Abstract

1. Introductory. The recent rapid development of electronic computing facilities on college and university campuses has become particularly dramatic during the past several months. Dozens of colleges and universities now have 'medium-sized' computers such as the IBM 650, and several campuses have larger machines. The best known of the large-scale digital computers are the IBM 704, 709, and 7090 systems, which are very similar to each other. Among the universities which have machines of this type are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Universities of Michigan, Washington, and California (at both Berkeley and Los Angeles), and several additional ones have recently been installed or are on order at other institutions. Comparable machines made by Remington-Rand are available at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina. The installations on these campuses exist for research and educational purposes; in other words, they are intended to be of service to the faculty and students. This being the case, it is standard practice to make the machines available free of charge to faculty members and students who have no outside financial support for their research, provided their projects are deemed worth while. This fortunate circumstance is extremely significant, since the use of these machines is ordinarily very costly. For example, the standard rental for a typical 704 is about $45,000 per month, and the price for its use on an hourly basis, if it were a commercial installation, would be around $300 to $400 per hour, which amounts to about $6 per minute or ten cents per second. Also important is the fact that the universities which have these large computers generally provide free use of them to faculty members of other academic institutions in their geographic areas, as long as time is available. This means that most linguists in the United States are potentially in a position to make use of large-scale computers. The reason that computers are not yet being widely used in linguistics is mainly that their presence on the academic scene is so recent that linguists for the most part have not had the opportunity to become acquainted with them. Moreover, the process of becoming acquainted has been impeded by various prevalent misconceptions regarding the range of applicability of the computer, the difficulty of learning how to use one, and the like. Perhaps the most widespread misconception is that the computer is primarily, if not entirely, a glorified mathematical calculator. Strangely enough, this misconception is even widespread among mathematicians who use computers. Since they use the machines only for purposes of numerical calculation, many of them have remained unaware of the numerous nonnumeric applications which are possible. Related to this

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