The first computer duped and printed log I ever submitted was for the 1959
ARRL SS.
I was a grad student at the University of Michigan. John Wilkinson [also a
grad student and whose call has escaped from my memory] and I did a multi-op
entry. After the contest ended John wrote computer program code so we could
enter each line of the paper log, find the dupes, find the multipliers,
compute the score and then print out the entry. The result was a very neat
submittal compared to the paper log entries we had done previously.,
Electronic, digital computers were very expensive. Usually they were only
found in very large company accounting departments, government labs or in
research projects at very large, high tech Universities . Finding a
computer, knowing how to write code for it {in machine language because
there was no FORTRAN, BASIC or in many cases not even an Assembly Language
compiler} and persuading the 'owner' of the computer to give you precious
computer time to debug the program and make the data entry and results
processing run for an non-research project was very challenging.
John and I felt we probably were making a 'first ever' type of contest log
submittal.
Much to my surprise when I asked ARRL HQ about their reaction to our
"historic" submittal they casually said "Oh yes, we have been getting of few
of such entries for the past several years." It would be interesting to
find out who actually made the very first computer duped and scored entry.
It must have occurred some time after 1954 I would think?
Tod, KØTO
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