Automatic Thinking Machine Promises to Alleviate Labors of Mathematician--Inventor Is M. I. T. Professor

The widely-announced electrical machine that thinks for itself, which has been developed in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the subject of an interview yesterday between the CRIMSON and Dr. Vannevar Bush inventor of the machine.

"Into this mechanical mind" said Dr. Bush, "can be fed the conditions of a mathematical problem too complex for the human brain to master, and it will promptly grind out the answer and write it down, as efficiently as a machine takes in lumber and chemicals and produces finished boxes of matches."

The new machine, which is called the Product Integraph, opens the doors to important fields of research hitherto inaccessible. It was developed by Dr. Bush, who is Professor of Electric Power Transmission at M. I. T., in conjunction with a staff of research workers including F. G. Kear, H. I. Hazen, H. R. Stewart, and F. T. Gage. The work was begun several years ago with the object of filling the urgent need for a machine which would automatically solve problems of advanced electrical theory.

"The Product Integraph." Dr. Bush explained, "might be called an adding machine carried to an extreme in its Gosign.

"The foundation of the Integraph is a watthour meter of the same type as is commonly used in homes for recording electric power Integration is merely a mathematical way of expressing the sum of a series of numbers which vary according to a given equation. The mathematician, in using the machine to do away in an afternoon with months of calculating, plots equations on paper which is passed slowly under pointers in the 35-foot apparatus: Operators stationed along the length of the machine keep the pointers on the curves, and as these pointers move up and down, the power flowing through the meter varies in proportion and the number of revolutions it makes is the integral desired."