system, and means for insuring the correctness of information all ...
A high speed, small size magnetic drum memory unit for subminiature digital computers
A Memory with dimensions compatible with microminiature assemblies is required for future computers to be used in missiles and aircraft. A drum memory is described which can fulfill this need. The bit rate of 546 kc makes possible a 20-bit serial word ...
Temperature compensation for a core memory
For fixed installation, it is often possible to control the temperature of ferrite core memories within narrow limits. However, in a small mobile computer designed to operate over world-wide conditions, this control is not feasible because of the added ...
Use of a computer to design character recognition logic
The IBM 1210 Sorter/Reader recognizes characters printed in a specified location on paper with magnetic ink. A schematic diagram of the machine system is given in Fig. 1. The characters first come to a writing head which induces a magnetic field in the ...
A self-organizing binary system
Any stimulus to a system such as described in this paper can be coded into a binary representation. A character on a piece of paper can be represented in binary form by dividing the paper into many small squares and assigning a 1 to a square if the ...
Alpha-numeric character recognition using local operations
This paper describes a demonstration of the recognition of thirty-four alpha-numeric characters. The IBM 704 EDPM was used as a tool to study the method which led to this demonstration. The Generalized Scanner was used as an input transducer for this ...
Pattern recognition and reading by machine
Many efforts have been made to discriminate, categorize, and quantitate patterns, and to reduce them into a usable machine language. The results have ordinarily been methods or devices with a high degree of specificity. For example, some devices require ...
Discussion of problems in pattern recognition
- W. W. Bledsoe,
- J. S. Bomba,
- I. Browning,
- R. J. Evey,
- R. A. Kirsch,
- R. L. Mattson,
- M. Minsky,
- U. Neisser,
- O. G. Selfridge
Various problems encountered in pattern recognition were examined by an eight-man panel during the Thursday afternoon session. The panel included O. G. Selfridge, M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, Session Chairman; R. A. Kirsch, National Bureau of Standards; ...
A computer analytic method for solving differential equations
In recent years, numeric analysis has been claiming an increasing share of overall mathematical research activity. The reason for this is apparently the need to have answers --- numeric answers --- to problems of modern technology, along with the ...
Normalized floating-point arithmetic with an index of significance
It has been frequently pointed out that the task of determining an error-bound for the results of a problem is usually a long difficult calculation, which is avoided as much as possible by the programmer. The introduction of floating-point arithmetic in ...