:f Q/204.acme.630406


re SU/ACME

COMP Program 4/6/63
    Very rapid developments in last weeks and months.

.fi
     Initiative - gradual build up since COMPSEF course last
September; Systems problems of office and bibliography work;
students assigned to introductory computer course; survey of
computer-input-typewriters: decided eventually on 026 Key punch;
started comp programs on natography...  All this involved familiar
usage of the 7090 system in Balgol.

     Concurrently, realization of strategy to acquire the
appropriate staff to do it right.  Via Al Collins, regular services
of Frank Bates as a programmer.  Just interviewed and hired?  Mme.
Morris as keypuncher and bookkeeper.  Correspondence with Mrs.
Wightman.  Own intense preoccupation with programs OK to learn the
languages, but must plan and organize, not tie down to tactical
level; though this has usual merits and fascinations of laboratory
work.

     An important turning point arose accidentally in re Bledsoe,
(2/82) from Wilson Stone's recommendations.  It was after interviewing
him, in seeking background insight that I met McCarthy (via Forsythe);
and his proposals for Time-sharing via PDP1 have dominated our
thinking since then.  Principally (1) Regular, inexpensive,
quasi-online access to the computer, (2) therefore a more vital
man/computer symbiosis.  Emotionally all this interacts closely
with the issues of human evolution raised at the Ciba symposium.
In many ways, I would admit this overrides the immediate
applications.