Alex: It depends on how fine-grained the Wall St. Journal wants to be. In 1954 the NACA acquired an ERA 1103 computer and modified its instructions to include an "interrupt" facility -- the first ever and a feature that is standard on all computers since (I'll let you decide whether NASA can take credit for an NACA innovation!) For project Mercury, NASA, as a customer, modified an IBM mainframe to operate in real-rime--another major innovation. That included the IBM 7090 featured in the movie "Hidden Figures." IBM's policy was to lease, not sell, its machines, and customers were not allowed to modify them in any way. But NASA had the clout, and real-time computer usage has since... well, you get the picture. Later on, at the MSFC in Houston, NASA created a program that allowed both real-time and batch processing to go on at the same time: "HASP" (I think it meant "Houston Automatic Spooling Priority" -- "SPOOL was another IBM acronym). This was a big deal in the mainframe era; not sure if it still is, however. I haven't checked, but I am sure that Wikipedia has a lengthy discussion of HASP & SPOOL. In general I would say that in many instances NASA has been behind the curve, but that is a topic for another day. So the bottom line is, yes, but the Wall St. Journal may not be all that interested in the finer details of computer architecture. Paul Ceruzzi By the Way, James Tomayko's book on NASA & Spaceflight computers is available in many libraries, including the Smithsonian's. If librarians have trouble finding it, tell them to look for the "Encyclopedia of Computer Science & Technology," volume 18, supplement 3 (Marcel Dekker, 1987). ________________________________ From: Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of members-request@lists.sigcis.org <members-request@lists.sigcis.org> Sent: Friday, May 31, 2019 4:35:16 PM To: members@lists.sigcis.org Subject: Members Digest, Vol 51, Issue 13 Send Members mailing list submissions to members@lists.sigcis.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.sigci... or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to members-request@lists.sigcis.org You can reach the person managing the list at members-owner@lists.sigcis.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Members digest..." Today's Topics: 1. NASA contributions to computer development (Alex Roland) 2. Re: NASA contributions to computer development (Armando Fox) 3. Re: NASA contributions to computer development (David C. Brock) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 17:48:12 +0000 From: Alex Roland <alex.roland@duke.edu> To: "members@SIGCIS.org" <members@SIGCIS.org> Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] NASA contributions to computer development Message-ID: <AB00619D-B221-496A-B656-7EE90AB96AFA@duke.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Friends: I have been a passive member of SIGCIS for many years now, even though I am no longer an active researcher in the field. Still, I follow your correspondence with great interest. I am writing now because I have received an inquiry from a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who is interested in NASA?s historical contributions to computer development. I know from research on my book Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence, 1983-1993 (2002) that NASA was involved in the Federal High Performance Computing Program in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I do not, however, know of other significant contributions by NASA to computer development. If anyone knows of such contributions, I would be happy to know about them. Thanks, Alex Roland