ABSTRACT
Desperate times are the mother of invention. War, or impending war in particular, has spurred many scientific advances-from the atomic bomb and space rockets to the computer. With World War II on the horizon, the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department began to test its weapons in the late 1930s. One critical task was the preparation of bombing and firing tables, which fell to the Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. The laboratory was assisted in its computational efforts by a device known as the Bush Differential Analyzer (BDA)—a continuous variable calculator. Unfortunately, the Army’s analyzer broke frequently, and a contract was awarded to the University of Pennsylvania for use of its BDA, which was more reliable and capable of making larger computations.
