An Experimental System for Time-shared, On-line Data Acquisition

With the increasing availability of terminal-oriented, time-shared computers, it now becomes feasible to extend the method of use to include real-time, on-line data acquisition and data reduction. Here described is a particular embodiment of such a system, using an IBM 1050 terminal and the IBM Research M44/44X and the APL/360 Model 50 computers. Reasons leading to the choice of equipment, special devices, programming considerations, data rates and some economic factors are considered.