University to Hook Up With M.I.T. Computer

An electronic link between the Harvard Computing Center and the $7 million New England Universities' Computation Center at M.I.T. will be completed within two weeks.

A teletype console, similar to 47 others already installed in M.I.T. buildings, will allow the University to utilize the facilities of the first fully operational Computer Time Sharing System in the world.

CTSS, which was designed at M.I.T., employs two giant IBM-7094 computers. Unlike conventional computer systems. CTSS is capable of working on many problems at once. All 48 teletype consoles can communicate with the computer simultaneously, resulting in a great increase in efficiency over other computers.

The new system also permits each operator to "interact" with the computer while his data is being processed. Errors in the computer's instructions may be quickly spotted and corrected. In traditional computers, errors cannot be detected until the results have been transcribed from magnetic tape onto printed forms several hours after the calculations have been completed.

Through the memory unit of CTSS, University physicists will have instant access to an electronic index of 20,000 physics articles from 15 scientific journals. The index consists of more than .3 million entries arranged by both subject and author. New periodicals are being added at the rate of one per month, and other fields may be indexed in the future.

If CTSS works well, the Harvard Computing Center may eventually purchase a similar system for installation throughout the University, according to Lewis B. Ward, Acting Chairman of the Faculty Committee on the Computing Center. Frank A. Engle, Jr., Manager of the Center, said yesterday, however, that a complete time sharing system might not meet the University's needs of the limited amount of information that can be fed to a computer through a teletype keyboard.

Engle predicted, nonetheless, that researchers in Social Relations, Psychology, Linguistics, and Business Administration would find the "interaction" feature of CTSS particularly valuable because of the exploratory nature of computer use in those fields.

Installation of the teletype has been temporarily delayed while an internal change is being made in the computer to insure that classified information submitted from one console cannot be removed from the computer by users of another console. Once this difficulty has been solved, the system will operate eight hours a day during the week, and 14 hours a day on Saturday and Sundays