ZUW 1.These were intended to be printed and circulated among the designers as a master list from which to choose signal names.One problem became increasingly evident as the first print-outs, emerged from the machine, however; some of the computer-generated words, although highly efficient phonetically, were se-

To conserve manpower and reduce the time needed for designing, assembling, and maintaining new large-scale computers, existing computers have been used to produce design and maintenance data for the new machines automatically. This paper describes some techniques that were devised at the National Bureau of Standards for automatically converting a logical design into detailed wiring plans which specify the actual pin-to-pin connections and other data necessary for assembling, debugging, and maintaining a new machine. Starting from punched-card input transcriptions of the logical design of the new computer, expressed in terms of Boolean algebra, an IBM 704 was programmed to produce 20,000 printed pages of wiring plans, fabrication data, and logical debugging and maintenance manuals.

The PILOT data processor is a high-speed multiple computer system, more than 100 times faster than SEAC. It contains three interconnected computers for rapid processing of data, and also contains multiple input-output channels for rapid transfer of data into and out of the system. All of these units operate concurrently in a coordinated fashion. A summary description is given of the over-all logical plan of the system, including the principal characteristics of the first computer, the second computer, the third computer, the internal controls, and the external controls. The system combines internal processing capabilities that are fast and versatile with external communication capabilities that are exceptionally flexible. This combination permits the internal power of the machine to be exploited readily by the outside world,—either by other automatic devices or by human operators.

Aeeociation for Contouring Mmchinery

The DYSEAC is a complete general-purpose high-speed digital computer utilizing the same basic electronic circuit elements as those in SEAC. In the DYSEAC, however, these basic building blocks have been organized into a more powerful system for controlling and responding to auxiliary devices. Communication between these auxiliary devices and the DYSEAC (or between the DYSEAC and the persons operating it) can take place at any time, on a completely unscheduled basis, at the instigation of either the computer or the external world, or both acting jointly. The System features which enable such impromptu interchanges of information to occur are described in this paper.

In the course of developing the system plans for the DYSEAC and the SEAC, certain standard methods and procedures were evolved for producing a large-scale digital computer design. These standard procedures cover, first, the development of system specifications, second, the development of functional plans, and finally the development of wiring plans. The later stages of these procedures are reducible to sequences of simple steps, capable of being systematically formulated in explicit terms. The similarity between these procedures and many of the data-processing procedures commonly being executed by present-day computers suggests that, with further development of these design techniques, the wiring plans for new computer systems might well be produced by existing digital machines.