Today beening the first sunday of the month, I finally
went to see and to take some pictures of a historically
important, but virtually unknown type of analog computer.
Just north across the Golden Gate bridge is a beautiful
protected area of rolling hills with biking and hiking
trails, but honeycombed with tunnels and overgrown gun
emplacements dating back to the 1870's. This area called
the Marin Headlands is also the location of SF-88, the
only one of 300 Nike missle sites to be restored for
public viewing.
They have a great web site and you can read about the
rest of the site, but today I was interested in the
control vans. One contains the electronic and controls
for the radars that tracked the missle and the target.
The other van contains the launch control panel and
the "intercept computer", a Western Elecric electronic
analog computer that occupies 4 equipment racks.
This analog computer guided the missile after launch
using radar inputs to intercept the target and maded the
idea of a anti missile deterrent a reality. The missile
site operated from 1955 to 1974 when it was turned over
to the National Park Service. But before 1955 many scientists
believed that a missile could never intercept another
missile (they said, would be like "hitting a bullet with
another bullet."). In 1955 Bell Telephone Laboratories
completed 50,000 simulated intercepts of ballistic
missile targets using an analog computer indicated
that it was possible to hit a missile with another
missile.
Today, I took a bunch of pictures. They had the
launch control panel powered up. Lots of multi-colored
buttons, and above the panel is the plotter, you
may have seen in the movies, with the two pens that
slowly move closer and closer until they touch as
the missile hits it's target.
http://www.jps.net/ethelen/t_acqconsole.html
A couple of pictures of the computer:
http://www.jps.net/ethelen/t_acqconsole.html
Take your own tour on-line:
http://www.jps.net/ethelen/t_tour.html
Nike sites in your state or country:
http://www.jps.net/ethelen/appndx_b.html
--Doug
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Doug Coward dcoward_at_pressstart.com (work)
Sr. Software Eng. mranalog_at_home.com (home)
Press Start Inc.
http://www.pressstart.com
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Analog Computer Museum and History Center
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/analog
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Received on Mon May 08 2000 - 04:03:20 BST