Simulation Readings Series SIMULA’s Place in Simulation History

Citation: McHaney, Roger, Simulation Readings Series: SIMULA’s Place in Simulation History, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KansasSIMULA (SIMulation LAnguage) is a computer programming language that was conceptualized, designed, and created at the Norwegian Computing Centre in Oslo by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Originally, SIMULA was intended to facilitate development of models for complex real world systems. It contained elements of both a standardized system description and a programming language. With system concepts based on Nygaard's experience working with operations research projects in the early 1950's, SIMULA was implemented as a discrete event computer simulation language. Initial constructs were influenced by symbolic notation used in the 1950's to construct flow diagrams representing system operation and rules governing system behaviors [1]. Early foundations for SIMULA first appeared in 1961. By this time, Nygaard had developed a fragmentary set of ideas that relied on Monte Carlo techniques to represent random variation in the occurrence of delays experienced by customers passing through a network of processes. These processes consisted of a queue portion and a service portion. The service portions were constructed with a series of statements governing the action of passive entities or customers that used these stations. Customers were created at a given station and after completing service, would be transferred to the queue of another station. After obtaining and completing service there, the process would be repeated. These transfers would continue until the customer had traversed the network and left the system. The timing and sequence of these stations would determine the number of customers that could be served over a period of time [2]. Although Nygaard had experience with computers, he did not have sufficient knowledge to develop his own programming language. He recruited software expert Ole-Johan Dahl to help him move SIMULA from theory to implementation. In the spring of 1962 Nygaard and Dahl released the first formal proposal for SIMULA. They decided that the best way to make it a real programming language was to link it to an existing, strong language. ALGOL 60, a popular programming language in Europe at the time was selected and SIMULA was developed as an extension, which allowed discrete event simulation construction. Later, SIMULA was expanded and re-implemented as a full-scale general purpose programming language. Although SIMULA has never achieved wide usage, the concepts developed within the language have been highly influential on modern computer programming. SIMULA has been credited with introducing objectoriented programming concepts like classes, objects, inheritance, and dynamic binding [3]. SIMULA's primary use is to develop computer models of systems such as ticket counters, production lines, manufacturing systems, and concurrent processing of computer programs. Today a wide variety of discrete event computer simulation software packages, such as GPSS/H, SIMAN, and ProModel, are used to create similar applications [4–8]. For further reading on simulation in general see Robinson [9–11]

Litteraturen om norsk luftfart før 2. verdenskrig. En oversikt og bibliografi

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A Nordic press : the development of printing in Scandinavia and the Baltic states before 1700 from a European perspective

Printing emerged more slowly in the Nordic lands than in most parts of Europe. The first active printing press in modern Latvia appeared in 1588; Estonia, Finland and Norway would wait until the 1630s and 1640s respectively. It was also in the seventeenth century that a provincial print trade of any significance would develop in Denmark and Sweden, the two main political powers of the region. While our knowledge of the evolution of printing in the Scandinavian region has long been well established, the print culture of the Nordic lands is often still approached from national perspectives. In this article, we propose to consider the print output of the entire Nordic region – Denmark, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia – as a single corpus. Using the resources of the Universal Short Title Catalogue project, we will consider what elements unite the history of printing in the region, as well as how distinct Nordic print culture is from that of the rest of Europe. We will consider especially the role of institutions (the church, crown, universities and colleges), foreign agents and linguistic traditions in shaping the print output of the Nordic region before 1700. What emerges from this study is a clear portrayal of the extent to which the Scandinavian book world takes inspiration and diverges from broader European norms. This article will make the case strongly for the importance of studying print culture in a comparative international perspective, and offers broader conclusions on the crucial interactions between print, power and peripheries in early modern Europe.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Edsger Dijkstra. The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders

This a biographical essay about Edsger Wybe Dijkstra.Comment: 12 pages. Originally appeared in Inference, Volume 5, Issue 3, 2020, see https://inference-review.com/article/the-man-who-carried-computer-science-on-his-shoulder

Nordic Narratives of the Second World War : National Historiographies Revisited

How have the dramatic events of the Second World War been viewed in the Nordic countries? In Nordic Narratives of the Second World War, leading Nordic historians analyse post-war memory and historiography. They explore the relationship between scholarly and public understandings of the war. How have national interpretations been shaped by official security-policy doctrines? And in what way has the end of the Cold War affected the Nordic narratives? The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive postwar characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context. Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history

Navngivning av auditorier på Rena : noen biografiske opplysninger

Norsk: En er igang med å sette navn på auditoriene ved Høgskolen i Hedmark på Rena. I begrunnelsen fra “Navnekomitéen” ble det lagt vekt på at navngivningen skulle bidra til å skape identitet faglig sett, og i forhold til lokaliseringen på Rena. I dette notatet blir det gitt en kortfattet og dokumentert oversikt med noen biografiske opplysninger om de personene som hedres på denne måten.English: The naming of auditoriums at the Rena campus is about to be carried out. The auditoriums are named after persons that in some important manner are related to the school at Rena and its mission, or more generally to the surrounding area of Åmot. The paper includes a series of short biographical notes on the persons honored