Engineering Feasibility Study on Automated Attack-Effects Information Systems

The Automated-Effects Information Systems-1 proposed by the Stanford Research Institute in April 1970 was studied to determine the practicability of such a system from an engineering viewpoint. At the request of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, ORNL prepared a preliminary design of two different models that are based on the original Basic Operating Situation (BOS) concept proposed before any work had been done on this system. Both ORNL designs will operate as dial-up systems with existing telephone networks and derive power necessary for operation directly from telephone lines. However, one is a digital system and the other is an analog system. From this study, a pressure-operated switch was developed that is automatically reset electrically and requires only a few microcoulombs of stored energy to reset it after an interrogation. A recommendation from this study is that a test model be constructed to provide a means of checking for problems that could be encountered in a dial-up system when long distance is involved. (Author)