Informatics General: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:55, 22 December 2021

Revision as of 19:17, 9 January 2022

Line 163:

During the 1960s and 1970s Informatics played a key role in the development of online information services. One of these was RADCOL at [[Rome Air Development Center]] (site of some of Informatics's earliest contracts); this was short for RADC Automatic Document Classification On-Line, which ran from the late 1960s into the mid-1970s.<ref>Bourne and Hahn, ''A History of Online Information Services'', p. 333.</ref>

Informatics had several contracts with [[NASA]]. The earliest, in 1966 (and possibly earlier) was in support of NASA efforts at the [[Jet Propulsion Laboratory]]<ref name="nasa-antenna"/> and the [[Ames Research Center]]. In conjunction with the contract, Informatics opened a branch office in [[Glendale, California|Glendale, CA]]. Work done there included software developed for the [[Surveyor program|Surveyor]], [[Mariner program|Mariner]] and [[Apollo program|Apollo]] programs with applications as diverse as satellite tracking, redesigning the [[Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex|Goldstone Observatory]]'s antenna,<ref name="nasa-antenna">{{cite web |last1author-last2=Firnett, |author-first2= P., | author4-last= Gerritsen, | author4-first=R., | author3-last= Jarvie, | author3-first= P. &| author-last=Ludwig, | author-first= A. |title=Computer program aids dual reflector antenna system design |url=https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19680000139 | publisher=NASA Technical Reports | date=April 1, 1968 }}</ref> and a database application for maintaining information about [[Monkeys and apes in space|primates]] in use]] at various NASA labslaboratories. The program for redesign of the Goldstone antenna used what came to be called a [[hill climbing]] algorithm and was given special recognition by NASA in the form of a small monetary prize for its developers.

Later, Informatics had a long-running contract with [[NASA]] from 1968 to 1980.<ref name="bh-163">Bourne and Hahn, ''A History of Online Information Services'', p. 163.</ref>

This began with winning an over-$4 million business to operate the Scientific and Technical Information Facility at [[College Park, Maryland]].<ref name="frank-49">Frank, "Achieving the American Dream", pp. 49–50.</ref> There Informatics maintained NASA online bibliographic systems, including the pioneering RECON facility.<ref name="bh-163"/> These systems involved abstracts and indexes created against microfilm and other representations of documents on NASA-related subject areas.<ref name="frank-49"/>

Informatics made continual improvements to it, including reducing the response time for queries down to three seconds or less.<ref>Bourne and Hahn, ''A History of Online Information Services'', p. 307.</ref> <!-- Informatics loses contract in 1980 https://books.google.com/books?id=LTTvmUU8rskC&pg=PA163 -->