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Science / Space Race

[November 1, 1964] Time (sharing) travel

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by Ida Moya

New Toys for Los Alamos

As the Traveler said, things have really been heating up in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL). And what with President Kennedy being taken from us so traumatically last year, it has all been too much. We have been struggling with national security while mourning the loss of our leader, and also attending to a deluge of new computers that are coming into the lab. Things have calmed down a little so I am now able to share a few secrets with you again.

Page from LA-1 document
Page from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory report LA-1

I've been busy helping with the preparation of the upcoming declassification of the Los Alamos Primer. This is the very first official technical report we produced at LASL, numbered LA-1. It is based on 5 lectures introducing the principles of nuclear weapons. These lectures were given in 1943 by LASL librarian Charlotte Serber’s husband, the physicist Robert Serber. You bet it's release took a long time to get this approved. Doing the work to cross out all those “Secret Limited” stamps and restamp each page with "Unclassified" also took some time.

Los Alamos is so important to the nation’s top-secret defense work that we are able to commandeer the first of each of the fastest computers manufactured. We had Serial no. 1 of the IBM 701 “Defense Calculator” in 1953. LASL also tested one of the first of 8 IBM 7030 “Stretch” computers, which even with its uptime shortcomings can calculate so fast that some people call it a “Supercomputer.”

I’m sure I also told you that we finally received our IBM 7090 computer. This equipment is being used for big science calculations around atomic energy, guided missile control, strategic planning (cryptanalysis, weather prediction, game theory), and jet engine design. I'm sure it is no surprise when I tell you we are using it to simulate nuclear explosions. This computer also has what they call an “upgrade,” the addition of more memory and input-output capability. The upgraded computer is called an IBM 7094.

Scientists at LASL, Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been working on better ways for computer operators to use the IBM 7094. Rather than custom-writing each computer operation and calculation that have to be done, they are working on a kind of “supervisor” to allow for more than one person to use the computer at the same time. This "operating system" is called CTSS or Compatible Time Sharing System.

Robert Fano sitting at a teletype
I don't have a current picture of Marge, but here is MIT Professor Robert Fano using CTSS from a Teletype ASR 35.

Sharing the Wealth

It's difficult to convey just how important this will be. Computers are hideously expensive things, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They are also vital for any scientific institution's operations. Currently, only one person at a time can use them, which results in one of two situations. Either one person at a time has a monopoly on the machine during for the time it takes to compose and enter a program into the machine (incredibly inefficient) or programs are written "off-line" and run in a "batch". This latter solution ensures that the computer is always running, but it means no one can access the computer in real-time, and it might take days to get results (or notice that the program failed to run correctly!)

With time-sharing, several people can use a computer at once, running different programs in real-time. While the performance might not be as efficient for the computer, since it is accommodating multiple processes at once, the increased efficiency for the operator should more than make up for it.

One of my colleagues at MIT, Marjorie Merwin-Dagget, co-wrote a paper with Robert C. Daly and MIT lab head Fernando J. Corbato (Corby) about the CTSS operating system. You can have a look at it here An Experimental TIme Sharing System.

The Mother of Invention

Marge majored in math, taught for a couple of years, then found a position doing calculations and differential equations at an engineering lab. In the mid-50s, one of Marge’s female colleagues at this lab was sent to MIT to learn about the Whirlwind computer, and when this colleague came back, she taught her about how to code for Whirlwind.

Marge then leveraged this knowledge to code applications for a card punch calculator, an IBM 407 accounting machine, which was much quicker than the manual equipment their lab had been using. This clever coding work helped her land a job from Prof. Frank Verzuh in the MIT computer center. Marge got her friend Robert "Bob" Daly a job there too, because he was so skilled programming the IBM 407.

IBM 407 Accounting Machine showing detail of plugboard.
The IBM 407 Accounting Machine is "programmed" by changing wires on this plugboard.

One of Marge's first assignments was to compare assembly language programming to FORTRAN programming. Her findings are that FORTRAN is quicker to use and easier for other programmers to understand. She quickly became the FORTRAN expert of her group. She even got to work with the brilliant John McCarthy. John has been promoting the notion of timesharing computer systems at MIT and beyond. These computers are so fast that, John reasons, that several people can use them at once.

Marge tells me that Corby thought she and Bob are the best programmers on the staff. CTSS started  as a demo, to demonstrate the feasibility of computer timesharing. This demo turned into a viable system, something people wanted to actually use. She worked one-on-one a lot with Corby, rehashing the problems. They ended up working a lot at odd hours, staying up late going over listings and working out the problems. Kind of like those “hackers” I told you about last year. She was so excited when she told me that it finally worked for two Flexowriters.

Fernando Corbato stands amidst an IBM 7090 computer system.
MIT's Fernando Corbato standing amidst some of an IBM 7090 computer system at MIT.

Corby worked on programming the supervisor and queueing, while Marge took the task of coding interrupt handling, saving the state of the machine, commands, character handling, and a method for inputting and editing lines for the demos. Bob Daly was best at translating this to the mechanical working of the computer.

After co-writing this paper, Marge got married and took a leave of absence after her first child was born. She did return to MIT last year (1963), and is working part-time on smaller support projects outside the mainstream of CTSS development. It’s troubling how difficult it is for a woman to juggle fulfilling technical work with the demands of raising a young family.

Things to Come

Next time, I will tell you about our newest Supercomputer, the CDC 6600. This remarkable machine, designed by that wag Seymour Cray, is being installed in Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory right now. It is so fast and hot that it has to be cooled by Freon, which is making for a lot of fuss with air conditioning technicians coming and going to the lab. I spend a lot of time making copies of "Site Preparation Guide" manuals for everyone from the managers to the technicians. There's a lot more to these computers than just programming languages, that's for sure.  I hear that IBM is working on a new computer system, the 360. One of its requirements is that the pieces be able to fit through standard doors, and ride in standard elevators. Guess buyers are getting tired of having to break through walls to get their computers installed!

CDC 6600 computer system
Installation manual photo of the CDC 6600. Look at that display console with the two round screens, perfect decor for your evil lair.

[Come join us at Portal 55, Galactic Journey's real-time lounge! Talk about your favorite SFF, chat with the Traveler and co., relax, sit a spell…]




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Science / Space Race

[May 22, 1963] Beyond the Typewriter (IBM Computers and how they work)

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by Ida Moya

I was very impressed by this month’s paean to the IBM Selectric Typewriter by traveler Victoria Lucas. Her sensuous love of the very physicality of the thing really got to me. As I mentioned before, knowing how to type is what made me what I am today; I too used this panoply of ever-better equipment, so I really enjoyed her story. The IBM Selectric is an incredibly satisfying typewriter to operate.

The most intriguing part of Miss (Mrs.?) Lucas’ article was her closing question, “What are you going to do to steal my heart next, IBM?  For example, where is this computer thing going? Will it be the next love of my life?”

Answer: The computer will be the next love of your life. (Or maybe your master.)

My place of employ, Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), is a frontrunner in adopting new computing technologies. I have worked in different capacities as LASL moved from calculating equipment that ran with hand-propelled gears and ratchet wheels, to things electrically controlled by mechanical switches, to those using electomechanical relays. (The IBM Selectric uses yet another kind of electromechanical switch, though since it is not properly a computer I won’t address it now.) The height of switching technology was until very recently vacuum tubes, which are now being by supplanted by transistors. Transistors, an amazing miniaturized technology, are much smaller than vacuum tubes, work faster, and don’t get as hot.

With computers, there are a lot of viewpoints from which one can focus. I think of computers more from the perspective of an operator: making software programs run on the computers, and producing and analyzing the results. Other people think about computer architecture — how does the data flow in and out of the computer, and what happens when the information is processed inside.

Here is a picture of one of the three vacuum tube-based IBM 704 computers at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. One of my colleagues, a computer operator, is shown opening the front door of the IBM 729 tape drive. As you can see, no special protective gear is required, and she doesn’t even have to wear a hair net. This is from just a few years ago; the computers we have now are even faster and more sophisticated.

The way we get a program into the computer is to punch the program onto cards, then use the card reader (the low piece of equipment in the center of this photograph) to transfer the program onto magnetic tapes. From the tape, the program is read into the computer’s core memory.

Data – for example, parameters for an experimental design study for a thermonuclear warhead, something you want to calculate over and over again with different settings — is then punched onto another set of cards, and read directly into the core memory. The program is transferred yet another time, to the CPU, the Central Processing Unit. There, the program acts on each of the data points in the core as appropriate. The results are printed out onto greenbar paper by the printer, which is the rightmost piece of equipment.

IBM produced this nifty card to illustrate the wonderful equipment they have to punch, sort, and interpret the cards.

We even have this little slide rule, which managers use to calculate how long it will take for keypunch operators to do a job. This little rule is our master – woe betide you if you cannot keep up!

I’m not sure what computing establishment this picture below is from, but here are a bunch of gals using IBM 026 card punches, very much like here at LASL. It’s nice to have a job and be a part of something important. But this windowless room jam packed with keypunch operators is depressing. Imagine how loud it is in there for these women. (Mary Whitehead tells me that when they were using calculators Weapons Research Establishment in Salisbury, Australia, they had carpeting in the room and egg crates lining the walls to attempt to absorb some of the sound. Not so lucky here.)


From Wikipedia

And heaven help them if they ever have to use that fire extinguisher. The cords on the floor look like a real trip hazard. However, most of these gal are just working for a year or two before they get married and become housewives, so it doesn’t pay to make the conditions any better. Me, even though my husband works at the Santa Fe Railroad, we don’t have that luxury. We both have to work in order to make ends meet and raise our wonderful children. I suspect more and more women are going to join the workforce permanently in the coming years, and these conditions will become a lot more humane for all of the future computer workers.

Another perspective from which to understand computing is the physical components inside the computer that come together to make a larger whole. For example this IBM Field Replaceable Unit (FRU), pictured below. On top of the unit are several vacuum tubes, while the rest of the contraption consists of resistors, diodes, and other discrete components. Electrons flow through this and, ingeniously, compute the Boolean logic of ands, ors, and nots.

I took this module as a souvenir from our IBM 704 system when it was decommissioned. Unlike the computers built as one unique unit, like say the one-off computers ENIAC or MANIAC, the 704 is constructed of a small number of modules. If a component in one of these modules goes bad, the individual module is removed and quickly replaced with a new module – then the computer works again. The bad module can be tested and repaired at a more leisurely pace.  These computers are expensive to own and run; keeping them “up” as much as possible, for all three shifts, is imperative.

The IBM 7030 Stretch was also designed with modularity in mind. Instead of tubes, the Stretch uses transistors, as you can see on this Standard Modular System (SMS) card below. This particular module, about the size of a playing card, is a “two-way AND,” a particular kind of Boolean logic gate. SMS cards were first developed for the Stretch, and are also used in the brand new IBM 7090, 1401, and other super-fast IBM computers and peripherals of today.

If you look closely at the transistors, which are the metal cans, you can see the Texas-shaped brand mark of Texas Instruments. This American company has learned how to mass-produce transistors. Inside this can is a teeny little piece of germanium crystal, a “semiconductor,” with some probes attached. (And by attached, I mean soldered together by women using binocular microscopes and steady hands, jammed together in another terrible windowless room). Manipulating and transforming the way electrons flow through these cans is, ultimately how the computer does our bidding. Interestingly, computer operators don’t need to know about this in detail; we can leave it to the expert computer engineers and technicians.

IBM is not the only company using a modular strategy. For example a few days ago the traveler showed a brand-new Siemens 3003 computer system. I don’t have a parts book for this German company, so I don’t know what this particular module does, but you can see in the picture below there are two silver can-shaped transistors, plus some other colored packages of components.


(Courtesy of The Living Computer Museum

So, Miss Lucas, there is plenty to love about computers. Don’t get stuck just being a typist, and join us in the transistorized revolution!

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Science / Space Race

[Mar. 30, 1963] Mercury waltzes Matilda (the tracking and research station at Woomera, Australia)

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by Ida Moya

I’m back from a whirlwind of helping the data analysts at Los Alamos get their FORTRAN formulas running on that balky old IBM Stretch computer. I can see why IBM only made 8 of these things. It is miraculous to have a computer that can fit into a single room, but this stretch (pardon the pun) in computing technology still averages only 17 hours uptime a day — and that’s also a stretch (no more, I promise).

When it breaks, this swarm of white-coated men in ties comes in and fusses around with it with a bunch of special tools, as well as the set of ALDs (Automated Logic Diagrams) that come with every IBM computer. The way those diagrams are produced and updated with punch cards and special line printers is an amazing story, but for another time.

Although we at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory can comfort ourselves that the Stretch is the fastest computer in the world, I’m still envious of the institutions that have the better-engineered IBM 7090 computers. These are being used for calculations for the exciting Mercury program.


IBM 7090 at the Weapons Research Establishment's headquarters at Salisbury, on the northern outskirts of Adelaide in South Australia.

The Mercury spaceships do not have a computer on board – computers are far too heavy – so for figuring out how to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere the astronauts rely on computations sent by radio from the pair of IBM 7090 computers at the Mercury Control Station at Cape Canaveral. It’s an incredible amount of faith to put in one site, so Mercury control has those two redundant IBM computers, plus another set of computers in New Jersey. A third computer gathering information from the flight is on the other side of the globe — in Adelaide processing tracking data collected at at Weapons Research Establishment in Woomera, Australia. There is also another control center at Muchea, in Western Australia.


Control room of the astronaut tracking station at Muchea in Western Australia, part of US Project Mercury

A lot of people haven’t heard of Woomera, so let me tell you a little bit about it. At Woomera, more is being done than track Mercury astronauts. This part's an open secret, but the Brits and the Aussies are working together there on testing (or doing “trials” as they say) on rockets, missiles, and even atomic weapons. That's why they built this testing range in the middle of nowhere, in the outback of Australia.


Woomera Research Establishment Officer’s mess

A few years ago we had a visit from Bill Boswell, the Woomera director, along with a team from Maths Services, and Mary Whitehead, the leader of the Planning and Data Analysis Group. They were visiting various computer installations at Point Mugu, White Sands, and Cape Canaveral. These are all larger-than life place-names, but they really just represent groups of men and women madly making observations, coding the photographs in a way the computer can understand, and using these results to steer the manned spaceships. Mary and I had time to talk about more prosaic things, like her new apartment (or “flat” as they call it down under) in Woomera village, and the troubles of living so far from civilization.


Mary’s new flat at Woomera

Woomera reminds me a lot of Los Alamos. It is a similar purpose-built town, isolated from the surrounding population by remoteness and security. Entire families live there, with houses, apartments, and schools for the kids. There are clubs and mess halls; a bowling alley and community grocery store. The store sells just canned and packaged food; if you want something fresh the closest produce is 50 miles away. The planners made a lot of efforts to plant trees, most of which failed. Honestly, it sounds awful to me. I love the "Land of Enchantment" (New Mexico), where things actually grow. The two science towns also have odd mixed populations – for Los Alamos, it is the influx of American and foreign scientists, local Hispanos, and the San Ildefonso tribe. In Woomera, it is the influx of British scientists, local Aussies, and the aboriginal people. Personally I think Los Alamos does a better job of integrating the native population.


Community store in Woomera

There’s something about space that is so exciting. Space has it all: exploration, discovery, danger, and destiny. There’s so much more to it than my dry work of computers, trajectory calculations, and strangely named groups that I am so mired in. That’s why I am so excited to find science fiction and Galactic Journey’s reviews, which is opening my mind to our real future in space that this work makes possible.




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