Page "Guidance system" Paragraph 7

In the summer of 1952, Dr. Richard Battin and Dr. J. Halcombe (" Hal ") Laning Jr., researched computational based solutions to guidance as computing began to step out of the analog approach.

As computers of that time were very slow ( and missiles very fast ) it was extremely important to develop programs that were very efficient.

Dr. J. Halcombe Laning, with the help of Phil Hankins and Charlie Werner, initiated work on MAC, an algebraic programming language for the IBM 650, which was completed by early spring of 1958.

MAC became the work-horse of the MIT lab.

MAC is an extremely readable language having a three-line format, vector-matrix notations and mnemonic and indexed subscripts.

Today's Space Shuttle ( STS ) language called HAL, ( developed by Intermetrics, Inc .) is a direct offshoot of MAC.

Since the principal architect of HAL was Jim Miller, who co-authored with Hal Laning a report on the MAC system, it is a reasonable speculation that the space shuttle language is named for Jim's old mentor, and not, as some have suggested, for the electronic superstar of the Arthur Clarke movie " 2001-A Space Odyssey.

" ( Richard Batin, AIAA 82-4075, April 1982 )