Boslaugh: When Computers Went to Sea
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David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea : The Digitization of the United States Navy. Los Alamitos, CA : IEEE Computer Society, 1999. xxiv + 467 pages, illustrated.
This is a book about the history of the US Navy's secret Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) program, possibly the most successful project ever undertaken by the US Navy. The goal of the NTDS program was to develop the technology of code-breaking computers and to adapt those computers to solving a critical fleet radar data handling problem in the Navy's first seaborne digital computer system that went to sea in 1962.
The technical challenges were great but perhaps nowhere near the difficulty of overcoming the skepticism and distrust of the Navy Brass. However, digital computers were clearly desirable for code breaking and the Navy saw a chance to gain some independence from the National Security Agency by developing its own computing capability.
Finding compelling reasons to have digital computers on board a ship took some work, however. Providing assistance in processing radar data proved to be the answer.
Radar in its earliest installations was a highly-protected secret—the fear was that the Japanese might discover its capabilities and the Navy went to extraordinary lengths to avoid revealing anything about it, resulting in a number of entertaining stories. Early radar techs had to practice using the systems effectively despite secrecy restrictions, so they used special-built scale models on a remote Pacific island with pilots on specially geared tricycles to simulate encounters with Japanese planes so that they could develop tactics using radar systems so that the operators could learn to give accurate vectors to the pilots.
From my engineer's perspective this was an incredible book, filled with satisfying details and providing a unique resource about this early stage in the development of tactical computing at sea.
-- Notes by RRT
