computers and optical design

[Arthur Wouk <awouk@nilenet.com>]

let us cast some light on the subject. the first ibm commercial stored
program digital computer was the ibm 701 which had its first delivery
in 1952-3 to a select list of american defense industry concerns.
although univac existed, it too was in very limited supply and for the
same users, largely.

so what could leitz have acquired in 1951?

most likely the CPC (card programmed calculator),which was the primary
instrument of scientific calculation during the late 40s. by repeated
passes through the system with special wiring boards changed at each
pass (equivalent of programming) major calculations were performed.
much** of the design of the early post war aircraft were achieved on
such systems. and optical design as well. most of optical design is
performed by ray tracing algorithms, and these are performable on
the cpc. the role of the cpc was somewhat reduced by the arrival of
the ibm 650 in the mid 50s.	

the CPC was a mainstay of accounting operations before it was applied
to scientific computing, and often scientific users had to cadge time
on it from accounting. i don't know if this was the case for leitz.

this from someone who was in the second class ibm set up for
prospective users of the 701,  and who bought his first leica (a IIIc
system) in 1945-6 winter  in germany, and at wetzlar.
 ------------
** although early 701s and univacs were used for such efforts, they
were so limited in storage and input/output that the CPCs remained in
use till much later in the mid-50s when the 704 and later the  709
came along. i am sitting here with an obsolete at&t workstation which
is faster and has more  RAM storage than a 701 or 704.