At 01:36 PM 3/31/2008, Jon Forrest wrote:
Sometime long ago I first heard the term "codes"
used in the same way I would use the term
"programs". For example, someone might have
said "The codes from Berkeley were very tricky".
The first time I heard this, I thought maybe
this term came from someone who wasn't a native
speaker of English, who was trying to pluralize
the term "code". This often happens with
words like "information" and "documentation".
But, now I regularly hear native speakers
of English using "codes" to mean "programs",
especially in the scientific realm, such as
what many of us deal with regularly.
Does anybody know how this usage first came about?
It's quite old (in computer age), I think. One sees references to
various hydrodynamic codes (meaning things like numerical computation
of Navier-Stokes, etc.) in reports from Los Alamos in the
1950s. Probably comes from the fact that "coders" did "coding" to
implement various models and algorithms, and what would the process
of coding produce but a code.
Jim
Some references:
at http://history.siam.org/articles.htm
one can find links to, e.g.
http://history.siam.org/pdf/cwgear.pdf
mentions that early implementations of RungeKutta methods were, for
example, "implemented by Wheeler as code #27 for the ILLIAC
I" ILLIAC 1 became operational in 1952. (page 10 of the pdf) ..
however, I'm not sure if they referred to them as codes then, or if
that usage is from the author of the article. One might want to get
references 33,34, and 35 from that article (from 1950,51, 54, respectively)
There's also the transcript of an oral history by Cody, where he
talks about the "Argonne Code Center", and the interviewer (Haigh) asks Cody:
Cody: ... The Argonne Code Center was a repository for nuclear codes,
codes that had been written to perform nuclear computations, design
of reactors, whatever.
Haigh: And code in this context basically means program?
Cody: Program, the complete program.
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0842402
Accession Number : AD0842402
Title : Comparison Between a Von Neumann-Richtmyer Hydrocode
(AFWL's PUFF) and a Lax-Wendroff Hydrocode.
Descriptive Note : Technical rept. Aug 67-Aug 68,
Corporate Author : AIR FORCE WEAPONS LAB KIRTLAND AFB NM
Personal Author(s) : Hicks, Darrell ; Pelzl, Robert
Report Date : OCT 1968
There are 7 TR's in DTIC with dates before 1970 and the word
hydrocode appearing somewhere.
The earliest one is from March 1967
Accession Number: AD0817429
Full Text (pdf) Availability:
Size: 28 MB
Handle / proxy
Url:
<http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/AD817429>http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/AD817429
Citation Status:
ACTIVE
Title: THEORETICAL CALCULATIONS OF THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF DISTANT PLAIN EVENT 6
Abstract:Abstract:
Theoretical calculations of the phenomenology of an atmospheric high-
explosive detonation are presented. The charge was a 100-ton sphere
(radius, 240.5cm) of TNT loading density, 1.56 gms/cc whose center
was at an altitude of 646.405 meters. The ground, upon which the
spherical charge rested, was 644 meters above sea level. The
numerical calculations taken out to 6 seconds were performed on the
CDC 6600 digital computer using SHELL2, a two-material (version of
the SHELL-OIL code), two-dimensional pure Eulerian hydrodynamic code.
Air and the detonation products of TNT were the two materials
considered in the calculation. The analytic, self-similar solution
for the detonation wave in TNT provided the initial conditions.
Included are pressure and density contours, velocity vector plots,
and wave forms for 19 test stations. This calculation is a
representation of the air blast of Event 6 of the DISTANT PLAIN test
series to be fired in Canada, July 1967.
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