ASK DR. SCHUND
(C)1993 Alan M. Schwartz
Dr. Schund, it is true that our military envisions installing
microminiaturized mechanical computers utterly invulnerable to
the remote effects of nuclear detonations?
We all have seen pictures of an H-bomb detonating near ground
level. Its retina-searing bubble of incandescent air screams
death at lightspeed and shepherds a one-two punch of sonic blast
and backlash which follows behind. That same device discharged a
hundred miles up is, remarkably, invisible and silent. Brought
to an instantaneous plasma temperature of a few million kelvins,
the substance of the gadget radiates its trillions of watts as
insensible soft x-rays. They ionize thousands of square miles of
tenuous upper atmosphere floating far below, freeing untold
exponential measures of electrons which spiral about the Earth's
magnetic lines of force re-radiating those trillions of watts as
a sustained electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Any suitable conductor
- power and telephone lines, antennas, extension cords, printed
circuitry, transformers - enjoys a million volts/meter 30 minute
jolt. An unpowered one inch circuit trace connecting typical 5
volt silicon logic thus feeds it an astonishing 25,000 volts,
ending civilization. All military command/control/communications
equipment is expensively TEMPEST-armored, guaranteeing its
survival for many seconds after the blast. Thus it was that a
Classified/Top Secret/Lotus Eater project was quietly stuffed
with political pork and the Macroprocessor came into existence.
In the 1800s Charles Babbage designed and sought funding for
construction of a crank-powered prototype of his Difference
Engine. It would have been the first computer. His full scale
dream machine was to be powered by a steam engine.
Military minds envisioned a variation upon Babbage's scheme
involving in its full scale implementation a 40,000 horsepower
Pratt & Whitney gas turbine. Their intrigues were abetted by 23
converted aircraft hangers in Bell Gardens, CA storing as surplus
enough tons of unpunched Hollerith computer cards to give every
modern day Chinese a 1950's IBM mainframe franchise.
Our best military strategists envisioned hundreds of thousands of
EMP-invulnerable Macroprocessors integrated into every martial
computational task accessed or planned through the year 2120 AD.
Exotic metals fabricators suddenly found themselves drowning in
Classified demands for millions of submicron-precise beryllium
assemblies, to go. Beryllium is only 69% as dense as aluminum,
is as stiff and strong as silicon carbide ceramic, costs a mere
$900/pound, and a trace of its dust will kill you by transforming
your lungs into biologically shredded leather. The Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), twelve of the largest law schools in the
country, and the entire American Chiropractic Association girded
their loins for the coming fight.
Perusal of the fine print liberally decorating Macroprocessor
CAD/CAM output would uncover intimations that achieving millions
of numerical floating point operations each second within a
finite mechanical construct would require many of those shiny
beryllium parts to be spinning at orbital velocities. Visions of
their equipment blazing with meteoric splendor lead the experts
to requisition a rather large vacuum chamber with a Mil-Spec
carrying handle, for press release photos conveniently bereft of
scale. Then there was the nasty problem of lubrication...
The solution was obvious. Senior Pentagon staff counted off
their remaining time to retirement and redefined Project
Macroprocessor as a solid-state computational model of the
operation of the mechanical device. They would save untold
millions of dollars as the equipment was emulated, debugged, and
optimized without ever having been built - just like Space
Station Freedom. Further Congressional funding was solicited and
procured behind closed doors for the creation of a new high level
mechano-logical computer language. DARPA began funding for
invention and construction of a new generation of dedicated
parallel-processor computers to contain and execute it. Military
personnel trusted with the most secret of all secret projects
were surreptitiously mustered from motor pools and mess halls to
be trained as programmers. Billions of dollars were quietly
diverted as the American economy subtly shifted in response it a
new and much more grandiose Manhattan Project.
The results to date are astonishing. After only three years of
intense development shared by 37 states and a minority contractor
in Puerto Rico, a major reorganization of Project Macroprocessor
is underway! The Pratt & Whitney hardware is being challenged by
competitive bidding from Rolls Royce. Pentagon lights burn late
into the night as the days to Project Macroprocessor's manager's
retirements count down.