Research and Advances

The first computers operating in post-war Germany had been constructed within Germany. These were developed at the Max Plank Institute in Göttingen, with two additional university machines under construction at Darmstadt and Munich [1]. These machines did not attain any importance, however, in the German economy.

This paper points out a variety of ways computer systems used in business and industry can be involved in legal entanglements and suggests that computer specialists have a responsibility to call for assistance in forestalling or minimizing those entanglements during the planning stage. Techniques are suggested for making legal clearance effective with the least burden on the new technology and for achieving a favorable legal climate for it generally. Computer specialists also are alerted to potential opportunities to interpret to lawyers the technical aspects of computer systems involved in legal situations.

It is unfortunate that almost all of the presently used algebraic languages do not provide the capability of linear algebra. Operations such as the inner product of vectors, the product of two matrices, and the multiplication of a matrix by a scaler must inevitably be written out in detail in terms of the individual components. The reasons usually given for avoiding linear algebra in these languages are (1) the difficulties which would arise in scanning linear algebraic expressions, and (2) the uncertainty involved as to the amount of temporary storage needed during the evaluation of linear algebraic expressions when the program is executed. The purpose of this paper is to show how these two types of difficulties can be overcome. Although suggestions have been made for even further increasing the general capability of ALGOL such as including the ability to form a matrix from a collection of vectors, we shall be content here to consider the ordinary operations of linear algebra. Even if this much becomes available in algebraic languages, considerable progress will have been made. The following remarks constitute a suggestion for the addition to ALGOL of linear algebraic expressions.