February 5, 1942

Dr. Warren Weaver

Room 5500

49 West 49th Street

New York, New York

Dear Warren:

I have talked over your letter with Mr. Shaffer. We would be very glad to team up with Neyman on any project that seems worth while to you. The equipment that we have now consists of an alphabetic tabulator with 80 counters, a sorter, and a duplicating punch. I think that we could get a multiplier from the Corporation without much delay, if it were desired. We are trying to get from the Corporation an alphabetic tabulator of the newer type which could be used together with the card transfer device and a summary punch to carry out the calculations described in the memorandum which accompanied my letter to Dr. Bush. I think that I should point out again that the methods developed by Mr. Shaffer promise to be very powerful. In particular it looks as though it would be possible to carry out with this setup not only multiplication but also division by a process of repeated addition and subtraction, so that the tabulator and card transfer device used in this way should be more powerful than the automatic multiplier.

The men here, in particular Mr. Shaffer and Dr. Schomaker, have had now a great deal of experience with the use of punched card machines for mathematical calculations, and it might well be worth while for them to go over any problems in which you are interested and which you think might possibly be handled by the punched card method. It might well be desirable for Mr. Shaffer to go to Berkeley to talk with Professor Neyman.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP:jr