[TowerTalk] NEC 5.0 ???

[Lux, Jim]

On 3/11/21 12:15 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist wrote:
>
>
>
>> "Jerry Burke, the primary author of the antenna-modeling software NEC,
>> died on February 14. He had been suffering from cancer. NEC (numerical
>> electromagnetics code) evolved out of a program called BRACT, which
>> Burke and others developed in 1967. The most common public version is
>> NEC-2. -- Thanks to Jim Breakall, WA3FET"
>>
>
> I didn't realize that the roots of NEC went back this far.
> Jerry produced amazing results especially considering what he
> had to work with in 1967 (IBM 360, keypunch, line printer, etc).
> Probably written in the wonderful language of Fortran.
> Those were the days.

Probably more likely a CDC 6600 or 7600, when those became available - 
Those were the big iron for numerical computation back then (60 bit 
single precision).  That's what I was using from around 1974 to 1980 at 
various places.   But yes, keypunch, lineprinter, maybe a RJE terminals.

https://computing.llnl.gov/history shows them getting a 7600 in 69, in 
addition to the 7600 they got in '64 (which replaced the IBM 7030) (it 
was Serial number 1)


NEC2.f (from 1980)


C     PROGRAM NEC(INPUT,TAPE5=INPUT,OUTPUT,TAPE11,TAPE12,TAPE13,TAPE14,
C 1TAPE15,TAPE16,TAPE20,TAPE21)
C
C     NUMERICAL ELECTROMAGNETICS CODE (NEC2)  DEVELOPED AT LAWRENCE
C     LIVERMORE LAB., LIVERMORE, CA.  (CONTACT G. BURKE AT 415-422-8414
C     FOR PROBLEMS WITH THE NEC CODE.  FOR PROBLEMS WITH THE VAX IMPLEM-
C     ENTATION, CONTACT J. BREAKALL AT 415-422-8196 OR E. DOMNING AT 415
C     422-5936)
C     FILE CREATED 4/11/80.


The VAX 11/780 came out very late in the 70s (I was doing heavy systems 
development on a multiprocessor PDP-11/70 in 1979, and we wished we had 
one - I actually got my hands on one in probably 1980-81)

NEC had been around for a while by then.




There are some interesting papers/conference presentations by Jerry, etc 
on the history of NEC.