New Vistas in Post-War Science Research Seen in Debut of Computation Lab Today

Post-war expansion of the University's science facilities will pass a milestone today as 200 experts gather for the official opening of the glistening new Mathematical Computation Laboratory. The modernistic structure has arisen during the past summer and autumn between the Pierce Engineering Laboratory and the veterans housing project on the erstwhile Jarvis tennis courts.

Housed in this latest major addition to University buildings is the already famous Mark I. This is not a German tank but a 51-foot great-grandchild of the humble adding machine, The International Business Machines Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. This shiny mathematical genius, composed of 765,299 parts and 530 miles of wire, has already been at work for the Navy for two years on complex problems of ship construction and ordnance in the basement of Cruft Laboratory.

Mathematical Revolution

The opening of the new lab marks a decade in the development in this new branch of science that promises a revolution in the methods and accomplishment of every division of knowledge that deals with finite quantitative problems, from economic statistics to astronomy. Representatives of a dozen departments in the University are casting a longing eye toward this wonder worker in hope that they will soon be able to get quick, effortless answers to problems which heretofore have taken prohibitive amounts of time and energy.

Operating 24 hours a day, 20 for the Navy and four for the University, Mark I is currently grinding out tables for the Navy Bureau of Ordnance for which it will continue to work until June 1948. In the meantime, however, grass is not growing under the feet of the Laboratory's director and Mathematics professor, Howard H. Aiken. Already in its final stages of construction is Mark II, a tremendous new calculator which generally departs from the mechanical ratchet counters of Mark I and will consequently be much faster.

Mark III Planned

Mark II, unfortunately, is already tagged for exclusive use by the Navy, but with the experience that has been gained from its construction, Mark III, which will in point of design put the present machines in the museum, is taking shape in the fertile brains and on the drawing boards of Professor Aiken and his enthusiastic lieutenants. With Mark I's contract work running out and Mark III in the offing, two years should see the Laboratory free to concentrate its full effort on civilian computation projects.

What is promised from this new science is still nebulous though the inherent possibilities have excited the imaginations of scientists throughout the world. Weather prediction, for which tremendous complex formulae already exist, may be reduced to an exact process instead of the present hit and miss system; economists and anthropologists have reams of statistical data which may with mechanical aid be put to practical use; engineers, particularly aeronautical and metallurgical, may be able to come out of the laborious testing laboratory and try their designs quickly and inexpensively through machine aided mathematics. Automatic computation cuts horizontally across all fields of exact science, and it appears that Professor Aiken will have a priority problem on his hands before the experts have enough calculators to keep them satisfied.

"Calculators are not thinking machines," Professor Aiken constantly emphasizes to exuberant laymen who see in this development the end for need of human cerebration. Neither Mark I nor any of the prospective calculators will be able to accomplish problems that cannot be fully reasoned out in advance and capable of solution with homely paper and pencil. The revolution that the giant calculator has brought to mathematics is the conquest of time. Even Mark I, whose fundamental mechanisms are mechanical rotating counter wheels, can accelerate by 250 to 600 times the speed of ordinary calculation.

Denials of "thinking machines" notwithstanding, an observer of Mark I in its luxurious new setting cannot fail to be impressed with the uncanny gyrations of the monster. Making little more sound than an electric refrigerator, the machine literally swallows the problem in the form of a punched paper tape that moves inexorably into the sequence control mechanism, while but a few feet away an electromatie type writer pounds out row on row of lengthy numerical results. Three devices similar to the sequence mechanism can also be brought into play to introduce logarithmic tables, interpolating tables, or any other functions needed for a specific problem. Also introduced into the sequence on each problem are orders to check the results at various stages of each operation. And should a mechanical fault or even some faults in the statement of the problem appear, the machine will stop computing until the "bug" has been corrected.

Today's meeting will mark the first gathering of all the experts in education, industry, and government who have been interested in the progress of large scale calculators. Two of the most trying problems that the experts will tackle are the storage of numbers in the machine for future reference in a problem and the elimination of the inaccuracies that develop from the constant interpolation of intermediate results. Professor Aiken is confident that the meeting of minds will eliminate duplication of effort and bring these problems much closer to final solution.

University Leads

Relaxing slightly after the three strenuous fall months. when Mark I was disassembled in Cruft and reassembled in the new building, Professor Aiken and his staff sat down briefly on December 19 to take a long view of their work both past and present. A bare two and a half years had passed since Mark I had been dedicated and turned immediately to recondite wartime problems. yet this infant department was now in an optimistic boom of expansion that promised to put the University in the lead in an uncharted science.

"This laboratory," said Professor Aiken with satisfaction, "is the first built exclusively for experimentation in and use of computing machines."

As suceessful as had been the past, the future looked more promising. Gathered with Professor Aiken in the conference Grace M. Hopper, Richard Block, Robert Campbell, and Joseph Harrison, all research associates, discussed the possibilities of large scale computation in the various fields of applied sciences. Though their interest vary in regard to the application of automatic computing, they are united in their interest in the machines themselves "Faster and more accurate machines and more of them. "is the immediate goal. according to Professor Aiken. If his first ten years in the business are any indication another deesde should find the new laboratory the world center of automatic computation development.