Browsing by Subject "Seac computer"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Oral history interview with Arnold Dumey
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 1984-10-09) Dumey, Arnold
    The Dumey interview begins with a description of his work for the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He discusses the development of a system for comparing data for which Eastman Kodak supplied a contrast reversal film process and Reed Research a reading device. He also considers some of the problems inherent in working for a secret organization. In the post-war period, he focuses on the contractual work done by Engineering Research Associates for the Navy, emphasizing their engineering excellence and the leverage that their competitive position gave him in his negotiations for the Navy with IBM. He highlights the roles of John L. Hill and William Norris in ERA, and contrasts the ERA 1101 with the Standards Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC). He concludes with a discussion of the obsolescence of electrostatic tube and delay-line memory devices with the introduction of magnetic cores.
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    Oral history interview with Ethel C. Marden
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 1983-04-20) Marden, Ethel C.
    Marden discusses the early use of computers by the U.S. government as seen from the National Bureau of Standards, where she was employed following World War II. She discusses the results of the construction of the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) and points to the prominent role in its design of people who had worked on ENIAC. Marden describes the enthusiasm and work environment of the SEAC project, including accommodations for women to hold professional positions at the same time they were raising families. She points to the success of SEAC as measured by the many government offices that used it. She describes the interactions of NBS with other government agencies and other major computer projects, and describes how NBS recruited talented personnel.
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    Oral history interview with Margaret R. Fox
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 1984-04-13) Fox, Margaret R.
    Fox describes how her Navy service in World War II led to a career in computing. She discusses the negotiations between the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), as an agent for the Bureau of the Census, over the completion of the first UNIVAC computer, and the development at NBS of SEAC and SWAC. Fox recounts her involvement in the National Joint Computer Committee which led to her work in the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) and describes the role of AFIPS in the International Information Processing Conference in Paris in 1959.