Equipment Notebooks
  My wheelbook containing equipment operating instructions from USNS Bowditch, 1967-1968.

(Courtesy of Earl Adams.)
  My wheelbook, now a small loose leaf notebook, containing equipment operating instructions from USNS Michelson, 1970-1971.

(Courtesy of Earl Adams.)

Sperry NAVDAC Computer:

  NAVDAC was an acronym for Navigation Data Assimilation Computer, which describes concisely what the equipment was, and what it did.  It's unusual for an acronym to end up being so precisely correct!  It was a computer, a general purpose computer to be more precise, which ran a program that assimilated navigation data.

The original NAVDAC on the T-AGS was a Sperry computer built to a UNIVAC design.  See the excellent commentaries by John Prough and Jack Keenan.  Photos of the computer, which unfortunately do not show the face of the control console, are here and here. The computer consist of both the three cabinet stacks seen in the photo, one behind the civilian tech rep on the left, and one behind LCDR Hammer on the right.

By ca. 1969-1970 the Sperry NAVDAC had been replaced on the T-AGS by the Bunker Ramo CP677, the civilian version of the Navy AN/UYK-1, the Navy's first general purpose digital computer (at least to my knowledge).

   


Bendix G15D:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~dgreen/g15intro.html
http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/bendix/index.html
http://members.iinet.net.au/~dgreen/docs.html

AN/UYK-3 General Purpose Computer:
http://jproc.ca/rrp/uyk3.html

AN/UYK-1:
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL64-t.html#TRW-230-130-AN/UYK-1

AN/BRN-3:
    http://www.jhuapl.edu/techdigest/td1901/rueger.pdf
    http://www.history.navy.mil/books/space/Chapter2.htm

Friden Flexowriter:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friden_Flexowriter
    http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/friden/
    Patent 2700446, January 1955

SPERRY MK3 MOD3 SINS:
    http://www.ion.org/museum/item_view.cfm?cid=5&scid=4&iid=4
    http://comcents.com/tendertale.com/tti/tti-55.html
    Inertial Navigation – Forty Years of Evolution
    Principle of Operation of an Accelerometer
    TenderJobs: SINS Gang - Ship's Inertial Navigation System

Transit Program (Navy Navigation Satellite):

    http://www.astronautix.com/project/transit.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_(satellite)

SASS:
(I remember this as "Ships Array Sonar System". Chet Headley, who worked for General Instruments, the manufacturer, recalls it to mean "Sonar Array Survey System".  The NOAA reference below says "Sonar Array Sounding System". Any other translations out there?)
    http://www.history.noaa.gov/stories_tales/poletobeam2.html
    http://www.mbari.org/data/mbsystem/formatdoc/L3TheoryOperation/thop_01.pdf

Stabilized Narrow-Beam Sonar Sounding Set AN/SQN-6 (XN-1)
    Doc: NAVSHIPS 93143

AN/WPN-3 Loran-C

Hyperbolic Radionavigation Systems
   
http://jproc.ca/hyperbolic/index.html

Acoustic Ships Positioning System ASPS-III

Deep Ocean Transponders AT-092AR, AT-095

Mk-19 Gyroscope

Velocimeter

Magnetometer

Gravitometer

Bunker Ramo CP677 Computer

IBM Selectric
Chet Headley notes that these units started out as electric typewriters from IBM. The I/O portion was originally designed and built by NASL/NSSNF (or whatever their name was at the end).