Firegeezer cyberspondent and famed Gnome handler, Steve Marshall recently came across some previously- undisclosed U. S. Army reports that have been declassified.  They have had some direct influence on the fire and rescue service, both directly and indirectly  Steve has graciously taken the effort to summarize them and prepare them for your enlightenment and education.  This is a two-part report.

Code Name:  Frog
Part One
by Steve Marshall

Firegeezer’s recent story about his ancient calculator reminded me that all of us who use a laptop or hand held calculator owe a debt to some unsung heroes of the mid-twentieth century.

It wasn’t always this easy in the U. S. Army.

My Father-in-law, Colonel David Ellis (ret.), passed away in January. While I had always known he was an intelligent and well educated man in life and even an important man during his Army career, it was not until after his death that I realized that he also had a lot of secrets and maybe a place in computer history.  Among other things, during his career, he had fought in 3 wars, did 3 tours in Viet Nam, one of them with the 5th Special Forces, was a nuclear weapons expert, and was even listed as MIA for a while when he accidentally invaded Laos.  At that point in the war, no American Troops where allowed in Laos but that’s another story.

A project he was assigned to in 1962 is what THIS story is all about. When I first met the Colonel, I found out he was “into” personal computers…in a big way. I was surprised at first at the level of his interest. He practically dragged me out of my car to come in and see this tiny Sinclair/Timex computer he had. It looked a lot like a toy. He typed furiously and a graph appeared on the screen. That was it, it would make a line with the right commands. He seemed to think that this was something special. Having dealt with the early computers used in EMS and Fire departments and having already spent considerable money at local game arcades playing Pac Man, I wasn’t all that impressed.

Later on, he would dabble in the Commodore computers, and then the first real personal desktop…the AT&T 6300 with its whopping 20 megabyte hard drive and 64 k of ram. He had mentioned that he had been in a project in the 60′s that was computer oriented but there weren’t many details. A lot of what the Colonel had done over the years was still classified so he couldn’t tell me much.

The Commodore 64

After his death, I found several brief cases with his Army papers in it. This guy had been into everything, but a project code named “The Frog” caught my eye and it explained so much about the man.  Officially, the project was known as the “AN/ MSQ19 ATOC” for “automated tactical operations center”, the Army’s first mobile computer system. The project, when completed, would have to pass a final test of it’s abilities and that would be called “Operation Major Domo”.

The Colonel had been assigned to head up the operation. The project was to be constructed at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and they had been given 2 years to complete it. This was long before the days of getting parts from Radio Shack or Best Buy and many of the parts would have to be custom constructed for the project.  Due to delays in construction of some of the components by Philco/Ford, the project had already been left in the dust of history by the time it was completed. Technology had passed it by.

You see, when the project was first begun, the standard of the day was vacuum tubes. Transistors were way too expensive and relatively new. When the completion date rolled around, not only had transistors replaced most vacuum tubes in consumer products, there were already these smallish hand held calculators that would do everything that the AN/MSQ19 could do and do it much faster, and far, far cheaper.

The Frog would later fail in its final test…Operation Major Domo.  In the end, all the AN /MSQ19 could do was add, subtract, multiply and divide….slowly.  The Army had hoped to use the AN/MSQ19 to plot out automated artillery trajectories within seconds of a call for a fire mission but the realities of the day would prove to be impossible to overcome.

So what was the problem?

The AN/MSQ19 took 30 men to operate. Its hard drive was mounted in a 55 gallon drum that had to be kept cool by a constantly flowing garden hose and took nearly 24 hours to spin up to operating speed. These were the days of the IBM punch card and, although faster than hand calculating, the cards were considered far too delicate and heavy for this use.  So an early hard drive had been constructed that could stand up to battlefield conditions.

The Frog dedicated complex.  (U. S. Army photo)

In the end, $25 million and 2 years of experimenting had produced a calculator that required 5 tractor trailers to haul it, plus 2 additional large trucks to haul electrical generators to power it, PLUS it needed its own portable buildings to house the operators and numerous operating consoles.

Inside The Frog command center.  (U. S. Army photo)

The main obstacle was the simple fact that there were individual soldiers on the development team that could calculate the required trajectories faster with a pencil and paper than the AN/MSQ19 could with its early cyberbrain.

But computers are not the family’s only claim to history fame.  Tomorrow I will tell you about the colonel’s brother, Major General Vincent Ellis and his contribution to firefighting vehicle design that also came close, but not close enough for enduring fame.  See you then.