Even in the Bedroom

At long last, Engineer Richard Foy has it: a computer in his bedroom. In his house outside Los Angeles, he has installed a Teletype-like machine that is wired into a central computer, which Foy must share with up to 350 other users. For five hours each month, at a rental of $160 monthly, he can type problems into the machine and get instant solutions. Besides using it in his work and to help design his own hydrofoil boat, Foy will rent out computer time to his two grade-school children to assist them with homework. For each three minutes of computer time, Daddy will dock their allowances by $1.

Not every man wants or needs a computer by his bedside, but almost everyone will soon be getting new benefits from a versatile array of advanced computers--recently brought to market or ready to come off the drawing boards--that are designed to serve fields as varied as medicine, defense, transportation and garment making. Items:

sbPLANE CONTROL. U.S. forces in Viet Nam will get Litton Industries' computers to direct combat missions. With the aid of radar and display screens, airborne computers will show pilots precisely where to go, signal corrections if they stray off course. A command control plane will carry a computer no bigger than a big dictionary that will keep track of all planes in a strike; a similar computer could control the air traffic at a big-city airport.

sbMAP MAKER. Bunker-Ramo Corp. has delivered to the Army two computers that perform the most tedious and time-consuming steps in map making. By scanning pairs of serial photos, the computers can measure heights, prepare charts showing altitude contours, automatically correct for parallax displacements and other distortions. e DRESS FIT. IBM has introduced a com puter system that can, from one original design, cut clothes patterns in different sizes. A moving mechanical arm traces the outline of the master design, then adjusts it for all sizes.

sbCOMMUTER'S AID. Illinois Central Railroad is testing a Litton computer that handles commuter ticketing. After a clerk punches in the passenger's monthly schedule, the machine calculates the price and issues a magnetic card. On each trip, the commuter slips the card into a turnstile receiver that automatically subtracts one ride from the total and flashes the number of rides remaining, then opens the gate. In a few years, clerks will be eliminated; the commuter will punch his own order on a console and pay the machine.

sbTALKING COMPUTER. Burroughs Corp. expects to market a computer next year that will read its answers aloud. Electric impulses will vibrate the membrane of a loudspeaker, forming words. One use: a bank customer can go to a drive-in window and deposit a check in the computerized system, which in one second or so will announce the amount of his balance,

sbMEDICAL WATCHERS. The Latter-Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City is using a Control Data computer to monitor the progress of patients in the intensive-care section. Electric sensors follow the heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration rate and other indicators, constantly compare them with data on normal recovery cycles stored in the memory bank. Any dangerous deviation produces a warning flash to a nurse, who thus can watch over many patients at once. Beckman Instruments is marketing an attache-size computer that can ascertain in less than three minutes whether a child has a heart defect. Electrodes attached to the child's chest pick up heart sounds; the computer lights up whenever its programming recognizes an abnormal sound. It has been tested successfully on 8,800 children in Chicago and Los Angeles. National Cash Register is building a hospital computer that records each patient's medical history, allergic reactions, past diagnoses--and gives it instantly to the doctor.

sbTAX INSPECTOR. Beginning next January, the Internal Revenue Service will inspect all federal tax returns by computer. Clerks will feed the figures into Honeywell machines to check the math --for accuracy. Then the figures will be sent to the national center in Martinsburg, W. Va., where IBM computers will check them against income records, dividend reports and past tax statements --for honesty.

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