Los Alamitos Research Articles

King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric’s Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry by Homer R. Oldfield

1010 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE desired end. The computer, which relies on rigid rules and routines but ultimately can be used to solve an almost infinite array of prob­ lems, brings this fundamental feature of technology into sharp re­ lief. The tradeoffs between order and opportunity were all the more apparent before 1960, when the crude state of electronic compo­ nentry severely constricted the freedom of programmers and placed special premiums on logical design and wiring. Meanwhile the terri­ fying power of the atom bomb, together with the tensions of cold war politics, raised the problems these men confronted to a level of urgency few technicians have known. Was it really so wrongheaded or narrow-minded of them to embrace the cumbersome electronic behemoths and pursue the objective ofa fail-safe defense? Were they not exhibiting something of the very same desire for liberation that Edwards himself feels so strongly? Steven W. Usselman Dr. Usselman is associate professor and graduate coordinator in the School of History, Technology, and Society at Georgia Tech. His extended essay on “Com­ puter and Communications Technology” recently appeared in the Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century (New York: Scribner’s, 1996). King of the Seven Dwarfs: General Electric’s Ambiguous Challenge to the Computer Industry. By Homer R. Oldfield. Los Alamitos, Calif.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+252; notes. (Price not given). King of the Seven Dwarfs offers a history of General Electric’s role as a vendor of computer products over a fourteen-year period in the late 1950s and 1960s. GE, like many other companies in the 1950s with expertise in electronics or office machinery, entered the new computer market briefly but evacuated when it could not compete profitably. For a time it was, after IBM, the second largest supplier of computers in the United States. The “seven dwarfs” refers to the seven companies that competed against IBM (and each other) in the new computer market of the 1950s and 1960s (Burroughs, Hon­ eywell, Sperry Rand, et al.). GE entered the market with an extraor­ dinary product—ERMA—a check-handling system built to order for the Bank of America. It later developed and marketed interactive systems, such as the GE Datanet 30, as well as a series of generalpurpose computers. In 1970, GE got out of the computer business, selling its operations to Honeywell. The book provides a narrative account of how GE won the ERMA bid and then built and sold these systems. Homer Oldfield describes the engineering problems encountered and overcome, and he pro­ vides a detailed look at how GE management operated, including a fascinating look at the internal politics of the company. An early GE participant and executive in the computer business, Oldfield por­ TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1011 trays GE as a company reluctant to enter the computer business, deciding to do so only after a group of engineers won a $31 million contract from Bank ofAmerica to build ERMA. Senior management is shown resisting entry into this new business, torn by doubts about GE’s ability to compete against IBM, on the one hand, and con­ cerned, on the other, that it might offend its potential rival, which was one of GE’s largest customers for electrical components. Old­ field demonstrates that an insufficient commitment to the computer business, management instability, and excessive bureaucracy all con­ tributed to GE’s failure. This occurred despite important engi­ neering achievements, such as the construction of dozens of ERMA systems and high-performance general-purpose computers, and de­ spite GE’s significant contributions to online systems in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Oldfield based his study on a large body of interviews and on an exchange of letters in the 1990s with engineers in GE’s computer business. A unique and effective feature of this book is his extensive use of dialogue and quotes from the participants, giving the reader the feeling of witnessing the events as they unfolded, almost as with a novel. The effect is powerful: what otherwise might have been a dull book to read is hard to put down. King of the Seven Dwarfs makes an important...

Determining the egomotion of an uncalibrated camera from instantaneous optical flow

A procedure is described for self-calibration of a moving camera from instantaneous optical flow. Under certain assumptions this procedure allows the egomotion and some intrinsic parameters of the camera to be determined solely from the instantaneous positions and velocities of a set of image features. The proposed method relies on the use of a differential epipolar equation that relates optical flow to the egomotion and the internal geometry of the camera. A detailed derivation of this equation is presented. This aspect of the work may be seen as a recasting into an analytical framework of the pivotal research of Vieville Faugeras [Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1995), pp. 750–756]. The information about the camera's egomotion and internal geometry enters the differential epipolar equation via two matrices. It emerges that the optical flow determines the composite ratio of some of the entries of the two matrices. It is shown that a camera with unknown focal length undergoing arbitrary motion can be self-calibrated by means of closed-form expressions in the composite ratio. The corresponding formulas specify five egomotion parameters as well as the focal length and its derivative. A procedure is presented for reconstructing the viewed scene, up to a scale factor, from the derived self-calibration data and the optical flow data. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the correctness of the approach.

The Early History of Data Networks by Gerard J. Holzman, Björn Pehrson

1004 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE dom had difficulties obtaining the necessary loans at moderate inter­ est rates. Local savings banks were generally very keen to assist town councils in financing gasworks. In the late 19th century, financial markets in other Nordic countries were less developed and Ending capital was thus more complicated there than in prosperous Den­ mark. Furthermore, Denmark was at the time the most urbanized of the Nordic countries, and the construction of gas networks was less ex­ pensive to carry out in more densely populated communities. In ad­ dition, some Danish gasworks were both technologically and organi­ zationally connected to local water supplies and sewage systems. Hence in the late 19th century gas pipes became organic elements in the process of Danish town building. During the present decade, when the Nordic energy systems are in a “liberation” process, Den lysende gas offers illuminating back­ ground to contemporary events. Ole Hyldtoft has written a wellresearched history ofa Danish peculiarity. The national idiosyncrasy of the book may, however, constitute a barrier at least to part of its potential audience. The Danishness is interwoven into the book so tightly that to comprehend it fully a knowledge of the language is not enough. The reader must be thoroughly acquainted with Danish society in order to realize what has been written between the lines. Timo Myllyntaus Dr. Myllyntaus teaches economic and social history at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of Electrifying Finland: The Transfer of a New Technology into a Late Industrialising Economy (London: Macmillan, 1991). The Early History ofData Networks. By Gerard J. Holzman and Bjorn Pehrson. Los Alamitos, Calif.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995. Pp. xi+ 291; illustrations, maps, figures, appendices, notes, bibli­ ography, index. $35.00 (hardcover). The tide of this book is a bit misleading, although one can see the reason for it. From the authors’ perspective on modern telecom­ munications, any system for getting information from one place to another looks like a data network, especially if its designers concern themselves with such things as codes and error messages. Nonethe­ less, it is surprising to find under a cover so titled a richly detailed account of the optical telegraph in France and Sweden, including a translation of a treatise on the subject by the designer of the Swedish system, Abraham N. Edelcrantz, published in Stockholm in 1796. Edelcrantz shares center stage with the creator of the first optical telegraph system, Claude Chappe, whose initial experiments on long-distance communication by sight and sound caught the atten­ tion of the French Convention in 1793 as war was breaking out. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1005 Chappe had tried several devices and codes before settling on a sem­ aphore system, at first called a tachygraphe but then renamed a télé­ graphe. This consisted of a rotating main beam (regulator) with a rotating wing (indicator) at each end. In a series of modifications of the allowable configurations of the beam and wings, Chappe moved from a code based on the ten digits to ninety-four positions ranging over the digits, the alphabet, and a set of common syllables. When combined with a 94 X 94 table of values, the system allowed for 8930 different words and phrases to be conveyed by a sequence of three settings of the semaphore. Messages went from source to destination through a string of relay stations in visual contact at dis­ tances of 10-15 kilometers. The first line from Paris to Lille in 1794 grew over the next fifty years into a network connecting the major cities of France, northern Italy, and the Netherlands. By 1852, 556 stations traversed some 4,800 kilometers. By then, however, the elec­ trical telegraph had gone into service and quickly rendered the opti­ cal system obsolete. Edelcrantz (his name after elevation to the nobility; he was born Clewberg) learned of Chappe’s semaphore in 1794 and quickly re­ produced it, thereby attracting the attention of the new Swedish king, Gustav IV. Commissioned to study a full telegraph network, Edelcrantz soon replaced the semaphore with a 3 X 3 array of shut­ ters held either open or shut. Treated as three columns of threedigit...

Nondrug Measures for Painful Procedures

Christine L. Pasero is a nursing pain management consultant in Rocklin, CA, and past president of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses. Margo McCaffery is a consultant in the nursing care of patients with pain in Los Angeles, CA. Nancy K. Smith is a staff nurse in the medical-surgical and postanesthesia care units at Los Alamitos Medical Center in Los Alamitos, CA, and an assistant instructor at Cypress College School of Nursing in Cypress, CA.

Book review: Software inspection: an industry best practice. By David A. Wheeler, Bill Brykczynski and Reginald N. Meeson, Jr. Published by IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 8186 7340 0, 293 pages. Price: U.S.A. $30.00 members/$38.00 non-members. Including disk, soft cover.

Book review: Software inspection: an industry best practice. By David A. Wheeler, Bill Brykczynski and Reginald N. Meeson, Jr. Published by IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 8186 7340 0, 293 pages. Price: U.S.A. $30.00 members/$38.00 non-members. Including disk, soft cover.

Bounds on the Number of Examples Needed for Learning Functions

We prove general lower bounds on the number of examples needed for learning function classes within different natural learning models which are related to pac-learning (and coincide with the pac-learning model of Valiant in the case of {0,1}-valued functions). The lower bounds are obtained by showing that all nontrivial function classes contain a hard binary-valued subproblem. Although (at first glance) it seems to be likely that real-valued function classes are much harder to learn than their hardest binary-valued subproblem, we show that these general lower bounds cannot be improved by more than a logarithmic factor. This is done by discussing some natural function classes like nondecreasing functions or piecewise-smooth functions (the function classes that were discussed in [M. J. Kearns and R. E. Schapire, Proc. 31st Annual Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1990, pp. 382--392, full version, J. Comput. System Sci., 48 (1994), pp. 464--497], [D. Kimber and P. M. Long, Proc. 5th Annual Workshop on Computational Learning Theory, ACM, New York, 1992, pp. 153--160]) with certain restrictions concerning their slope.

Book review: Software inspection: an industry best practice. By David A. Wheeler, Bill Brykczynski and Reginald N. Meeson, Jr. Published by IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 8186 7340 0, 293 pages. Price: U.S.A. $30.00 members/$38.00 non‐members. Including disk, soft cover.

Book review: Software inspection: an industry best practice. By David A. Wheeler, Bill Brykczynski and Reginald N. Meeson, Jr. Published by IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 8186 7340 0, 293 pages. Price: U.S.A. $30.00 members/$38.00 non‐members. Including disk, soft cover.

Two-boson Hamiltonian for Shor's algorithm

A two-boson Hamiltonian is constructed whose induced unitary evolution implements in the corresponding Fock space the algorithm devised by Shor [Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Logarithms and Factoring, in Proceedings of the 35th Annual Symposium on Foundation of Computer Science, edited by S. Goldwasser (IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1994), p. 124] to factorize an integer into prime factors.

HANDBOOK OF SOFTWARE RELIABILITY ENGINEERING. Edited by Michael R. Lyu. Published by McGraw‐Hill, New York, U.S.A. and IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 07 039400 8, 850 pages. Price: U.S.A. $72.50, including 1 CD‐ROM, Hard Cover.

Software Testing, Verification and ReliabilityVolume 7, Issue 1 p. 59-60 Book ReviewFree Access HANDBOOK OF SOFTWARE RELIABILITY ENGINEERING. Edited by Michael R. Lyu. Published by McGraw-Hill, New York, U.S.A. and IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A., 1996. ISBN: 0 07 039400 8, 850 pages. Price: U.S.A. $72.50, including 1 CD-ROM, Hard Cover. MIN XIE, Corresponding Author MIN XIE Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511.Search for more papers by this author MIN XIE, Corresponding Author MIN XIE Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511.Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 0511.Search for more papers by this author First published: 04 December 1998 https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1689(199703)7:1<59::AID-STVR126>3.0.CO;2-5AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. References Azem, A. (1995) Software Reliability Determination for Conventional and Logic Programming, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, Germany. S. Bittanti (Ed.) (1988) Software Reliability Modelling and Identification, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany. Clapp, J. A., Peng, W. W. and Cerino, D. A. (1995) Software Quality Control, Error Analysis, and Testing, Noyes Data Corporation, Park Ridge, New Jersey, U.S.A. Friedman, M. A., Tran, P. Y. and Goodards, P. L. (1995) Reliability of Software Intensive Systems, Noyes Data Corporation, Park Ridge, New Jersey, U.S.A. Friedman, M. A. and Voas, J. M. (1995) Software Assessment: Reliability, Safety, Testability, Wiley, New York, U.S.A. B. Littlewood and D. Miller (Eds) (1991) Software Reliability and Safety, Elsevier Applied Science, London, U.K. Y. K. Malaiya and P. K. Srimani (Eds) (1990) Software Reliability Models: Theoretical Developments, Evaluation, and Applications, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A. Musa, J. D., Iannino, A. and Okumoto, K. (1987) Software Reliability: Measurement, Prediction, Application, McGraw-Hill, New York, U.S.A. Neufelder, A. M. (1993) Ensuring Software Reliability, Marcel Dekker, New York, U.S.A. H. Pham (Ed.) (1995) Software Reliability and Testing, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, U.S.A. P. Rook (Ed.) (1990) Software Reliability Handbook, Elsevier Applied Science, London, U.K. van Pul, M. C. J. (1993) Statistical Analysis of Software Reliability Models, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Xie, M. (1991) Software Reliability Modelling, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore. Volume7, Issue1March 1997Pages 59-60 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Pain ratings: the fifth vital sign.

Christine L. Pasero is a nursing pain management consultant in Rocklin, CA, and past president and cofounder of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses. Margo McCaffery is a consultant in the nursing care of patients with pain in Los Angeles, CA. Nancy Smith is a staff nurse working in medical-surgical and PACU, Los Alamitos Medical Center, Los Alamitos, CA.

Computer Pioneers by J. A. N. Lee

860 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE ComputerPioneers. ByJ. A. N. Lee. Los Alamitos, Cal.: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1995. Pp. xiii+816. $54.00 (hardcover). ComputerPioneers is a biographical encyclopedia covering the lives, careers, and publications of more than 240 people who influenced the development of the modern computer in some significant way. Most of the biographical sketches, printed alphabetically by name, include a schematic outline of the individual’s career, listing dates of birth and death, education, professional experience, and honors and awards. This is often, but not always, followed by a narrative (in length anywhere from one paragraph to a dozen pages) that dis­ cusses the pioneer’s work on computers and gives some flavor of his or her life and times. Each sketch closes with one or two short quotations and a brief bibliography of significant publications and other biographical sources. Most of the sketches are based on articles previously published in the Annals ofthe History of Computing or elsewhere. Some were origi­ nally memoirs written by the pioneers themselves; others were obitu­ aries. Many of the still-living pioneers edited or contributed to their own biographies. Lee’s selection criterion was “someone who introduced a new ele­ ment, concept, or direction to the field.” He has, in general, chosen very well. All of the most important names—Babbage, Turing, Mauchly, von Neumann, Forrester, Cray, Noyce, Wozniak—are here. But some pioneers have also been included whom a less thor­ ough editor might easily have forgotten, such as the 9th-century Per­ sian mathematician Al-Khowarizmi (after whom “algorithms” are named). In addition, a host of lesser-known contributors, such as Robert Hughes, a member of the FORTRAN development team, have found their way into the volume. Finally, Lee has also wisely included some—such as John Parker, who provided the financial backing for Engineering Research Associates, an early commercial computer firm—whose contributions were primarily supportive or facilitating: managers, CEOs, financiers, and educators. Lee pro­ vides substantial information about importantwomen computer pio­ neers such as Grace Hopper, Lady Lovelace, and Mina Rees. Some sketches attend carefully to important biographical issues, such as Turing’s homosexuality. Anyone selecting pioneers in this field is certain to draw fire for leaving somebody out. I might have included, for example, Paul Armer, head of RAND’s numerical analysis department from 195262 , and Terry Winograd, who developed the natural language under­ standing program SHRDLU. But this is only a quibble. A more seri­ ous problem is that the sketches vary enormously in both quality and length. In too many cases, the entry consists of only a single sen­ tence. In others, career information is provided, but no narrative, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 861 or vice versa. Many of the narratives are excellent, but others say little about the pioneer’s work and serve no real purpose beyond adding an element of human interest. (This may be the unfortunate result of allowing the pioneers themselves too strong a hand in com­ posing their own entries.) The quotations section of the entries seems to me, in general, a misguided attempt to add flavor to what is essentially a reference work, particularly since many of them are poorly chosen. Lee and his contributors do not seem to have thought through carefully enough the issues of why and how scholars (and others) will want to use this book. Most of the entries are two pages or less of fairly large type. Since this means that anyone seeking more than the most cursory information will have to look elsewhere—and since many of the shortest entries include no bibliographies to guide that search—using this book as a reference tool can be a frustrating expe­ rience. In this reviewer’s opinion, Lee would have done far better to provide a smaller number of more consistently developed entries. The book’s index is, unfortunately, its worst feature. Inexplicably, it fails almost entirely to cross-reference the biographies or to pro­ vide content-based information. Instead, it simply lists the entries by name, adding a few subheadings. People who don’t know exactly for whom they are searching will curse this index; it is worse than useless...

Efficient networks for quantum factoring.

We consider how to optimize memory use and computation time in operating a quantum computer. In particular, we estimate the number of memory quantum bits (qubits) and the number of operations required to perform factorization, using the algorithm suggested by Shor [in Proceedings of the 35th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, edited by S. Goldwasser (IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1994), p. 124]. A K-bit number can be factored in time of order ${\mathit{K}}^{3}$ using a machine capable of storing 5K+1 qubits. Evaluation of the modular exponential function (the bottleneck of Shor's algorithm) could be achieved with about 72${\mathit{K}}^{3}$ elementary quantum gates; implementation using a linear ion trap would require about 396${\mathit{K}}^{3}$ laser pulses. A proof-of-principle demonstration of quantum factoring (factorization of 15) could be performed with only 6 trapped ions and 38 laser pulses. Though the ion trap may never be a useful computer, it will be a powerful device for exploring experimentally the properties of entangled quantum states. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

Self-consistently optimized statistical mechanical energy functions for sequence structure alignment.

A quantitative form of the principle of minimal frustration is used to obtain from a database analysis statistical mechanical energy functions and gap parameters for aligning sequences to three-dimensional structures. The analysis that partially takes into account correlations in the energy landscape improves upon the previous approximations of Goldstein et al. (1994, 1995) (Goldstein R, Luthey-Schulten Z, Wolynes P, 1994, Proceedings of the 27th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Los Alamitos, California: IEEE Computer Society Press. pp 306-315; Goldstein R, Luthey-Schulten Z, Wolynes P, 1995, In: Elber R, ed. New developments in theoretical studies of proteins. Singapore: World Scientific). The energy function allows for ordering of alignments based on the compatibility of a sequence to be in a given structure (i.e., lowest energy) and therefore removes the necessity of using percent identity or similarity as scoring parameters. The alignments produced by the energy function on distant homologues with low percent identity (less than 21%) are generally better than those generated with evolutionary information. The lowest energy alignment generated with the energy function for sequences containing prosite signatures but unknown structures is a structure containing the same prosite signature, providing a check on the robustness of the algorithm. Finally, the energy function can make use of known experimental evidence as constraints within the alignment algorithm to aid in finding the correct structural alignment.

Latin American Immigration and U.S. Schools

Latin American Immigration and U.S. Schools

Discussion of the Paper by Grenander and Miller

Discussion of the Paper by Grenander and Miller

Trading Space for Time in Undirected s-t Connectivity

Aleliunas et al. [20th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, 1979, pp. 218–223] posed the following question: “The reachability problem for undirected graphs can be solved in log space and $O(mn)$ time [m is the number of edges and n is the number of vertices] by a probabilistic algorithm that simulates a random walk, or in linear time and space by a conventional deterministic graph traversal algorithm. Is there a spectrum of time-space trade-offs between these extremes?” This question is answered in the affirmative for sparse graphs by presentation of an algorithm that is faster than the random walk by a factor essentially proportional to the size of its workspace. For denser graphs, this algorithm is faster than the random walk but the speed-up factor is smaller.

Discussion on the Meeting on the Gibbs Sampler and Other Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods

Discussion on the Meeting on the Gibbs Sampler and Other Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods

More than Knott's Berry Farm: Museums and Southern California

WHEN W.E.B. Du BoIs wrote these words in 1913, he was commenting on status and aspirations of burgeoning African American community in greater Los Angeles region. Yet his comments might also describe vibrant and expanding museum community in Southern California, which until recent fiscal crisis seemed ripe with opportunities and possibilities. For most outside of region, Los Angeles is rarely viewed as hotbed of museums. Usually Los Angeles is seen as New Ellis Island, island on land, a city in search of center, the city of future, or la land. Far too often, Los Angeles is depicted as simply series of extremely diverse communities held together by regional boosterism, earthquakes, fads and eccentricities, urban unrest, freeways, and smog. The city's persona seems dominated by Hollywood, beaches, LA lawyers, free-wheeling (or should I say free-wielding) cops and, of course, Disneyland. Yet, as following reviews suggest, Los Angeles region is flush with an impressive array of cultural institutions: fine art museums such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art; historic houses like Gamble House or Rancho Los Alamitos; historical and anthropological museums such as Southwest Museum

Review: Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens, by Pamela Seager and Pamela Young; Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site, by Ellen Calomiris and Stephen Iverson; and Drum Barracks Civil War Museum, by Marge O'Brien

Review: <i>Rancho Los Alamitos Historic Ranch and Gardens</i>, by Pamela Seager and Pamela Young; <i>Rancho Los Cerritos Historic Site</i>, by Ellen Calomiris and Stephen Iverson; and <i>Drum Barracks Civil War Museum</i>, by Marge O'Brien

FerugliotheriumBonaparte, the first known multituberculate from South America

ABSTRACT Ferugliotherium windhauseni Bonaparte 1986a, the only known species of the Ferugliotheriidae, is the first multituberculate recognized from South America. It is known from the previously described holotype ml and 12 additional isolated teeth (m1, M1, and, tentatively, three lower incisors, one lower premolar, four upper incisors, and two upper premolars), which we describe here. All of the specimens were discovered in the Campanian Los Alamitos Formation of Argentina at one locality, Estancia Los Alamitos. Two other teeth, a purported lower premolar and a large lower incisor, both from the same locality and both previously referred to F. windhauseni, probably do not belong to that taxon. The lower premolar is unidentifiable and the lower incisor is probably referable to Gondwanatherium patagonicum. We regard two worn specimens previously identified as upper molars and comprising the hypodigm of Vucetichia gracilis Bonaparte, 1990 as probable mis of F. windhauseni. Vucetichia, previously assigned to the Gondwanatheriidae, is therefore probably a junior synonym of Ferugliotherium but formal synonymy is deferred pending the recovery of more nearly complete m1s of Ferugliotherium and/or less worn molars of Vucetichia. The gross dental morphology of the new specimens and the inferred pattern of jaw movement help to confirm the multituberculate affinities of F. windhauseni. The Ferugliotheriidae is more derived than the Haramiyoidea and Paulchoffatoidea but probably still retained more than two lower premolars and generally low cusp formulae on m 1 and M 1; these characteristics indicate that a cimolodont grade of organization had not been attained. The family, tentatively assigned to the Plagiaulacoidea, is considered a derived member of that group, possibly most closely related to an undescribed genus from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. In other characters (e.g., presence of fully restricted band of enamel on central incisors, development of lingual row of cusps on M1, large size of m1 relative to m2), ferugliotheriids resemble either taeniolabidoids or ptilodontoids, or both. The Ferugliotheriidae differ from all other known multituberculates in possessing prominent transverse ridges and furrows on the molars. This unique mosaic of attributes indicates a significant interval of isolation from Laurasian populations.