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<b>Idaho Highway Agency
Installs Electronic "Brain"</b><br>
Idaho Statesman July 28, 1957
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The Idaho Highway department has taken a step to move engineers out of their swivel chairs and put them out in
the field where they are sorely needed under the expanded road  construction program initiated  last year by
the federal government.
Last week an electronic computer, first of its type in Idaho, was put through its initial tests and soon will
be doing in mere minutes the computations that formerly occupied a number of  engineers for weeks or months.
<br><br>This machine will shake engineers loose from calculators and slide rules and allow them to get out on the jobs,
said Marion Whaley,  in whose department the computer has been placed. The computer is a UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer),
and although it is one of the smallest of its line, it will, at the snap of a switch, tell how much earth should be
moved from cuts and into fills, will determine the slight distances on curves and be of unusual help in actual designing
of a  highway for safety and specified speeds.<br> <br>Last week Kay Brimhall, whose title is "programmer", developed for
the machines calculations a program covering proposed construction of 13 miles of road. He explained that once
programmed, that the 13 miles can be repeated with slight variations, elsewhere on most of Idaho's terrain.<br><br>


Whaley said the computer's value lies in what he called repeat performances, in which the multitude of cards needed
to be  fed in, can be used again and again. Whaley said the machine will handle the department's payroll,
many statistical analyses, including that of the planning survey, sufficiency report and accident report.
<br>Idaho is the second state in the west to go to an electronic computer to ease its workload demands. Arizona
was the first, but such computers are being used by highway departments in Connecticut, Oklahoma, Louisiana,
Minnesota and others.
<br><br>Seaman Mills of the accounting  department, wrote an explanation of the computer's work for the July issue of
"Idaho Highway News" which came off the press Thursday. Operation of the computer is too technical for ordinary
folk to understand. But here is what Mills had to say about its operation. Setting up the problems for the machine
to handle will be a field of its own, I saw Kay Brimhall plugging in wires in holes in a panel that looked like a
of peg board with an aluminum frame, in 14 by 22 inch board there are 3264 holes the size of a matchstick,
so you can see that the cross wiring combinations for handling mathematical digits would be staggering.<br><br>
There will be seven pairs of panels wired up to handle traverses, (a traverse is the calculated distance,
including curves, etc, over a given piece of ground). The planning survey departments will have several pairs
of  panels wired to do electronic computing on their sufficiency ratings.
<br><br>On the average, it takes about $60 of labor just to wire a panel. Once wired, however, it is ready to handle
 many calculations with a given type of problem. Tab cards will be punched out for the specific problem involved
and then will be fed into the computer. The holes in the tab cards will permit the computer to pick up the digits
and electronically compute the answer. This will be of great assistance in designing a roadway because several
different methods of building a particular piece of road can be calculated through the machine and the most
economical way chosen. No change is contemplated in the method of taking field notes, although such a move may
develop later. Several states have found it a great advantage to develop a special printed form for taking
field notes so that the information can better organized to handle it in the computer.


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