Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Access of diaries and appointment books required written permission.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
André Emmerich Gallery records and André Emmerich papers, circa 1929-2009. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing of this collection was provided by the Leon Levy Foundation.
National Biomedical Research Foundation. Georgetown University Search this
Extent:
3 Cubic feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Manuals
Patents
Photographs
Design drawings
Correspondence
Articles
Diagrams
Slides (photographs)
Notes
Motion pictures (visual works)
Albums
Date:
1972-1990
Summary:
The Robert Ledley Papers document the development of the first whole-body diagnostic imaging system, the Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) X-ray Scanner by Ledley in 1973. Also included is material relating to Ledley's company, Digital Science Information Corporation (DISCO), as well as the public and medical communities' reactions to the scanner.
Scope and Contents:
The Robert Ledley Papers document the development of the Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) X-ray Scanner, Ledley's company Digital Science Information Corporation (DISCO), as well as the public and medical communities' reactions to the scanner. The collection is arranged into nine series.
Series 1, ACTA Scanner I Schematics, 1973-1975; Series 2, ACTA Scanner I [Computer and Electronics], 1973; and Series 3, ACTA Scanner Tomograph Mechanics, 1973-1974 document the development and design of the ACTA scanner through drawings, notes, memoranda, and product information. More detailed information about these materials is located in the control file. All oversize drawings have been moved to flat storage for preservation concerns.
Series 4, ACTA Scanner Operating Instructions, 1975, is the operating manual created for the scanner used in Ledley's Georgetown lab.
Series 5, ACTA Articles, Clippings, and Press Releases, 1973-1979, is comprised of the aforementioned materials relating to the ACTA Scanner. Newspaper clippings illuminate the public's perception of the scanner, and scientific pieces highlight the medical community's reaction. Ledley's published articles on the scanner and related topics are included.
Series 6, Digital Information Science Corporation (DISCO) material, 1973-1981, documents Ledley's career and his company. A biographical sketch, list of articles, textbooks, and patents highlight Ledley's achievements. Invoices, receipts, contracts, and correspondence illuminate the financial situation at DISCO and the relationship between the company and Pfizer.
Series 7, Computer manuals, 1972-1975, documents the computer systems and software that were used with the ACTA Scanner.
Series 8, Photographic material, 1973-1978, includes an album of photographs depicting the ACTA Scanner and images of the scans it created. This album was disassembled due to preservation concerns. This series also includes a collection of slides featuring the scanner and related equipment in use and images of the scans it created. A detailed description of each photograph and slide is included in the control file.
Series 9, ACTA Scanner film, [1974?], is a 16mm narrated film describing the creation of the scanner, its components, the way they work, the scanner in use, and images of the scans produced.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged into nine series.
Series 1, ACTA Scanner I Schematics, 1973-1975
Series 2, ACTA Scanner I [Computer and Electronics], 1973
Series 3, ACTA Scanner Tomograph Mechanics, 1973-1974
Series 4, ACTA Scanner Operating Instructions, 1975
Series 5, ACTA Articles, Clippings, and Press Releases, 1973-1979
Series 6, Digital Information Science Corporation (DISCO) material, 1973-1981, undated
Series 7, Computer manuals, 1972-1975
Series 8, Photographic material 1973-1978
Subseries 1, Photographs, 19731978
Subseries 2, Slides, 1974
Series 9, ACTA Scanner film [1974?]
Biographical / Historical:
Robert Steven Ledley was born in Flushing Meadows, New York in 1926. He received a D.D.S. degree from New York University College in 1948. While attending dental school, he simultaneously studied at Columbia University; he earned a M.A. in Theoretical Physics in 1949. He volunteered for the army and was sent to the U.S. Army Medical Field Service School in Fort Sam Houston, Texas.1 After completing his service, Ledley held a wide variety of research and academic positions in physics, electrical engineering, and medicine.
Ledley was a physicist within the External Control Group of the Electronic Computer Laboratory of the National Bureau of Standards from 1953-1954. He was an operations research analyst within the Strategic Division of the Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University from 1954-1956. Ledley went on to become an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at The George Washington University from 1956-1960 while also serving as a consultant mathematician at the National Bureau of Standards Data Processing Systems Division, 1957-1960. At this time, Ledley also worked part time at the National Research Council's National Academy of Sciences from 1957-1961. Ledley became the president of the National Biomedical Research Foundation in 1960, a position he still holds today. He was an instructor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1960-1963. He returned to The George Washington University's Department of Electrical Engineering in 1968 where he was a professor until 1970. He then became a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1970. In 1974, Ledley also became a professor in the Radiology Department at the Georgetown University Medical Center. In 1975, he became the director of the Medical Computing and Biophysics Division at Georgetown University Medical Center.
In 1972, the British company Electric and Musical Industries Limited (EMI) released a medical imaging machine for use on smaller areas of the body that were positioned under a water tank. In 1973, Ledley developed the Automatic Computerized Transverse Axial (ACTA) X-ray Scanner (US Patent #3,922,552). This machine was a whole-body diagnostic medical imaging system. He was awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health for an engineering equipment project, but the money was never received due to budget cuts. Ledley looked elsewhere for funding. He consulted with Georgetown staff and discovered a neurosurgeon had asked to buy a head scanning machine from EMI. Ledley did not think the images in EMI's brochure appeared clear, and he offered to create a similar machine for half the price. Georgetown agreed to fund this project for $250,000. Ledley secured the services of a machinist at a local machine shop, an electronic engineer, and a programmer/mathematician to assist in the project.2 The ACTA Scanner debuted in February, 1974 and did not require the use of a water tank.
Following the creation of the ACTA Scanner, Ledley organized Digital Information Science Corporation (DISCO) in order to manufacture the system. DISCO began producing scanners as orders were received. Due to financial constraints, DISCO was forced to request $100,000 upon receipt of the order, $100,000 when the scanner was halfway completed, and the final $100,000 payment upon delivery3. In 1975, Pfizer purchased the rights to manufacture the ACTA Scanner from DISCO for $1.5 million.
Ledley is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has earned numerous awards and honors for his work. In 1997, he received the National Medal of Technology from President William Jefferson Clinton for his pioneering work on the whole-body CT diagnostic X-ray scanner. He also founded the Pattern Recognition Society and Computerized Tomography Society.
Sources
1 Ash, J., D. Sittig, and R. Ledley. "The Story Behind the Development of the First Whole-body Computerized Tomography Scanner as Told by Robert S. Ledley." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2006 Sep-Oct (2006), 465-469, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1561796. (accessed June 24, 2009).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
Separated Materials:
An ACTA Scanner and numerous accessories were donated to the Division of Medicine and Science in 1984.
Provenance:
This collection was donated by Robert S. Ledley on September 18, 1984.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
National Biomedical Research Foundation. Georgetown University Search this
Container:
Box 4, Folder 9-10
Type:
Archival materials
Date:
1973-1981
undated
Collection Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Collection Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Collection Citation:
Robert Ledley Papers, 1972-1984, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Kalfatovic, Martin R. 1994. "Review. Qualitative Research in Information Science" by Jack D. Glazier and Ronald R. Powell, eds. (1992)"." Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply, 4, (3) 223–224.
Unrestricted research access on site by appointment.
Collection Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Collection Citation:
Ithiel deSola Pool Collection, 1919-1984, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Use of born-digital records requires advance notice.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Matt Mullican papers, circa 1968-2017. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests.
Collection Citation:
Kathryn D. Sullivan Papers, NASM.2019.0007, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests.
Collection Citation:
Kathryn D. Sullivan Papers, NASM.2019.0007, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
This collection is open for research. Access to original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Collection Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Collection Citation:
Mel Casas papers, 1963-1998. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
The processing and digitization of this collection received Federal support from the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Additional funding for the digitization of the papers was provided by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation.
Material is subject to Smithsonian Terms of Use. Should you wish to use NASM material in any medium, please submit an Application for Permission to Reproduce NASM Material, available at Permissions Requests.
Collection Citation:
Sally K. Ride Papers, Acc. 2014-0025, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Collection Rights:
Copyright held by donor and/or heirs. Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Reproduction permission from Archives Center: fees for commercial use.] .
Collection Citation:
The Computer World Smithsonian Awards, Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Human development : competencies for the twenty-first century : papers from the IFLA CPERT Third International Conference on Continuing Professional Education for the Library and Information Professions : a publication of the Continuing Professional Education Round Table (CPERT) of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions / edited by Patricia Layzell Ward and Darlene E. Weingand
Author:
International Conference on Continuing Professional Education for the Library and Information Professions (3rd : 1997 : Copenhagen, Denmark) Search this
UCRL (University of California Radiation Lab) Search this
Extent:
20.5 Cubic feet (59 boxes, 4 oversize folders)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Correspondence
Technical reports
Diagrams
Notes
Memorandums
Place:
Palo Alto (Calif.)
Pittsburgh (Pa.)
Santa Monica (Calif.) -- 1950-1980
Cambridge (Mass.)
Date:
1933-1993
bulk 1950-1971
Summary:
The John Clifford Shaw papers contain reports, research notes, correspondence, memorandum, and diagrams documenting Shaw's development of one of the earliest list processing languages (IPL) and an early interactive, time sharing program, the JOHNNIAC Open Shop System (JOSS). The collection also contains printed material on the RAND Corporation and the evolution of the artificial intelligence and electronic computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition there is biographical material documenting Shaw's personal interests, family, and academic career.
Scope and Contents:
The John Clifford Shaw Papers contain reports, research notes, correspondence, memoranda, and diagrams documenting Shaw's development of one of the earliest list processing languages (IPL) and an early interactive, time sharing program, the JOHNNIAC Open Shop System (JOSS). The collection also contains printed material on the RAND Corporation and the evolution of the artificial intelligence and electronic computer industry in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, there is biographical material documenting Shaw's personal interests, family, and academic career.
Series 1: Shaw's Career at Rand, 1950-1971, documents Shaw's most significant work. The subseries are arranged by specific projects and illustrate his pioneering work on programming languages, interactive time-sharing systems, heuristic problem solving, logic programming, stored programs, and artificial intelligence. This work included his role in the development of the JOHNNIAC computer and programs such as the Logic Theorist (LT), General Problem Solver (GPS), and the JOHNNIAC Open-Shop System (JOSS).
The materials include technical reports, research notes, correspondence, memorandum, coding sequences, and system tests. In addition, there are reports documenting the collaborative nature of the NSS team's work on human problem solving, computer simulation of human thinking, and complex information processing. The subject files in Series 1 document the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) role in the JOSS research and other work done by Shaw.
Series 2: Rand Environment, 1951-1986, is arranged into three subseries containing technical reports that document other computer related research being conducted at RAND during Shaw's tenure. These materials are not directly related to his work, including reports documenting defense related research. The series contains memoranda and correspondence illustrating the internal workings and daily operations at RAND from 1950 to 1971 and various sets of annual reports, progress reports, and newsletters from 1960 to 1971. In addition, there are historical materials commemorating RAND anniversaries, profiles of the company, and indexes to RAND publications and abstracts.
Series 3: Computer Industry, 1947-1973, consists of printed matter that documents developments at other institutions and companies engaged in artificial intelligence and programming research. The printed matter includes reports, manuals, brochures, and reprints of articles about research by other institutions, companies, and individuals. Also, there are materials from trips, conferences and seminars attended by Shaw.
Series 4: Consulting Work, 1972-1990, comprises Shaw's work after he left RAND in 1971. It consists of reports and reprints from companies and institutions for which Shaw worked or from those he saw as potential clients. Of particular interest are the research notes, on note cards and 8.5" x 11" paper that illuminate Shaw's ideas and thoughts regarding artificial intelligence and programming languages during this period.
Series 5: Biographical Information, 1933-1993, consists of printed matter regarding Shaw's life and accomplishments. It contains resumes, list of publications and lectures, salary history, and the outline for a book on JOSS. Material on Shaw's personal life includes information about his family, personal correspondence with Herbert Simon, Allen Newell and his wife, Marian, Chuck Baker, Edward Feigenbaum, and correspondence from authors requesting information or comment on future publications. Additionally, there are reprints and clippings that reveal Shaw's personal interests in political issues such as the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the making of the hydrogen bomb, and Star Wars Defense Technology.
Arrangement:
The collection is organized into five series.
Series 1: Shaw's Career at Rand, 1950-1971
Subseries 1.1: JOHNNIAC, 1950-1968
Subseries 1.2: Logic Therorist [See also Complex Information Processing], 1956-1963
Subseries 1.3: General Problem Solver (G.P.S.) and Heuristic Problem Solving, 1955-1967
Subseries 1.4: Chess Program, 1954-1973
Subseries 1.5: Complex Information Processing (C.I.P.), 1953-1972
Subseries 1.6: Information Processing Languages (IPL), 1956-1977
Subseries 1.7: JOHNNIAC Open Shop System (JOSS), 1959-1977
Subseries 1.8: Subject Files, 1954-1971
Series 2: Rand Environment, 1951-1986
Subseries 2.1: Related Papers and Reports (RM-Series), 1951-1972
Subseries 2.2: Reports and Papers—General, 1949-1971
Subseries 2.3: RAND Material, 1948-1988
Series 3: Computer Industry, 1947-1973
Series 4: Consulting Work, 1972-1990
Series 5: Biographical Information, 1933-1993
Biographical / Historical:
John Clifford Shaw (1922-1991) was born in Southern California. Shaw went to Fullerton High School, the same high school as Richard Nixon. Shaw's English teacher was Nixon's high school debate team coach. Shaw attended Fullerton Junior College from 1939 until February 1943. At the same time, he worked as a timekeeper at the Douglas Aircraft Company, where he was responsible for time-card calculations and reports. He served in the Army Air Force for three years during World War II as a navigation instructor and then aircraft navigator in the 4th Emergency Rescue Squadron in Iwo Jima, Japan. Shaw returned to California in 1947 and began working for the Beneficial Standard Life Insurance Company as an assistant to the actuary, compiling actuarial calculations of premium rates, reserve liabilities, and annual reports. Shaw and his wife Marian had four children: Doug (b. 1948), David (b. 1950), Donna (b. 1952), and John (b. 1962). By 1948, Shaw received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from UCLA and in 1950 joined the newly formed RAND Corporation as a mathematician.
The RAND Corporation evolved during the years after World War II amidst the escalating Cold War. Project RAND was originally carried out under a contract with the Douglas Aircraft Company. RAND was incorporated in May 1948. RAND, a California nonprofit corporation, was one of the earliest Cold War "think tanks" that functioned as an interdisciplinary research and development facility; it received large sums of money from the Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission. Throughout the 1950s, other agencies such as the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) solicited scientific and foreign policy research from RAND. During Shaw's tenure (1950-1971), money flowed into RAND and enabled many scientists and researchers, including Shaw and his colleagues in the Math and Numerical Analysis Department, to explore new avenues of discovery.
Shaw's early work at RAND involved administrative matters, such as improving the processes of company management through automation of the computation and calculation techniques. This work included collaboration with Allen Newell on a radar simulator. In the mid-1950s, Newell and Shaw, and later Dr. Herbert Simon of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, formed the team known by the mid-1950s in the artificial intelligence field as NSS (Newell, Shaw, and Simon). The NSS team broke much ground in the field of artificial intelligence, programming languages, computer simulation of human problem solving, and man-machine communication. The radar simulator project involved studying how humans made decisions and whether one could design a program that could simulate human decision-making. While Newell and Simon concentrated on the human behavior aspect, Shaw focused on creating a programming language that would implement Simon and Newell's concepts.
When Shaw began working in 1950, RAND was using six IBM 604 calculators to satisfy its scientific computing needs. In the early 1950s, RAND decided that it needed more computational power to accomplish projects for the Air Force and decided to build a Princeton-type computer named JOHNNIAC, after computer designer John von Neumann. The Princeton Class computer was considered state-of-the-art and was running at RAND by the first half of 1953. William Gunning was the project leader and Shaw worked on the selection of the instruction set and the design of the operator's console. The JOHNNIAC became the basis for Shaw's work on conversational time-sharing in the 1960s.
During the early 1950s, the dynamic of the innovative process was at work as Shaw and Newell in California, and Simon in Pittsburgh, were theorizing about human decision making, programming languages, and how computers could be manipulated to process information more productively. Air Force funding enabled Shaw and his colleague's considerable intellectual and academic freedom to explore various hypotheses. In the mid-1950s, NSS began forming the theoretical basis for what they called Complex Information Processing (C.I.P.). C.I.P was the basis for the three main computer programs developed by NSS: the Chess Program, Logic Theorist (LT), and the General Problem Solver (GPS). By 1954, Shaw's focus was on utilizing the power of the JOHNNIAC to develop a viable language that could simulate human behavior.
In early 1954, Newell left RAND for Pittsburgh to work with Simon; Shaw remained at RAND. The NSS team focused on creating programs that would enable a machine to exhibit intelligent behavior and "think" like a human. Chess and the Logic Theorist (LT) were the first programs that evolved from their work. Shaw dealt with the programming aspects, as Simon devoted his time to human thinking processes for chess, logic, and problem solving. Newell, who was still employed by RAND, was the middle man who worked both in programming and human behavior. He flew back to California every couple of months in 1954 and 1955 to confer with Shaw. Because of language limitations, the chess program was temporarily put aside as NSS decided to finish the LT. Known as IPL (Information Processing Language), the language developed by Shaw was one of the first list processing languages. Through experimentation with assemblers, compilers, and interpreters, Shaw developed list processing sequences that allowed the computer to arrange and store data more effectively. The effectiveness stemmed from links that formed the lists. From a storage point of view, lists were inefficient. Shaw translated Simon and Newell's ideas into IPL. The IPL interpreter was able to compile and translate higher level language statements into machine language. The interpreters process the statements and carry out the indicated operations without generating machine code which must then be executed. Although not specifically programmed so, one of LT's innovative characteristics was that it proved mathematical theorems from Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, including a proof from Theorem 2.85 that the authors had missed. This was the most fascinating aspect of the program because LT was not programmed to find alternative proofs.
The NSS team's work on the LT was completed by the end of 1955, and it perfected the program language in the winter and spring of 1956. LT was one of the earliest programs to investigate the use of heuristics in problem solving. It was capable of discovering and working out proofs for theorems in symbolic logic. In the summer of 1956, NSS presented the LT program to the artificial intelligence community at the Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference. Relatively unknown at the time, NSS excited the conference with the LT and the possibilities it opened in the study of programming languages and artificial intelligence.
The NSS team continued to focus on developing artificial intelligence. By 1957, NSS had constructed the General Problem Solver (GPS) program that attempted to demonstrate various human thinking processes in a variety of environments. At RAND and Carnegie Tech, studies were conducted that had human subjects think aloud in hopes of identifying human problem solving techniques and simulating them in GPS. NSS codified some human problem solving techniques such as means-end analysis, planning, and trial and error. Through the end of the 1950s, NSS produced improved versions of the IPL language and studied heuristic methods of decision making.
By 1960, when the JOHNNIAC was of insufficient computing power to support the level of computation needed, and IPL had been reprogrammed for the IBM 7090, List Processing (LISP), a high-level programming language had overtaken IPL as the language of choice for Artificial Intelligence research. Shaw's interests had shifted towards attempting to simplify the use of computers for all types of computer users. Simon and Newell continued to study how they could simulate human cognitive processes on a computer. Until this point, a user would have to be adequately trained in programming or need assistance from a programmer to use a computer like JOHNNIAC. Shaw was interested in programming the JOHNNIAC so RAND staff could utilize the computer for small as well as large scientific computations. The JOHNNIAC was available for experimental research projects because RAND owned a newer IBM 7090 (acquired in 1960) which handled the bulk of RAND's production computing load. Although JOHNNIAC was no longer state-of-the-art by this time, its major appeal was its reliability and capability for experimentation.
These factors were the impetus for the initiation of the JOHNNIAC Open-Shop System (JOSS) project in November 1960. JOSS was intended to be an easy to use, on-line, time sharing system. The JOSS research, conducted under the Information Processor Project, was formalized in 1959 as part of the RAND Computer Science Department and was heavily funded by the Air Force. The innovative character of JOSS was in the ease of use for the non-programmer, its remote access capabilities, the establishment of an interactive environment between user and computer, and the capability for RAND scientists and engineers to use the computer without an intermediary programmer. It was hoped that the JOSS project would bridge the communication gap between man and machine. JOSS's user language achieved this goal. It featured a small set of English verbs and algebraic symbols which did not need a programmer as intermediary between user and computer. During 1961-1962, Shaw selected the character set that would be used to write JOSS programs, its syntax, and grammar. The conversational environment included a Model B IBM Electric Typewriter. Tom Ellis and Mal Davis directed the hardware configurations and Ike Hehama, Allen Newell, and Keith Uncapher participated in the project discussions with Shaw.
The very limited JOSS experiments on the JOHNNIAC began in May 1963, with five consoles, one connected to the JOHNNIAC and four others located in the offices of various RAND staff. By June, a schedule of operations was in place and by January 1964, JOSS was fully implemented. The use of JOSS by RAND staff was higher than expected as users taught other users how to run the system. However, Shaw and the other designers worried that JOHNNIAC's hardware placed limitations on speed and storage which might taint the evaluation of JOSS. In July 1964, a second version of JOSS was proposed on a more powerful computer. C.L. Baker was named project head, and Shaw focused on developing the programming language for JOSS II.
After accepting numerous bids to replace JOHNNIAC, a contract was signed with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) promising the installation of a PDP-6 computer and thirty consoles at RAND. The installation was completed by October 31, 1965. At the Fall Joint Computer Conference in Las Vegas in December 1965, the first demonstration of remote use of JOSS II was given. JOHNNIAC was retired on February 18, 1966, with Willis Ware delivering a eulogy and Shaw loading a final JOSS I program. By the end of 1966, JOSS II was available to users 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the new PDP-6/JOSS computer, which had thirty times the speed and five times the storage capacity as the JOHNNIAC version. In April 1967, the maintenance and improvement of JOSS II was transferred from the development group to a small staff under G.W. Armending. In 1971, at age 49, Shaw left the RAND Corporation.
In 1971, Shaw took a one-year appointment as a Research Associate in the Information Science Department at the California Institute of Technology. In 1972, he began working as a consultant which he continued for the rest of his professional career. Much of his work in the 1970s and 1980s consisted of formulating new ideas on operations research, video games, man-machine interfaces, interactive computer systems, time-sharing, information architecture design, and artificial intelligence. During the 1980s, Shaw also became more involved in church-related activities.
Shaw's work on creating the Information Processing Language in the 1950s and the JOSS program in the 1960s were the two major contributions he made to the fields of programming and artificial intelligence. His IPL-I programming language is one of the earliest examples of list processing languages now in widespread use. The JOSS program was one of the first easy-to use, remotely accessible, interactive programs that allowed non-programmers to utilize the power of a computer.
Related Materials:
Material in the Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Computer Oral History Collection, AC0196
Material in Other Institutions
Charles Babbage Institute
L.A. County Museum
For RAND reports see www.RAND.org
Provenance:
The collection was donated by John Clifford Shaw's eldest son, Doug Shaw, March 1997.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research use.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Shaw, J. Clifford (John Clifford), 1922-1991 Search this
Container:
Box 49, Folder 7
Type:
Archival materials
Date:
1972 - 1974
Collection Restrictions:
The collection is open for research use.
Collection Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Collection Citation:
John Clifford Shaw papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Shaw, J. Clifford (John Clifford), 1922-1991 Search this
Container:
Box 50, Folder 1-4
Type:
Archival materials
Date:
1972 - 1974
Collection Restrictions:
The collection is open for research use.
Collection Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning intellectual property rights. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Collection Citation:
John Clifford Shaw papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
