The following are excerpts from a 1954 IBM booklet describing
NORC
The Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC) was designed
and built by International Business Machines Corporation
for the U.S. Navy. It was designed especially for the
solution of the largest computational problems of science
and technology. It is the fastest and most powerful electronic
calculator in operation. With its unsurpassed speed and
reliability, NORC handles single problems involving billions
of multiplications, divisions, additions and subtractions.
Unusually simple, straightforward instructions assist
the scientist in presenting the most intricate problems
to the machine.
Unique electronic circuits perform arithmetic and other
logical operations and control all parts of the machine.
An example of its simplified construction is the fact
that over half the circuitry of NORC is made up of only
six types of pluggable units.
NORC does arithmetic in the same manner as a human. It
says "9 and 6 are 5 and 1 to carry" — but does it in a
millionth of a second. . . .
Complete arithmetic operations include referring to the
instructions, selecting the factors and "remembering" the
result — each operation following the other at a rate
of 15,000 a second or a billion in less than a 24 hour
day. This is equivalent to one thousand people computing
for a lifetime.
Operating instructions and problem data are read into
NORC from eight ultra high-speed magnetic tape units.
Seventy thousand characters a second are read from or
recorded on a single tape. It would take 14,000 typists
to write this data in the same amount of time. The tape
starts and attains full speed in 8 thousandths of a second.
In addition to their use for input and output, tapes also
store intermediate results during the calculation.
Printed records are produced at the rate of 18,000 characters
a minute -- equivalent to the output of 70 typists.
In NORC, calculation proceeds during printing, characters
being delivered to the printers at the rate of 10,000
a second. This high-speed printing during calculation
permits the scientist to modify his planning as the problem
progresses.
In normal operation, the calculator proceeds automatically
according to written instructions, without attention from
the operator. Indicator lights on the console show the
progress of the problem and the operations being performed.
Controls permit the operator to start and stop the machine
and to modify the written program. Any number or instruction
in the calculator can be shown on the faces of cathode
ray tubes at the discretion of the operator. Also, any
selected portion of the program can be examined in slow
motion through this display.
Card-Tape-Card Machine
The Card-tape-card Machine automatically transcribes input data for NORC from
punched cards onto magnetic tapes. And conversely, final results from calculations
on NORC are transcribed from magnetic tape into punched cards on this same
machine.
Punched cards facilitate many operations such as recording,
verifying, editing, collating, sorting and printing.
Test Assembly
Electronic circuits for the calculator are mounted on pluggable units which
may be removed from the calculator for test and repair.
A unique piece of auxiliary equipment, the Test Assembly
permits dynamic testing of all pluggable units away from
the calculator, without interrupting its operation. No
testing or adjusting of pluggable units is done on the
calculator.
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