🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:24:07, Anne & Lynn Wheeler <ly...@garlic.com> wrote:

> I did alta-vista search on 9020 and came up with a couple hits.
> 
> http://www.faa.gov/apa/speeches/aoa/FWINGS.htm
 
> Automation of en route ATC began with the installation of IBM's
> prototype 9020 system at the Jacksonville Center in 1967.

I was traveling to ZJX weekly during testing circa 1968.  The 9020 was not a 
prototype.  The *system* of which the 9020 was a part was sort of a prototype.
 I say "sort of" because Raytheon was having difficulty delivering the display
system, so we were using an entirely different kludge of Haseltine and 
Raytheon analog display gear.

The Jacksonville system had a lot of problems, foremost being an inability to 
process a second's worth of radar data every second.  JAX had four radars at 
the time, but we had only two digitizers because the Air Force requisitioned 
two of them for use in Viet Nam.  The real-time problem was a consequence of 
poor software design and also of writing the radar processing software in 
JOVIAL.  In the redesign, some of the processing was moved into the I/O 
Control Units (360/50s) and all of it was rewritten in BAL.  Actually, what 
IBM did was to take the BAL code produced by the JOVIAL compiler and hand 
optimize it.  Thereafter and until this very day it has been maintained in 
BAL.

Besides learning definitively that JOVIAL was unsuited to real time radar data
processing, the main thing we learned in JAX was the deficiencies in our 
design for flight plan processing and posting. 

> Designed to
> provide automated flight data processing and radar tracking at all en
> route centers and major terminals, this was the most complex computer
> application ever undertaken up to that time.

Maybe.

> Its half million commands
> required more than twice the amount of memory originally planned, a
> complication which caused the project to fall behind schedule. The

It wasn't the size of the code.  It was Raytheon's display system problems, 
the radar processing software design problems (IBM's fault) and the flight 
data processing specification deficiencies (MITRE and FAA's fault) noted 
above.  We really did learn a lot at JAX.

> installation at all 22 en route centers was not completed until the
> end of the 1970s.

Much earlier.  The 9020s were all installed by about 1968.  The software was 
fielded in a series of packages:  flight data processing without real-time 
interaction from the sectors (this was called "CUEless"), real-time flight 
data processing, basic radar processing, and the final system.  The last 
Center went operational around 1973.  If anyone really cares I could probably 
find the actual date.
 
> http://www.aero-space.nasa.gov/library/ch1.htm
> 
> Automation of en route ATC began with the installation of IBM's
> prototype 9020 system at the Jacksonville Center in 1967. The system
> was designed to provide automated flight data processing and radar
> tracking at all en route centers and major terminals. The system was

Wrong.  The 9020 was part of the system called NAS (National Airspace System) 
En Route Stage A.  It was installed only in Air Route Traffic Control Centers.
 The terminal system was an entirely different system made by Univac.  There 
were grandiose plans for a Stage B but it never happened.  Oh well.

> delivered behind schedule, which created significant frustration
> within FAA, the aviation community and IBM. The system would not be in
> place at all 22 en route centers until the end of the 1970s. However,

Wrong again about the date.

> indicative of the complex nature of automating the en route
> environment, the 9020 system proved to be the most complex computer
> application in the world at the time, with more than half a million
> commands. When the program was completed, IBM had more than doubled
> the amount of memory the company had first thought the program would
> require.

These guys must be getting their misinformation from a common source.
 
-- 
    John Varela