A system for general-purpose analog-digital computation

Concerning the age-old argument on the relative merits of analog and digital computation, it has been said that the true future for scientific computation involves the union of the equipments by means of an analog-digital converting device. In this period prior to the digital computer with fractional-microsecond arithmetic commands and memory accesses, it appears that for many problems such a union is necessary. Or, from another point of view, considerable machine time savings can be realized from such a union. The Digital Computing Center and the Analog Computing Center of The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation have cooperatively arranged for the design and construction of a general purpose analog-digital conversion device, the system point of view of which will be discussed here especially in relation to the digital computer.