AFIPS

Three years ago, 877 of us gathered in Philadelphia at the first Joint Computer Conference, a meeting organized by a committee representing three professional societies which were then, as now, active in the design and application of electronic ...

In recent years, a very large proportion of the man-hours expended in designing and constructing new digital computers has been devoted to machines that are "internally programmed." By "internally programmed" we mean a machine in which all of the ...

The purpose of this paper is to survey a rather well-defined group of computing machines. No attempt will be made to place these machines in order with respect to certain applications. However, a listing of their pertinent characteristics will be given.

The problem of increasing the number of digits per linear inch of track length which can be reliably stored on and recovered from a magnetic medium is considered herein. The techniques to be described evolve from two well-known recording systems: the ...

As soon as large-scale digital computers made large amounts of data an easy thing to handle, considerable talk arose about the need for high-speed printers. Of the two general classifications of computer problems, that is scientific and business, the ...

The magnetic cores developed prior to 1952 were nonuniform and, therefore, extremely marginal in their operating characteristics. Not only did they present many circuit problems but they were difficult to manufacture as well. Since 1952, however, the ...

Computer input-output is basically a communications process, the link between the human element and the machine element. The very nature of this process creates a close relationship between computer input-output and telegraph communications. This was ...

The 102-D is a general-purpose computer using a magnetic drum for its internal memory. This drum has a storage capacity of 1,024 words of nonvolatile, permanent storage, each word containing the equivalent of ten decimal digits. Any word of the internal ...

The Marchant MINIAC system is a completely new approach to the automatic accounting system, or as it has been frequently termed, the automatic office. With no intention of entering into the current debate as to whether the automatic office has arrived, ...

At the Joint Computer Conference in February 1952, I presented a paper on the transistor as a digital computer component. My talk at that time was based upon some early experience with transistors which led to the TRADIC program. This paper will present ...

The Burroughs E101 digital computer is designed to fill the gap between standard desk calculators and large-scale digital computers. The machine combines flexibility of operator access and judgment, as in use of desk calculators, with automaticity on ...

There was a group of about 700 in attendance at the panel discussion on small digital computers and business applications. A show of hands was requested to clarify the composition of the audience. An estimated 15 per cent of the audience was interested ...

The chairman opened the session with some general remarks on errors, giving three kinds:

1. Errors due to machine malfunctioning.

2. Errors due to program mistakes.

3. Errors due to doing the wrong problem or using very inefficient methods.

The participants in the panel agreed that there had been very few examples of installations where both large computers and small computers of the type discussed at the conference were available.

The problem of finding solutions to various types of differential equations has intrigued mathematicians from a theoretical point of view for many years. It has also plagued many applied scientists for an equally long period of time. Except for the ...

There is a fairly large amount of recent literature on the subject of automatic coding for large calculators. For example there are the various compilers constructed for UNIVAC, the International Business Machines (IBM) 701 speed coding system, and the ...

Information retrieval is a task that must be accomplished whenever records have to be consulted to provide needed facts. The task may be simple and easy as, for example, in consulting the telephone directory. In contrast, it may require many hours of ...

In large-volume Teletype network operation, such as the periodic collection and dissemination of weather observations or the filing and processing of aircraft flight plans, certain basic clerical operations can be mechanized. Mechanization of this kind ...

This discussion will consider how the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company viewed the problem of how it might use the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) type 650 machine to fulfill part of a responsibility of considerable magnitude. ...

The photograph reproduced in Fig. 1 is an example of good optical imagery. The picture is crisp and considerable detail is resolved all over the area, even at the extreme edges and corners. Fig. 2 is a poor picture. The reasons are obvious. While the ...

Higher speeds, temperatures, and pressures, greater power, less allowable weight, and other requirements make it increasingly necessary for engineers to employ more accurate design techniques. Data-processing instrumentation has an important role to ...