Talk:CASINO
Medidata's previous name
According to Special Follow-up Feature: Nuclear Family:
- Scientific Engineering Institute. The SEI was .. eventually rebranded as Searle Medidata Inc., a subsidiary of G.D. Searle.
So if the Bell quotation from Computer Engineering:
- DEC also never built a PDP-3, although one was designed on paper as a 36-bit machine. [...] In 1960 a customer (Scientific Engineering Institute, Waltham, Massachusetts) built a PDP-3
is correct, this seems to be the machine he was talking about. Which fits with things in the letter from Rawson to Lane, which speaks of:
- the basic 4K memory. This memory consists of two PDP-1 memories placed on top of one another to provide 38-bit words
At first I was thinking 'if the PDP-1 was 18 bits plus a parity bit, making its memories 19 bits wide, that would check - if CASINO was 36 bits, plus a parity bit - or a parity bit for each half-word, if the machine was prepared to do half-word writes (the way PDP-11 memories have separate parity bits for each half-word, because they can do byte writes)'. If the PDP-1 had parity, that would all check, and explain why the paired PDP-1 memories were 38 bits wide - but I decided I should check to make sure the PDP-1 had parity. It didn't! But, in the PDP-1 Maintenance Manual (pg. 8-7, 214 of the PDF), I found:
- The core bark actually includes an extra core plane which is completely wired in. .. The extra 19th plane is not ordinarily used, but is provided in case it is wanted for some special application
So either CASINO had 36 bit words, with parity (or it had no parity :), or 38 bit words... But still, I'm fairly certain this was the 'PDP-3'. I will leave the PDP-2 and PDP-3 articles as they are, for the moment, but if you think I have correctly identified it, I will fix them. Jnc (talk) 01:48, 8 January 2024 (CET)
- Very interesting theory! I'd like to mull over this for a while before announcing my edict. And pass around the word. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 09:27, 8 January 2024 (CET)
- Sure; no rush.
- In looking for info about Scientific Engineering Institute, I found some other sources which indicated that it became Medidata (with Homer Oldfield, he of the GE ERMA project, involved). I decided this morning that I wanted to find better sources on that connection, because a lot of the ones online are kind of conspiracy theorists (and sound like they are all quoting each other, which does not increase the weight of actual evidence).
- I did find a public record (bottom right corner on pg. 21), which gave SEI's address (140 Fourth Avenue), and that is indeed the same address as the one printed in the Medidata letterhead of the letter from Rawson, so I think it's now pretty well nailed (as the English-language expression goes) that they were the same.
- And that means, if Bell was right about SEI in his book, that CASINO is the machine it spoke of. (The 'other' PDP-3 he speaks of, in his oral history, is not an actual machine, but just an order for one.) Jnc (talk) 12:22, 8 January 2024 (CET)
- Having slept and mulled and put out the word, I can't raise any strong objections. It seems likely that building a 36 and/or 38-bit computer would be a major effort and cost, so SEI doing it twice over in the same time period seems improbable. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 08:14, 10 January 2024 (CET)
- The 19th core plane is an interesting find by itself! No PDP-1 aficionado I mentioned it to was aware of it. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 08:14, 10 January 2024 (CET)
Original use
A lot of Web-sites seem to say something like this: The only PDP-3 was built by the CIA’s Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI) in Waltham, MA to process radar cross section data for the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in 1960., but I haven't yet tracked down a reference to the A-12 usage, other than this. Jnc (talk) 13:15, 8 January 2024 (CET)
So I looked around a bit, and found a book, The Archangels, by an amazing guy, Thornton Barnes (available for download here - grab it while it's available!), which confirms the SEI was doing radar low-observable work:
- the anti-radar research of Dr. Edward M. Purcell of Harvard University, who had discovered a possible means of countering or absorbing radar emanations. His discovery, led to laboratory work in techniques to blanket portions of the A-12 with radar absorptive materials to reduce radar detection. .. Project RAINBOW laboratory’s research and testing occurred under the auspices of a CIA proprietary research organization named as the Scientific Engineering Institute
This was long before Overholser at Lockheed discovered Ufimtsev's paper, and they started that low-observable program; but the A-12 had been using low-observable techniques long before (notably in radar-absorbing composite materials, and for the chine design) - which is what SEI was involved in.
This doesn't tell us exactly what CASINO was being used for - running theoretical models (as with Overholser's later work), or processing recorded experimental data (as suggested by the query above) - but it likely was some sort of low-observable work. Jnc (talk) 18:43, 9 January 2024 (CET)
- Rawson seems particularly keen on pointing out CASINO's good graphics capabilities. Maybe they were put to good use in medical applications, but still, maybe that wasn't the first application. Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 08:14, 10 January 2024 (CET)
- It almost definitely wasn't. I found some bio-medical papers from SEI, back in the day, so I can see how SEI get into that field, commercially, back when they apparently stopped doing engineering work for the CIA, and became e real business, Medidata. And the use CASINO was being put to later, just before it was retired ("the board testing function now being carried out on CASINO") definitely was a later re-use of a machine they had laying around.
- Ben Rich's Skunk Works mentions Dr. Purcell's work on reducing the U-2's radar cross-section (pg. 152), so that Thornton Barnes guy does know what he's talking about. It's a pity there's not more available on exactly what they were using CASINO for, originally, but although the RCS-reduction work of that era is now completely antediluvian, and it would be fine to talk about now, back then it was completely hush-hush, so it was obscured. The original report speaks of "radar cross section data for the Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft in 1960", so maybe if I poke around in material on the early A-12 RCS-reduction work (which was a follow-on to previous, similar work on the U-2), I'll turn something up. SEI probably had either data or theoretical models that needed a high level of accuracy, so they needed a 36-bit machine. Jnc (talk) 11:28, 10 January 2024 (CET)
