Rebecca Jones and Wallace Eckert

Photo: from Brennan [9].

Rebecca (Becky) Jones, an Associate in Astronomy at Columbia, was Wallace Eckert's assistant for many years. She was co-author (with Eckert) of the book Faster Faster [64], and (also with Eckert) specified the first program for the SSEC (the moon orbit calculations that would be used later in the Apollo missions; the actual programming was done by Ken Clark).

The Star Measuring Engine was built by Heber D. Curtis in 1927 for Swarthmore College's Sproul Observatory, and came to Watson Lab courtesy of Swarthmore director Piet van de Kamp. The automation features were added by Watson Lab's John Lentz and Richard L. Bennett; these included electrical indicator lights, sensors, and driving motors plus interfaces to output and control devices including keyboards and an IBM gang punch. Wallace Eckert describes its as follows [105]:

Having eliminated a great deal of the labor of measurement by making it possible with a few minutes use of the telescope to get a problem that will last a week, the new machine has been designed to eliminate even that labor. The plate containing a couple of thousand stars is placed in a measuring engine. In the old days the operator would turn cranks in two directions to find the star, then set on the image, and read the circle. In the new machine we will not only place the photographic plate, but also a stack of a thousand cards, one for each star. Each card will contain the approximate position from the old catalog made 75 years ago. The machine will read the card, find the star, measure its position and punch the measured position on the same card. The new program will then be simply a matter of traffic control, so to speak, through the machinery.
   After the machines have automatically performed the measurement and computation, certain data must be selected and displayed for inspection so that the astronomer can see what is going on; here again the machines come into use. We look upon this equipment as purely a slave which does the work and exhibits the material in such a way that the astronomer can exercise the judgment which formerly came only after he had exhausted himself on a lifetime of routine work.

Publications:

1. Eckert, Wallace J., and Rebecca Jones, "Problems in Astronomy: Automatic Measurement of Photographic Star Positions", Astronomical Journal, Vol.59, No.2 (March 1954).
2. Eckert, Wallace J., and Rebecca Jones, Faster, Faster: a simple description of a giant electronic calculator and the problems it solves, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1955. The final chapter, "What is There to Calculate", was written by L.H. Thomas [90].
3. Eckert, Wallace J., and Rebecca Jones, Schneller, Schneller, International Büro-Maschinen GmbH (1956) (German edition of Faster, Faster).
4. Eckert, W.J., and Rebecca Jones, "Measuring Engines", in Hiltner, W.A., Astronomical Techniques, Vol II: "Stars and Stellar Systems", U of Chicago Press (1962).

Most recent update: Tue Jun 6 12:43:15 2006