[SIGCIS-Members] In Memoriam - Fran Allen

[Ken Strauss]

Thanks. Unfortunately those documents are largely non-technical. It would be 
great to find the "NSA-produced ALPHA Language Technical Report that was 
issued in June 1960" mentioned in your second link.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Win Treese [mailto:treese at acm.org]
> Sent: Monday, August 10, 2020 9:09 PM
> To: Ken Strauss
> Cc: SIGCIS Listserver
> Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] In Memoriam - Fran Allen
>
>
>
> > On Aug 6, 2020, at 1:16 PM, Ken Strauss <ken.strauss at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> >
> > The obituary mentions her work on Alpha for the NSA (possibly in
> conjunction with development of the IBM 7950?). Are any details of Alpha
> available?
>
> Hi, Ken.
>
> Alpha was a language on the IBM 7950 (Harvest) for the NSA's use in writing
> cryptanalysis applications.
>
> Some links:
>
> - The Wikipedia article on Harvest:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7950_Harvest gives a little context.
>
> - A declassified 1964 paper by Snyder, "History of NSA [National Security
> Agency] General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers" has a little about 
> Alpha
> (https://www.governmentattic.org/3docs/NSA-HGPEDC_1964.pdf)
>
> - It looks like Allen gave a talk at the Computer History Museum in 2000, 
> but
> the page about it is just publicity for it:
> https://computerhistory.org/events/stretchharvest-compiler/
>
> Not a lot that's easy to get to, however.
>
> Best,
>
> Win