[SIGCIS-Members] whirlwind, radar and real-time tracking

[Ceruzzi, Paul]

Pierre:

Good to hear from you.

After my retirement I donated my books and papers to a number of libraries and archives -- most of which are closed right now.  I will have to rely on my memory, which was never that good anyway. So with that caveat...

A crucial step toward real-time digital computation was initiated by Perry O. Crawford, and described in his Masters' Thesis at MIT. There is a Wikipedia entry on Crawford, which appears to look right, although I can't check. I met Crawford and discussed this topic briefly when I was writing my dissertation, but unfortunately I was not far enough along in my work to understand the point that he was trying to make regarding his role in Whirlwind.

The best analysis of Crawford's role was done by Bernard O. Williams, in his PhD dissertation at the University of Kansas, "Computing with Electricity 1935-1945" (Univ. Kansas 1984). It is a shame that the dissertation was never published, but it is available electronically from University Microfilms [sic], #85137830.

Best,

Paul Ceruzzi

________________________________
From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Paul N. Edwards <pedwards at stanford.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2021 3:01 PM
To: Guy Fedorkow <guy.fedorkow at gmail.com>
Cc: members <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] whirlwind, radar and real-time tracking


External Email - Exercise Caution

Guy, seconding Pierre’s good response and adding that in 1951, analog computers were still far faster than digital for most complex calculations, because they are inherently parallel processors. Digital machines were also prone to *very* frequent failure. Most sensors were analog, too, providing no numerical readouts. Few control engineers would have even considered a digital computer for any real-time application until the second half of that decade, and even then they were not the natural choice for most applications.

The early chapters of my book The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996) cover SAGE and the surrounding computing landscape of the 1940s-1950s.

Other resources on SAGE:

Everett, Robert R., Charles A. Zraket, and Herbert D. Benington. “Sage: A Data-Processing System for Air Defense.” Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer Conference (1957): 339–45.

Redmond, Kent C. and Thomas M. Smith. Project Whirlwind: The History of a Pioneer Computer. Boston: Digital Press, 1980.

Valley, George E., Jr. “How the Sage Development Began.” Annals of the History of Computing 7, no. 3 (1985): 196–226.

Redmond, Kent C. and Thomas M. Smith. From Whirlwind to Mitre: The R&d Story of the Sage Air Defense Computer. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.




Best,

Paul Edwards


On Apr 23, 2021, at 16:41, Guy Fedorkow <guy.fedorkow at gmail.com<mailto:guy.fedorkow at gmail.com>> wrote:

Greetings Colleagues,
  I've been working on restoring a 1951 Whirlwind program, written at MIT, used to demonstrate real-time tracking of aircraft with radar for the purposes of guiding an interception (the Cold War was in full flight in the 1950's).  This work ultimately led to the massive SAGE air defense network in the US.
  You can see some rather informal preliminary notes on the work at
https://www.historia-mollimercium.com/whirlwind/WW-Track-while-Scan-Draft-Notes-v1.pdf<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.historia-mollimercium.com%2Fwhirlwind%2FWW-Track-while-Scan-Draft-Notes-v1.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cceruzzip%40si.edu%7Cac59e0d26dcb4e38456908d9075afd7a%7C989b5e2a14e44efe93b78cdd5fc5d11c%7C0%7C1%7C637548909809785399%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=0WQ8hyh5ATsF%2B%2BE%2BvkWue%2F2wLBg%2B%2B%2FoSGOMTmSv7qLc%3D&reserved=0>
  The program does work in simulation; you can see a four-minute video of the simulator running an intercept at
https://www.historia-mollimercium.com/whirlwind/Track-while-scan-Apr-23-2021.mp4<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.historia-mollimercium.com%2Fwhirlwind%2FTrack-while-scan-Apr-23-2021.mp4&data=04%7C01%7Cceruzzip%40si.edu%7Cac59e0d26dcb4e38456908d9075afd7a%7C989b5e2a14e44efe93b78cdd5fc5d11c%7C0%7C1%7C637548909809795402%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=cV93KhAIGLmT%2BUT9y1egrnE5j%2BfKOtvBqcsS6vlRKSI%3D&reserved=0>
  Spoiler alerts: The original really did display moving dots on a CRT, but the graphics are "spartan" to say the least.  And nothing in particular happens when the intercept actually happens.

  Would anyone know of contemporaneous work involving digital computers for either radar tracking or real-time computing around 1951?  I think all the familiar digital computers from those years were used in applications where batch operation was perfectly acceptable, e.g., computing ballistics tables.
  Innovations like this rarely occur in a complete vacuum, but I don't see references to any similar digital computing projects.
  If anyone has pointers, do let me know!
Thanks
Guy Fedorkow


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