Retiring Presidential Address

In behalf of the Association for Computing Machinery, I want first to thank our host, the University of California at Los Angeles, for permitting us to meet on this campus, and the members of the Local Arrangements Committee for their preparations. A meeting of this sort is made possible only by the joint efforts of many people. To all those who have contributed we are most grateful. As you know, a new group of officers is now taking over the conduct of the affairs of the Association. Your former president is making his last official appearance, and your new president will shortly make his first. To him, and to the other members of the Executive Committee and Council, I offer my congratulations for their selection, and my best wishes for their success in office. The Association for Computing Machinery has not yet completed its first decade. It was first conceived in January of 1947, following a Symposium on High Speed Computing Machinery held at Harvard University. I t started as a regional organization, later became national, and now has many foreign members. At first, the meetings were held at irregular intervals. When a local group aished to organize a conference or symposium on computing machinery the Association was usually glad to give its blessing, but the local group carried essentially the full responsibility for enlisting speakers and making all other arrangements. The Association's Program Committee acted mainly in an advisory capacity. The scope of the organization was at first rather loosely defined to include anything related to high-speed computation: component development, engineering design, logical design, applications. In the early days the tense was generally future. The year 1950 was a turning point. On the negative side, there was disillusionment. People became bored with promises that were being deferred indefinitely if not renounced altogether. But on the positive side the SEAC at the Bureau of Standards actually started computing during this year. Sober accounts of real achievements came more and more to replace the visionary plans for the future. As interests spread and achievements grew, other organizations took official cognizance of the field of high speed computing. In particular the AIEE and the IRE began to interest themselves in design. Eventually there was organized the Joint Computer Conference, sponsored jointly by these two organizations and the ACM. Each year two such conferences are held, one on the East Coast and one on the West, and consideration has been given to a proposal for a Midwest conference in addition to these. The Joint Computer Conferences feature exhibits by manufacturers, and the papers relate mainly to hardware.