Sunday, January 19, 2014

▶ NTDS - Naval Tactical Data System the pre AEGIS USS Ships brain - YouTube

NTDS- Navy Tactical Data System | Bring the heat, Bring the Stupid
Almost immediately after the end of WWII, a handful of radar specialists in the Navy began to search for a solution to the problem. They quickly realized any mechanical/analog computer system similar to those used in gunfire director/computer systems would be overwhelmingly complex. But a few had heard of the first forays into the electronic (digital) computer systems entering service such as the ENIAC. The plotting and tracking functions of any system of automation would largely be relatively simple mathematic calculations. The challenge wasn’t the complexity of the math, but the volume of it. And the ENIAC and its brethren were designed for the sole purpose of performing large numbers of mathematical computations.  The problem was, the ENIAC was as big as a house. The Navy’s codebreakers were also deeply interested in digital computers. Codebreaking is again an arena where the mathematical computations themselves aren’t terribly complex, but the sheer volume of calculations needed overwhelm both humans, and the primitive electromechanical devices used in World War II.


Group of U.S. Navy NTDS officials including Stan Foote with
Lord Louis Mountbatten, First Sea Lord, Royal Navy
in front of NELC Point Loma, 1962-10-09
First-Hand:No Damned Computer is Going to Tell Me What to DO - The Story of the Naval Tactical Data System, NTDS - GHN: IEEE Global History Network
The entire AN/USQ-17 Computer set consisted of the unit computer at left, the operating console (non militarized) at center, and the Friden Flexowriter automatic typewriter with paper tape punch and reader at right. Photo from Donald L. Ream, courtesy of Unisys.

First-Hand:Building the U.S. Navy's First Seagoing Digital System - Chapter 4 of the Story of the Naval Tactical Data System - GHN: IEEE Global History Network



▶ NTDS - Naval Tactical Data System the pre AEGIS USS Ships brain - YouTube

Published on Jan 19, 2014
NTDS Naval Tactical Data System the pre AEGIS USS Ships brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ta...
Naval Tactical Data System, commonly known as NTDS, refers to a computerized information processing system developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s and first deployed in the early 1960s for use in combat ships.

Full Playlist: Computer History Museum -2013 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...

TilTul http://tiltul.com LinksYouWantToRemember
CIMG5957 NTDS the pre AEGIS USS Ships brain

NTDS technology still widely used across Navy platforms worldwide - Military Embedded Systems

1 comment:

Lowell A. Benson said...

The ERA/UNIVAC/... retirees club web page http://vipclubmn.org/sysnavy.html has several personal experiences with NTDS. Much of the NTDS software and hardware development was done in Minnesota!