J. C. Shaw

Programming the logic theory machine

A companion paper has discussed a system, called the Logic Theory Machine (LT), that discovers proofs for theorems in symbolic logic in much the same way as a human does. It manipulates symbols, it tries different methods, and it modifies some of its processes in the light of experience.

JOSS: a designer's view of an experimental on-line computing system

The JOHNNIAC Open-Shop System (JOSS) is an experimental, on-line, time-shared computing system which has been in daily use by staff members of The RAND Corporation since January 1964. It was designed to give the individual scientist or engineer an easy, direct way of solving his small numerical problems without a large investment in learning to use an operating system, a compiler, and debugging tools, or in explaining his problems to a professional computer programmer and in checking the latters results. The ease and directness of JOSS is attributable to an interpretive routine in the JOHNNIAC computer which responds quickly to instructions expressed in a simple language and transmitted over telephone lines from convenient remote electric-typewriter consoles. An evaluation of the system has shown that in spite of severe constraints on speed and size of program, and the use of an aging machine of the vacuumtube era, JOSS provides a valuable service for computational needs which cannot be satisfied by conventional, closed-shop practice.

A command structure for complex information processing

The general purpose digital computer, by virtue of its large capacity and general-purpose nature, has opened the possibility of research, into the nature of complex mechanisms per se. The challenge is obvious: humans carry out information processing of a complexity that is truly baffling. Given the urge to understand either how humans do it, or alternatively, what kinds of mechanisms might accomplish the same tasks, the computer is turned to as a basic research tool. The varieties of complex information processing will be understood when they can be synthesized: when mechanisms can be created that perform the same processes.