Conversational Computerese

In the new world of office automation, one of the prime problems has been the fact that not all machines talk the same language. The information from computers, in the form of magnetic tape, punched cards or punched paper tape, must be translated for use by less sophisticated machines. The language of the simpler machines, in turn, has to be translated into a form that computers can use. Also, a computer talking in punched cards cannot talk to a computer operating with I magnetic tape, unless the punched-card information is first put on tape, often a lengthy, expensive process. Last week Long Island's Digitronics Corp. brought out a converter, or translating machine, that licks much of the problem.

Digitronics' electronic Berlitz can translate teletype and magnetic tape and punched cards into a common language, or even bypass punched cards entirely by taking information direct from the teletype to computers. First purchaser: Alcoa's Wear-Ever subsidiary. Wear-Ever will use the machine (price: $79,000) to take orders for pots and pans, at the rate of 3.000 words per minute, from the central-office computer, where the orders are assembled, and relay them by teletype to warehouses for shipping. The converter will also feed orders coming in by teletype from sales offices to the computer for billing. Wear-Ever estimates it will cut the time for filling orders from three days to a few hours.

Competition with Giants. Like many another electronics firm, Digitronics was founded only four years ago by three bright young engineers. Unlike many of the defense-oriented companies that dot Boston's route 128 (TIME, July 13, 1959), Digitronics' business is virtually all in the civilian field, where its sales volume has grown from $750,000 the first year to an estimated $2,000,000. From a first-year loss of $60.000, profits rebounded to an estimated $115,000. Digitronics Chair- man Eric H. Haight has found that his company can compete with the giants in the field by designing machines, at a good profit, in areas the big companies pass by.

Digitronics designed an earlier version of the Alcoa machine for Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, world's biggest brokerage house. The Digitronics machine takes customers' bills as they come in on magnetic tape from Merrill Lynch's International Business Machines' computer, translates them to teletype tape for sending to the 130 branch offices for collection. Bache & Co. has two converters: one sends bills, the other translates orders and office accounting data coming in on teletype into computer language. In the first year, Merrill Lynch, which paid $120,000 for the machine, saved $85,000.

Other uses for Digitronics machines: at Readers Digest, scanning a master mailing list and picking out names for special mailings; at the Schering Corp., charting the reactions of rats to stimuli in studies of anti-schizophrenic drugs, doing in a week what would take researchers a year; at the Rockefeller Institute, recording the reactions of the optic nerves of horseshoe crabs, to advance basic eye research.

Fast Talker. A month ago, Digitronics brought out a new machine, the Dial-o-verter, for which it has high hopes. It can take information from punched cards or tape at various places around the U.S. and transmit it by telephone, at the rate of 1,500 words per minute, to a central computer. The machine automatically checks itself for errors, can be started by telephone from the central office with no local operator on hand. Digitronics says that the machine is now being tested by one Government agency to relay statistics from branch offices to a central computer, and the agency estimates that the speed of the machine will save it $1,000,000 a year in communication bills.

In January, restless Digitronics will introduce another machine, which Addresso-graph-Multigraph will sell and service. By adding new names and dropping old ones, the machine brings mailing lists with millions of names up to date daily.

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