Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

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DSR brought new scopes and supporting
PCs to en route centers.
However, the programming language
that relays information to controllers from
radar sites and aircraft transponders remains
etched in the Stone Age of computing.
Ever since the FAA installed radar data
processing computers at its centers in 1967,
they have run on a venerable, but obscure,
language known as JOVIAL.
Jules Schwartz, a programmer for
System Development Corporation, wrote the
language for the U.S. Air Force. He dubbed it
Our Own Version of the International Algebraic
Language, but his moniker presented a
problem.
“In the late 1950s, society wasn’t quite
as free thinking as it is today,” Schwartz wrote
years later. “The name OVIAL seemed to have
June
From Sanskrit to Silicon
NATCA holds a ten-year anniversary celebration, including a party at
the U.S. Capitol. Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles declares June 19 Air Traffic
Control Day, as does Manassas, Virginia, Miami, Milwaukee, New York
a connotation relative to the birth process that
did not seem acceptable to some people.” 6
A colleague at System Development Corporation
suggested JOVIAL as an alternative in
honor of its inventor, Jules, and the name stuck.
Aside from FAA computers, JOVIAL is
used on a variety of weapons systems, including
the B-52 Stratofortess, F/A-18 Hornet, UH-
60 Blackhawk helicopter, and the advanced
cruise missile. Work on replacing JOVIAL at
the FAA’s en route centers was under way in
2002.
The ARTS system in TRACONs runs
on another arcane language called ULTRA.
Programming is done painstakingly at the bit
level—akin to using toothpicks to create each
stroke of every letter in a sentence.
ULTRA will fade into history when
Unix-based STARS is deployed.
Chapter 6: Spreading its Wings
City, and Spokane, Washington. Many facilities hold open houses and
other festivities.
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