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Oral History
– Walter MacWilliams
(Continued)
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After you began work at Bell
Labs in 1946, how did your project evolve to the point that transistor
circuitry was possible?
After a year the work was
transferred to the Whippany Laboratory, under Stuart Hight. We presented our report to officials at
the Navy Bureau of Ordnance, and were awarded a contract for further study,
looking toward design and manufacture of a gunnery defense system for the
USS NORTHAMPTON, a command ship that was being designed. We studied the problem of analyzing an
air attack, with a system for establishing tracks on incoming aircraft,
evaluating the emerging priority of engaging the various aircraft, taking
into account dynamically the threat to the ship that they represented, and
selecting gun directors to track the aircraft, assigning gun mounts to the
directors, and controlling defensive gunfire as appropriate. The defense would be a fluid affair,
taking into account the threat represented by the attacking aircraft and
the limits of defensive gunfire, a dynamic problem as the attack developed
and the ship maneuvered with the rest of the fleet unit that was being
attacked.
We developed a set of
principles for evaluating the relative threats of the incoming aircraft,
the ability of the defensive gun directors to track them, and the computed
effectiveness of engaging the various aircraft with gunfire, and designed a
defense system for switching assignments of directors to track incoming
aircraft and assignments of gun mounts to engage them with gunfire.
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Oral History
– Walter MacWilliams
(Continued)
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The system was dynamic, and
emphasized a dynamic solution, with a presentation for the personnel
organizing the defense to control the operation. We proposed a system that would show the threats of the
incoming aircraft and the capabilities of defensive gun directors and guns
to engage them, to be managed by gunnery defense personnel. We also developed a system for
analyzing the developing air attack, and presenting, to defensive
personnel, assignments of directors to targets and guns to directors, with
the capability of carrying out the defense automatically, by analyzing data
from the aircraft tracks.
The computer envisaged for
this purpose was called the TEWA (Target Evaluator and Weapon Assignor),
and it also had an automatic mode, called the ATEWA (Automatic Target
Evaluator and Weapon Assignor), in which the defense would be carried out
by the ATEWA computer.
We developed a scheme for
quantizing the principal variables of gunnery defense, and designed a
computer to determine the optimum defense, and to generate orders for
assigning gun directors to incoming aircraft, and gun groups to appropriate
directors, dynamically, using multi-contact relays of the type used in
telephone switching centers.
Go
To MacWilliams Oral History, Pg 4
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