Record Unit 9536,  The Research and Development (RAND) Corporation Interviews, 1987-1990

In Sessions One through Three, Collins and Tatarewicz interviewed three participants to review the development of aerial reconnaissance photography between 1940 and 1970. In this period engineers had to develop cameras, lenses, shutters, and film for use at ever higher altitudes and usually at higher velocities. The United States benefitted from the improvements at the tactical level in World War II and in the Korean War, and at the strategic level in surveying nuclear capability in the Soviet Union and Cuba. Sessions were recorded at Amrom Katz's home, in Santa Monica, California, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Session One's participant, Amrom Katz, contributed to the field throughout the period discussed. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Wisconsin before beginning work for the U.S. government in 1938. From 1940 to 1954 he mastered approaches to aerial photography at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and led the photographic missions for the Bikini Island atomic bomb tests and the Inchon invasion in 1950. In 1954 he joined the senior staff at RAND, concentrating further on the related issues of aerospace surveillance, arms control and the institutional attitudes that help and hinder these processes.

In Sessions Two and Three, Katz was joined by two other aerial reconnaissance experts. Merton E. Davies completed his B.A. and graduate studies in mathematics at Stanford University in 1938. After ten years of design and engineering work for Douglas Aircraft, he joined RAND's engineering department. His research on satellite reconnaissance photography led not only to its development for military intelligence purposes, but for arms control verification and extraterrestrial exploration as well. Walter Levison received a B.A. in physics at City College of New York before joining Katz at Wright-Patterson and the Bikini tests during and after World War II. Although he never worked directly for RAND, Levison spent the 1950s researching and directing the development of camera and lens technology at Boston University's Physical Research Laboratories for the Air Force surveys of the Soviet Union. Levison continued in this field with the Laboratories and Itek Corporation until 1974.

The discussions detailed technological and methodological developments in photoreconnaissance. The sessions were shot on U-Matic and one-inch videotape; they provide visual documentation of high-altitude cameras and photography and the tools of photointerpretation.

In Session Four, Collins and Senior Vice President Gus Shubert interviewed six participants on their experience of the intellectual culture as it pertained to nuclear strategy studies at RAND in the 1950s and early 1960s. The period 1958-1962 marked a relative decline in RAND's sponsorship by its initial and exclusive patron, the United States Air Force. This was due in part to conflicts over the definition of RAND's role, diversification of RAND's clientele, the appearance of other research centers, and the departure of a significant number of RAND personnel. The participants in this session attempted to analyze the concomitant changes in the Corporation's mission and consequently in its culture. All were senior staffers or division heads by the late 1950s; the first three listed below had departed by 1963 while the others remained or returned to RAND later.

Edward J. Barlow was born in 1920 and received a B.E.E. at Cooper-Union in New York City in 1942 before combining work on radar for Sperry Gyroscope Company on Long Island with studies at New York University. Sperry underwrote his scholarship at Columbia University until he went to RAND. From 1948 to 1960 he worked in RAND's Engineering Division, specializing in aeronautics and space flight. In 1960 he left for a vice presidency at Aerospace Corporation, and took over the presidency of Varian Corporation's Instruments Division in 1969 before retiring in 1984.

Burton H. Klein was born in 1917 and majored in economics at Harvard University for his B.S. in 1940. After stints with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, the Commerce Department, and the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Klein finished his Ph.D. at Harvard and joined RAND's Economics Division in 1952. His published interests include strategic planning and the factors affecting research and development policy. In 1964 he left RAND to become the head of the Economics Department at the California Institute of Technology, where he remained until his retirement.

Albert Wohlstetter was born in 1912, graduated from City College of New York in 1933, and later earned an M.A. at Columbia in mathematical logic. During World War II he consulted for the War Production Board and supervised production control at his brother's Acme Aircraft Company in New York City. After working in the public and private sectors on the problem of post-war housing shortages, he joined his wife, Roberta May Morgan Wholstetter, at RAND in 1951. His exhaustive studies of Air Force basing policy led to a major revision of strategic defense policy. He left RAND in 1963 for the Stanford Research Institute and moved to the University of Chicago's Economics Department two years later. He formed his own consulting firm, PanHeuristics, in 1974, and continued to be involved in the national debate on nuclear deterrence.

Bruno W. Augenstein was born in Germany in 1923, earned a double B.A. in mathematics and physics at Brown University twenty years later and an M.S. at the California Institute of Technology in 1945. After teaching aeronautics at Purdue University he joined RAND's Physics Division in 1949, where he developed additional interests in space and weapons systems, systems analysis and strategic policy formation. Although he left in 1958 for stints at Lockheed Corporation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Institute for Defense Analyses, Augenstein returned to RAND in 1967 as a vice president and senior scientist.

Gustave Shubert received his B.A. from Yale University at the age of nineteen in 1948, and his M.A. from New York University in 1955. After working on radar and communications systems in the United States and France, he joined RAND's staff in 1959, researching national security issues related to aerospace technology. After heading the Economics Department for two years, Shubert left RAND 1964 to lead the U.S.-NATO Defense Planning Teams. On his return in 1966 he became a member of the Research Council and co-authored several studies of American policy in Southeast Asia, including the Pentagon Papers. Since 1968 Shubert has led RAND's involvement in domestic social policy research, including the New York City-RAND Institute and the Institute for Civil Justice, both of which he founded. Shubert stepped down as Senior Vice President in 1989 but continued to consult with RAND as a Senior Fellow/Corporate Advisor.

Robert D. Specht was born in 1913, received an A.B. from the University of Florida in 1936, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin in 1942. During the war he rose from Assistant Physicist to Associate Mathematician at the U.S. Navy's David Taylor Model Basin. From 1945 to 1949 he taught mathematics at the University of Wisconsin. He joined RAND's Mathematics Department in 1949; upon retirement in 1979 he became a consultant in the fields of applied mathematics and mechanics.

Born in 1905, Hans Speier arrived in New York City from Berlin in 1933 with his Heidelburg doctorate to teach sociology at the New School for Social Research. During World War II he worked in the State Department's Intelligence Service and Overseas Branch, and led the Occupied Areas Division from 1945 to 1947. As head of RAND's Social Sciences Division for twelve years, he authored numerous books on the effect of military power on domestic and foreign policy, focusing on modern Germany in the Cold War period. Speier rose to the RAND Research Council in 1961. In 1969 he began teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and retired in 1975. Speier died February 17, 1990.

The discussion detailed the intellectual culture at RAND and relations with the Air Force between 1948 and 1963. The session was shot on one-inch videotape and documented group interaction.

In Sessions Five through Eight, Paul Ceruzzi, Robert Anderson, and Willis Ware interviewed thirteen participants to discuss RAND's role in the post-1945 development of computers. Along with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in Livermore, California, RAND pioneered computer engineering and programming on the West Coast. The Air Force initially funded this work as a means of accelerating systems analysis and missile and nuclear weapon development, but became somewhat more reluctant to underwrite RAND's research when staff there began to develop more interactive applications for computers in the 1960s. Sessions were shot at RAND Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Besides the listed participants for each session, other session participants often contributed as members of an audience.

Participants for this first session contributed to the development of computer hardware between 1945 and 1965. Paul Armer joined Project RAND in 1947 as a mathematician and desk calculator operator. Five years later he became head of the Computer Sciences Department. In 1968 Armer left RAND to direct the Stanford University Computation Center, and since then has also headed the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Processing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and presided over the American Federation of Information Processing Societies.

William F. Gunning started working for Douglas Aircraft in their Flight Test laboratory in 1941. In 1947 he transferred to Project RAND where he worked as an electronic engineer on the development of the Random Number Generator, the modification of the REAC (Reeves Electronic Analog Computer), the Williams memory of the SWAC (Standard Western Analog computer), and the JOHNNIAC.

William P. Myers began working at RAND as Tabulating Department shift leader in 1948. With the arrival of the IBM 604 programmed calculator in 1951, he headed the Operations Group of the Numerical Analysis Department before moving to the Systems Development Department. In 1958 Myers returned to the Numerical Analysis Department in various managerial capacities; he switched to the Computer Science Department in the 1970s and retired in 1984.

Robert T. Nash worked at RAND from 1948 to 1957. He rose from IBM Cards Processor to Administrative Assistant of the Numerical Analysis Department by 1955. Nash then filled the same position for the Programming Department of the Systems Development Division, where he arranged for the settlement of SDD staff at air bases of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) defense system. In 1956 he became manager of Field Services for the SDD and kept the position in 1957 when RAND spun off the Division into an autonomous corporation.

Keith W. Uncapher also arrived at RAND in 1950 and focused on computer engineering. He began with designing components for the REAC, and was responsible for development of the Selectron memory store of the JOHNNIAC. In the late 1950s he oversaw the RAND contract with Telemeter Magnetics for the first 4,096-word, 40-bit, magnetic core store; in the 1960s he managed the development of JOSS (JOHNNIAC Open Shop System), the RAND tablet, the GRAIL system, the acquisition by RAND of larger computers, and the development of a hardened communications system for the Air Force. Uncapher left RAND in 1972.

Willis H. Ware received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and his S.M. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology one year later. After spending World War II at Hazeltine Electronics Corporation, he joined John von Neumann's Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1951 and immediately joined RAND, where he helped lead the engineering on the JOHNNIAC, particularly its Selectron and magnetic core memories. Between 1964 and 1971 Ware headed the Computer Science Division, during which time he initiated debate on computer security as a technical subject. Ware joined the Corporate Research Staff in 1973 and advised various agencies on the applications of large computer systems. Throughout his career, Ware also helped found and support professional groups associated with computing.

Participants for Session Six contributed to the development of computer software between 1945 and 1965. Morton I. Bernstein joined RAND in 1954 as an assistant mathematician. For three years he wrote programs for the IBM 701 computer, the Linear Programming group, the Logistics Department, and consulted on various war games. In 1957 Bernstein assumed responsibility for the JOHNNIAC, concentrating on programming language design and implementation. Between 1961 and 1963, when he left RAND, Bernstein worked with the engineering staff on the RAND tablet.

Irwin Greenwald worked for RAND from 1950 to 1960 and from 1964 to 1969. During the 1950s he was responsible for programming JOHNNIAC's first assignment, the computations on UNIVAC I for the first H-bomb test, RAND's system and utility programming of the IBM 701 and 704 computers, PACT-II (Project Advanced Coding Technique), and the formation of the first users' group, SHARE (Society to Help Avoid Redundant Effort). In the 1960s Greenwald masterminded the major components of the JOSS-II system and the initial software for the RAND Videographic System.

J. Clifford Shaw spent twenty-three years at RAND, beginning in 1950. He specialized in systems software, beginning with the IBM Card-Programmed Calculator, the IBM 701, and the JOHNNIAC; and in artificial intelligence, where he worked with Allen Newell and Herbert Simon on various AI programs and IPL's (Information Processing Languages) I-VI. In the early 1960s he developed JOSS and its language and the system and demonstration software for the RAND tablet. Shaw died in March 1991.

Paul Armer and Willis Ware also appeared in this session.

Participants in Session Seven contributed to the development of computer graphics hardware between 1960 and 1965. Raymond W. Clewett began working in 1937 as a machinist, model builder, and laboratory foreman for Douglas Aircraft Company. After World War II he joined Lear Incorporated as machine shop foreman and design engineer for six years, returning to Santa Monica as shop manager and design engineer for RAND in 1951. His contributions there included design and construction of JOHNNIAC, other computer hardware, nuclear reactor test equipment, the RAND tablet, and closed circuit television reading devices for the visually impaired. After 1977, Clewett was an independent design consultant and owner of HY-TECH Engineering and Development Lab.

Thomas Ellis joined RAND in 1953 after graduate research on computer engineering at UCLA, and worked on most of the projects discussed in these sessions before he left in 1972. He was responsible for the JOHNNIAC's input/output machinery, design of the JOSS (JOHNNIAC Open Shop System) terminals, the RAND tablet, GRAIL (Graphic Input Language), and the RAND/IBM Videographic system.

Paul Armer, Morton Bernstein, and Willis Ware also appeared this session.

Participants in Session Eight contributed to the development of computer graphics software between 1965 and 1975. Robert Anderson received degrees in physics, philosophy, and applied mathematics between 1962 and 1968 at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. He joined RAND in 1973 as head of its Information Sciences Department while holding teaching and research appointments at the University of Southern California. In 1981 Anderson founded his own computer systems consulting firm. After 1986 he was director of RAND's Institute for Research on Interactive Systems (IRIS) and resident consultant.

Barry W. Boehm received his degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and UCLA between 1959 and 1964. Concurrently with his graduate work at UCLA, Boehm headed RAND's new Information Sciences Department. From 1973 to 1989 he was Chief Scientist of TRW's Defense Systems Group, after which he became Director of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Information Science and Technology Office. Boehm has written three books on software engineering.

Edward C. DeLand started working at RAND after finishing his Ph.D. in mathematics at UCLA in 1956. He spent the next six years managing the analog computers, REAC and TRAC, and then began developing mathematical models for blood biochemistry. After switching to physiological research in 1963, DeLand helped construct the BIOMOD program. DeLand left RAND in 1972 for UCLA's Department of Surgery where he continues to develop applications for computers in medical instruction and diagnosis.

Gabriel F. Groner was finishing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Stanford University when he joined RAND in 1964. His interests in character recognition, interactive systems, computer graphics and medical applications of computers were manifested in his contributions to the GRAIL program; the BIOMOD simulation system; the study of computer applications to industrial automation; and the CLINFO data system for medical research. Groner left RAND in 1978.

Thomas Ellis also appeared in this session.

The discussions detailed the development at RAND of computer hardware and software in the post-war era. Sessions were shot on U-Matic videotape and provided visual documentation of early computer components.