A digital computer for airborne control systems

A digital computer has been developed for use in airborne control systems. This application presents many problems. The computer must be small, light weight, and very reliable. It receives its input signals from instruments in the rest of the system. These signals are of the “analogue” continuous type and must be converted into the discrete electric signals used in the computer. The problems of analogue-digital conversion are problems in the measurement of the physical quantities that define the state of the system and in the transformation of the results of these measurements into digital signals. The digital numbers representing the input quantities are processed by the computer which performs in real time the computations corresponding to the mathematical representation of the control problem. The results of these calculations are numbers representing the signals used to control the system. These output numbers are converted into the analogue type signals used in the control operations.