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National Geographic : 1970 Nov
Contents
WEAKENED CIRCUITS WITHIN COMPONENTS THAT MAKE UP A COMPUTER... IT TAKES LONG HOURS AND CONSTANT PROBING TO TRACK DOWN AND REPAIR THEM ONE BY ONE .... Those are the ills computers are heir to. There are more. Excessive humidity can make them go haywire. So can the vibration from heavy traffic. And particles of tobacco ash can mix up the impulses stored on magnetic tape and produce errors. Exasperated Student Gets a Warning As I traveled on, I was impressed by the variety of sophisticated programming done for the benefit of students nowadays. I sam pled the computer-assisted instruction avail able to all the midshipmen at the U. S. Naval Academy-physics, electrical engineering, economics. And I took a geography lesson myself at Dartmouth College. Please keep in mind that there is no human being at the other end of the line, just a well programmed computer. HI, I AM CALLED MISS TELETYPE-WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO CALL YOU? PETER. HELLO, PETER! TOGETHER WE WILL LEARN THE LOGIC OF LOCATING A SET OF CLIMATE DATA ON THE GLOBE.... I was given climatological definitions, plus information about average monthly tem perature ranges and average rainfall for a real but unidentified place-interspersed with questions I was to answer in my own words. Step by step I located the place in the Northern Hemisphere, in the upper mid latitudes. I did fairly well but not for long. BE SERIOUS, PETER. I confess that I became unduly exasperated. I typed in an intemperate word. Miss Tele type reacted immediately. GOODNESS-SHAME ON YOU!!! WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE OR I'LL CUSS BACK AT YOU. I was ashamed. I buckled down. VERY GOOD. EXCELLENT, PETER. PERFECT-THAT WASN'T HARD, WAS IT! SO LONG FOR NOW, PLEASE GIVE ME A CALL AGAIN-SOON. I paid my respects to the professor who had programmed Miss Teletype. "It's not all that hard," he said. "You know-you present things logically, you try to anticipate what might happen." An even more graphic lesson awaited me at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 612 The associate dean of engineering took me to a desk equipped with a TV screen, a key board, and a so-called light pen all connected to the same computer. "Take the pen and draw on the screen," he said. "Lines of light will appear on the screen, in the path of the pen. Please draw a child's set of building blocks. When you are satisfied, press this key-your drawing will be stored in the computer's memory." I was creating a model, so to speak, of a set of blocks. It was in the form of informa tion stored in the computer, representing algebraic formulas based upon lines and curves. No need to worry about the mathe matics, though; the computer's program took care of that. "Now watch," said the dean. "I can com mand your blocks to become larger or smaller. I can change their shapes. And rotate them, to view them in different perspectives. I can arrange them as I like; I can erase them." He did all that, moving the light pen, pressing keys. I had never seen a fancier toy. Computer Models Help Decision Makers "In the same way," said the dean, "we can create a model of something we really want to build. A school building perhaps, or a traf fic interchange. Then we type in information on the physical site, on design requirements, and human considerations, on many factors affecting our project. The computer calculates these, and we can modify the model accord ingly-add parts, delete parts, change some. "We look at various stages of modification. We measure the effects and the costs. We are simulating things that might happen-to find the best choice, to make the best decision." In other words, figuring out a lot of things a lot faster than many men could with pencils? "I think your analogy is unfair to the com puter," said the professor. "We have a brand new capability here, to do things we couldn't do before, to explore so many possibilities. To let the truly creative man use his mind freely. An incomparable tool of exploration." Modeling! Simulation! Much aircraft de signing is done that way nowadays (page 615). An engineer with a light pen draws a cross section of a wing. Then, in effect, he turns his computer into a wind tunnel, subjecting the wing to simulated stresses. He changes the shape and dimensions of the wing, and when the results look good to him, he presses a key. Thereupon a computer controlled plotting machine will draw a
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