On 3/11/21 12:15 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:
"Jerry Burke, the primary author of the antenna-modeling software NEC,
died on February 14. He had been suffering from cancer. NEC (numerical
electromagnetics code) evolved out of a program called BRACT, which
Burke and others developed in 1967. The most common public version is
NEC-2. -- Thanks to Jim Breakall, WA3FET"
I didn't realize that the roots of NEC went back this far.
Jerry produced amazing results especially considering what he
had to work with in 1967 (IBM 360, keypunch, line printer, etc).
Probably written in the wonderful language of Fortran.
Those were the days.
Probably more likely a CDC 6600 or 7600, when those became available -
Those were the big iron for numerical computation back then (60 bit
single precision). That's what I was using from around 1974 to 1980 at
various places. But yes, keypunch, lineprinter, maybe a RJE terminals.
https://computing.llnl.gov/history shows them getting a 7600 in 69, in
addition to the 7600 they got in '64 (which replaced the IBM 7030) (it
was Serial number 1)
NEC2.f (from 1980)
C PROGRAM NEC(INPUT,TAPE5=INPUT,OUTPUT,TAPE11,TAPE12,TAPE13,TAPE14,
C 1TAPE15,TAPE16,TAPE20,TAPE21)
C
C NUMERICAL ELECTROMAGNETICS CODE (NEC2) DEVELOPED AT LAWRENCE
C LIVERMORE LAB., LIVERMORE, CA. (CONTACT G. BURKE AT 415-422-8414
C FOR PROBLEMS WITH THE NEC CODE. FOR PROBLEMS WITH THE VAX IMPLEM-
C ENTATION, CONTACT J. BREAKALL AT 415-422-8196 OR E. DOMNING AT 415
C 422-5936)
C FILE CREATED 4/11/80.
The VAX 11/780 came out very late in the 70s (I was doing heavy systems
development on a multiprocessor PDP-11/70 in 1979, and we wished we had
one - I actually got my hands on one in probably 1980-81)
NEC had been around for a while by then.
There are some interesting papers/conference presentations by Jerry, etc
on the history of NEC.
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