Route Reference Computer: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:27, 6 November 2009

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At the time, Ferranti was in the midst of developing the [[DATAR]] system for the [[Royal Canadian Navy]]. DATAR was a [[vacuum tube]]-based [[drum memory]] computer that stored and collected data for display. Radar and sonar operators on any of the ships in a convoy could send contact reports to DATAR using a [[trackball]]-equipped display that sent the data over a [[UHF]] [[pulse code modulation|PCM]] radio link. DATAR stored the data on the drum and periodically sent out the complete dataset to the ships, which plotted them on local displays, rotated and scaled for that ship's position in the convoy. The result was a single unified picture of the entire battlefield that could be seen on any of the ships, even those without direct contact with the targets.<ref>Boslaugh, pg. 42</ref>

Porter suggested using the DATAR computer design as the basis for a sorting system. Following Lewis' suggestion, a new reader would sort the mail based on the basis of the pattern of stripes on the letter provided by an operator who simply typed in the address without attempting to route it. Ferranti suggested a florescent ink instead of a conductive one. Routing information would be placed on the magnetic drum, which could store thousands of routes and could be easily changed on demand. Levy, however, was interested in using an optical memory system being developed at IBM by a team including [[Louis Ridenour]] (see [[Automatic Language Translator]] for details) for storage of the routing information. Turnbull overruled Levy, and on 10 August 1954 he signed a contract with Ferranti for the '''Electronic Information Handling System''' using a drum memory.<ref>Vardalas, pg. 114</ref>

In February 1955 Levy announced the system to the world at a conference in the U.S., claiming that it was able to process 200,000 letters per hour. Although the computer system did appear to be able to meet this claim, they were having serious problems with the non-computer portions of the project.<ref name=v115>Vardalas, pg. 115</ref>