Wallace Eckert Smithsonian Exhibit - Photo #3

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The 1942 issue of the American Air Almanac, produced quarterly by Eckert 1940-45 during his tenure as director of the Nautical Almanac Office of the US Naval Observatory. Eckert's almanacs were the basis for US air and sea navigation in World War II, and were produced entirely "by computer" using methods devised by Eckert at Columbia and USNO. In the background, an enlarged computer-printed almanac page showing how Eckert was able to coerce the primitive early printers into producing high-quality compact and readable tables. (More about this HERE.)


Frank da Cruz / fdc@columbia.edu / Columbia University Computing History / Sep 2003