T0OLS I &TOYS

General interest

Reference works on CD Owners of IBM-compatible personal com-puters now have access to two renowned reference works on a single compact disk: the McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science & Technology and the third edition of the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms.

Search software retrieves any article by title or phrase, and the encyclopedia's 7300 articles are integrated with the dictionary's 115 500 definitions. Users can thus look up a subject in the encyclopedia and then check the definition of any term that ap-pears in the article.

Besides an IBM PC XT, PC AT, or com-patible computer, the reference set re-quires a CD-ROM player from Sony, Hita-chi, or Philips, at a cost of $690 to $1350. Additional system options provide access to all photos and illustrations in the text, electronic panning and zoom over any page, and full laser reproduction of any article.

For $300, McGraw-Hill provides the CD-ROM Science & Technical Reference Set— the compact disk, two diskettes for pro-gram installation, and a 27-page manual. Contact: Elizabeth Crawford, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 11 West 19th St., New York, N.Y. 10011; 212-337-5022.

Who's who in Japan After 15 years of Japanese-language pub-lication, a Tokyo database company has published the Japan Computer Index '87, a two-volume dictionary, printed in En-glish, covering the Japanese computer in-dustry. One volume provides a directory of hardware companies listing 1500 manu-facturers; the other lists more than 3500 software houses.

Basic data—name, telephone arid fax numbers, financial data, and product information—are shown for each com-pany. The directory also has analyses, reviews, and projections for the computer industry in Japan. In the United States, the hardware directory costs $215, the soft-ware volume $280. Contact: Anthony Capasso orMieko Namiki, Infonetlnc, 5F The 7th Industry Building, 1-20-14 Jin nan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan 150; (81 + 3) 770-4483; telex J25845 SIMPLE.

Constant changes The meter, and Avogadro's number are two of the several fundamental physical quan-tities that were redefined or adjusted in 1986 for greater precision. Last year saw the first revision since 1973 in the values of internationally adopted constants. The changes are detailed in 1986 Adjustment

of the Fundamental Physical Constants, which costs $15. [For more on the mea-surement of physical constants, see "Volts and amps are not what they used to be," by Paul Wallich, Spectrum, March, p. 44.] Contact: Pergamon Press Inc., Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, N.Y. 10523; 914-592-7700.

Searching for standards Two new publications available through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) direct readers on how and where to find information on the thousands of stan-dards used throughout the world.

Access to Standards Inform ation. lists the international and national standards bodies in some 70 countries. The 102-page, $30 publication has names and addresses, information on on-line databases of stan-dards, and accredited testing laboratories. It also lists general works on certification. A free flier, Ready Access to the World's Standards Through ANSI, outlines the in-stitute's collection of standards and catalogs. Contact: American National Standards Institute (International Sales Dept), 1430 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10018; 212-642-4900.

Computers

You can take it with you Most hard disk drives are sensitive to shock and, bolted into a computer, cannot easily be removed. But the Personal Data Pac from Tandon Corp. is an entire 30-megabyte hard disk drive in a plastic case that can be carried from computer to com-puter. Roughly the size of a fat paperback

book, the Data Pac plugs into an adaptor for use with either Tandon's new PAC-286 personal computer or IBM-compatible PCs. It weighs slightly more than 1 kilo-gram and can survive drops of more than half a meter onto a vinyl floor, says Tandon.

Each Data Pac has an encoded serial number that allows users and program-mers to restrict software programs to a par-ticular unit. The cost of a Data Pac remov-able drive is $400, and a PC adaptor box, holding two drives for additional storage or backup, costs $500. Contact: Tandon Corp., 405 Science Dr., Moorpark, Calif. 93021; 805-523-0340.

See-through software For those who want to know what's going on inside their IBM PC, the Visible Com-puter: 8088 program simulates the opera-tion of the Intel 8088 microprocessor at the heart of a PC or PC XT. The user loads pro-grams into the simulator and executes them one instruction at a time, checking the contents of processor registers and memory locations as the machine operates. The $79.95 program comes with a 350-page manual that includes a tutorial on 8088 assembly language.

A version of the Visible Computer pro-gram is also available for the 6502 proces-sor at $39.95 for a version that runs on the Commodore 64, or $49.95 for an Apple II version. One that simulates the IBM PC AT's Intel 80286 processor is now under development. Contact: Software Masters, P.O. Box 3638, Bryan, Texas 77805; 409-822-9490.

MacStructural analysis Engineers generally analyze complex structures on enormous mainframes or

Hours of enjoyment from nanoseconds of light The Museum of Holography in New York City has mounted an exhibition of holograms from pulsed laser light. On view through Sept. 20 are some 45 holo-grams from nine countries, all created with bursts of laser light lasting less than 10 nanoseconds.

The short exposure times allow pulsed-laser holographers to freeze movement in living and moving sub-jects, including wildlife, as well as im-ages impossible to view normally, such as the core of a nuclear reactor, or vari-ous types of what is described as an in-stantaneous event.

One such event is a bullet shattering a cocktail glass. Called "Shocktail," this rainbow hologram [photo, right] was captured with a single laser pulse, fired just afterthe bullet passed out of the frame. The hologram was created by Kevin J. Baumber, with technical assistance from Rob Munday, both from the Royal College of Art, London.

"The Holographic Instant: Pulsed Laser Holograms" was conceived by muse-um executive director Ian M. Lancaster and put together by Marcia Merryman-Means. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., except for Wednesday, when it opens at 10:30 a.m. Admission is $3 for adults, $1.75 for chil-dren and senior citizens.

The museum has a bookstore and arranges group visits and school lectures. It also publishes holosphere, a quarterly journal. Contact: Museum of Holography, 11 Mercer St., New York, N.Y. 10013; 212-925-0581.

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even supercomputers. But the MSC/pal software, which performs finite-element analysis on structures with as many as 500 nodes, runs on Apple Macintosh personal computers.

MSC/pal can analyze static structures, determine resonant frequencies, and pre-dict a structure's response to transient forces. It plots its results as three-dimen-sional wire-frame models, with a stress-de-formed shape overlaid on the original structure. The program has a library of such commonly used structural elements as beams, plates, membranes, and springs.

The MSC/pal software costs $995 for a Macintosh with 512 kilobytes, and $1495 for the 1-megabyte package. Special ver-sions are available for educational institu-t ions. Contact: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp., 815 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif., 90041; 213-258-9111.

Robotics

Journal on robotics The international journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, Advanced Robotics, aims to publish interdisciplinary works on research into robotics science and engi-neering, with special emphasis on Japan-ese work.

The journal reports on research into the analysis, design, implementation, and use of robots in such areas as manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuators, materials, control, intelligence, language, software, man-machine interfaces, and systems ar-chitecture. Some articles in English are translated from the Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan; others are sub-mitted directly by expert authors to Ad-vanced Robotics.

The cost is DM360 by air and DM352 by surface mail. The price in dollars varies with the dollar-to-deutsche mark exchange rate. Contact: VNU Science Press, P.O. Box 2093, 3500 GB Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Robots on display A selection of robotic applications will be on display at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia through Sept. 6. "Robots and beyond: the age of intelligent machines" includes Number Five, a robot prop from the film Short Circuit, as well as a Kurzweil reading machine and the psychoanalysis software program called Eliza. "The Age of Intelligent Machines," a 30-minute movie produced by the Kurz-weil Foundation, will be shown three times a day.

The Franklin Institute is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $4.50 for adults, $3.50 for children 4-11, $3 for senior citizens. Contact: The Franklin Institute, 20th St. and the Parkway, Philadelphia, Pa. 19103; 215-448-1200. (Taped message on program information, 215-564-3375.)

Coordinator: John Voelcker Consultants: Jack M. Kinn, Electronic

Industries Association; Paul AT. Wolfgang, Boeing Vertol

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PEARSON Very High Voltage & Very High Current

Pulse Transformers Pearson Electronics specializes in the design of very high voltage (to 1,000,000 volts) and very high cur-rent (to 1,000,000 amperes) pulse transformers. Typical applications are for units supplying power to high power microwave tubes, particle ac-celerator injection systems, pulsed x-ray tubes, high power lasers and plasma physics.

Other Pearson pulse-modulator components include preci-sion current transformers and coaxial capacitive voltage di-viders. The current transformers for high voltage use feature double shielding and high voltage stand-off capabilities. Units for use with high currents are rated up to 1,000,000 amperes or more. The voltage dividers are rated up to 500 kV.

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IEEE SPECTRUM JULY 1987 Circle No. 11 55