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