Computer Helps KU Stride Into Modern Space Realm
Through the acquisition of a giant General Electric 625 computer KU takes another giant stride into the space age.
The huge computer is to be installed in February. Its acquisition was announced during Commencement weekend by Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe.
It will be leased with some of the funds provided last year by grants from two major national agencies for a three-year development of a computer center at KU.
LIKE THE IBM 7040 system it will replace at the KU Computation Center, the new system will be made available for research projects by state agencies, business and industry and other colleges and universities.
Richard Hetherington, director of the center, said other state institutions can use the 625 "through so simple a hook-up as a telephone
line." The 625 has a large capacity for development of remote terminals and time-sharing systems.
Heart of the new computer is a 40.000-word magnetic core memory with an access speed of two words in two-millionths of a second—more than twice the memory and eight times the speed of the 7040.
THE 7040 SYSTEM, installed only last summer and operated around the clock, is inadequate for the growing number of research projects flowing to the center and already is operating near capacity.
The 7040 was used some 4,500 hours the past year and hourly usage has been rising monthly— to more than 520 hours the last month of the fiscal year.
The new 625 will make possible advances in data processing for research for fields such as petroleum engineering, numerical taxonomy and library science. It will return to the campus some research projects that previously had to go elsewhere, and make possible some research projects that could not have been considered earlier.
THE TELEPHONE DATA processing hook-up to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City is being supplanted by a microwave communications system to include a data channel for high speed communications.
It will permit studies in psychiatry and processing of hospital data for research purposes on a scope not now feasible, and will allow experiments with optical scanning for routine identification and classification of disease vectors and other organisms.
Because it is more advanced, the new computer is expected to improve classroom instruction in programming, numerical analysis and other computer science subjects.
8 University Daily Kansan Friday, September 17, 1965
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