Identifier: belltelephone6667mag00amerrich (find matches)
Title: Bell telephone magazine
Year: 1967
Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept
Subjects: Telephone
Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)
Contributing Library: Prelinger Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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he operator is seated at a console fac-ing the cathode ray tube. Within easy reach are aa typewriter-like keyboard and a device called a lightpen. About the size of an ordinary pocket pen, it Frame enlargements from a motion picture produced at BellLaboratories show some of the steps in designing an electroniccircuit. Coniputer gives printed instructions at key points andshows performance curves for the finished product. operates through photoelectric cells to pick up lightfrom displays on the cathode tube, and with it theengineer controls size, shape, and position of imageson the tube. The designer can apparently draw onthe face of the cathode tube, moving or changingsymbols, lines or whole forms, and creating newones on a blank screen. Suppose the operator is an electronics engineerwho wants to design an amplifier to be built on aprinted circuit board. He invokes one of several pro-grams stored in the computer which displays on thescreen visible symbols of basic electronic compo- 13
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nents—building blocks—for amplifier circuits. He alsois given an array of light buttons, which take theform of command words, such as connect, comment,move, delete, cancel, etc. The engineer, by choosingconventional electronic symbols displayed on thetube and connecting them with lines with the lightpen, gradually builds, piece by piece, a block diagramof his circuit. As he goes along, the computer canshow him what kind of performance he will get fromvarious combinations of components as he tries them.It also provides him a variety of choices: The circuitworks, but does it work well enough? Can I removethis or that component, making a simpler, more reli-able job that will still deliver specified performance?Can I cut something here or there and save money inproduction? By using the light pen he can makechanges and immediately see the results on thescreen. He has at his command one form of simula-tion, which is one of the computers most valuablecontributions to engineering design.

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