Abstract :
In the 1950s, the "Golden Age of the Signal Corps, " a farsighted U.S. Army Signal Corps program foreshadowed many of the advanced computing and communications technologies that were not to be generally available for several decades. These technologies included compatible computers made by several manufacturers, high-availability systems, standardized interfaces and communication codes, and large-capacity disk files. The early genesis of Fieldata is described as well as the development program for the MOBIDIC machines. Details on machine reliability are provided, together with descriptions of the Fieldata code, the MOBIDIC instruction set, the operation of the MOBIDIC I/O converters, and the MOBIDIC real-time system.
