Scope and Contents From the Collection: The Papers of John V. McMillin II primarily chronicle developments at the Measurement Research Center (MRC), which was founded in 1952 by Prof. Everett F. Lindquist of the University of Iowa College of Education. Prof. Lindquist pioneered the design and use of standardized tests in American public schools, beginning in the late 1920's. By 1953, he and his staff developed an optical mark reader (OMR) for scoring students' test answer sheets. The electronic brain, as the OMR was called at the time, was a breakthrough in providing, for the first time, large-scale high-speed test scoring. However, its vacuum-tube technology was becoming obsolete, and by 1959 MRC began work on the design and development of solid-state, or transistorized, circuitry to replace the less stable vacuum tubes. The bulk of the papers document activities at the MRC from 1959 to about 1980 from the perspective of a project engineer, and later engineering manager, who was closely involved with...

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An Original Copy. JVM Archival media disc contains JPEG Image Files of the Cover, frontispiece, Introduction, and the first 12 pages of the 28-page document

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This Folder contained in the current JVM Archival Media disc is a duplicate of one donated in the DVD Archival disc included in the JVM 11/14/2006 Accession, but is repeated in this group for continuity and convenience, as several hard-copy printouts prepared by JVM are also in this current accession, as extracted from this (repeated) folder

Scope and Contents Includes "Background Information on Westinghouse Learning Corporation": 1968_07_circa_The World of Engineering in 1968: The sale of Measurement Research Center (MRC) to Westinghouse Learning Corporation (WLC) was announced by Dr. E. F. Lindquist, MRC President, and Verne S. Atwater, WLC President, on June 27, 1968, at a press conference in the Iowa Memorial Union, Iowa City, Iowa. Shortly, thereafter, several of us were invited to WLC's corporate headquarters at 100 Park Avenue in New York City, NY to give individual presentations on our respective areas of responsibility at MRC. As Engineering Product Manager, it was my job to tell the "Engineering Story." The transcribed version of my original manuscript titled, "The World of MRC Engineering in 1968" is included as an MS Word file in this U of I Accession Set in a folder on the Media Disc named: 1968_JVM Engineering Status report for WLC NYC. The Word file is named: 1968_MRC Engineering Status Report for WLC_JVM Author.doc, and...

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9-page set of documents

Scope and Contents After the WLC acquisition of MRC in June 1968 by the Westinghouse Learning Corporation (WLC), it became an annual exercise for the MRC Iowa City Engineering Manager (John V. McMillin) to prepare a recommended/suggested list of research projects that the Central Research Laboratories of WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORPORATION, located in Churchill, PA, could assist the MRC Division Engineering Department in reaching their Product Development goals and strategic objectives. Thus, shortly after the June 1968 WLC acquisition of MRC, I was required to submit my first 'WEC R & D Lab Assistance Report' - for which MRC Engineering Budget was assessed an internal funding allocation, which was sometimes viewed as an unnecessary expense burden. A review of my 13-page Response Report shows that MRC's Engineering priorities were 'rubber' reading heads (e.g. the sensing elements could expand or shrink, electronically, to align with variable size sheets due to humidity variations), the processing...

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A 3-page Technical Brief prepared by JVM to distribute to WEC/WLC Engineers - see next item below: (The Original Copy is provided in this Accession Set, and the JPEG-images are in the Media Disc Folder 1968_10_03_RASCOL DESCRIPTION - JVM, as well as copied into the folder described below

Scope and Contents As covered in my other U of I Accession Documents, prior to the acquisition of MRC by Westinghouse Learning Corporation (WLC) in June 1968, we had already developed a novel approach to scanning OMR documents at high-speed with a "turn around" mechanism in the feeding path that permitted each side of an answer/test-sheet to be scanned independently by reflected light, yet requiring only a single sensing head. We temporarily dubbed this new product RASCOL: Reverse Action Scanner On Line: Given the relative cost savings of incorporating only a single sensing head, rather than two normally required for dual-side independent reflective scanning of OMR sheets, WLC Management felt that we had a very competitive product for the so-called 'OMR Marketplace', which in hindsight, was far more limited than the senior WLC management appreciated! Regardless, there was a major emphasis by WLC to tap the appropriate WEC Corporate resources to assist the small MRC Engineering Staff to quickly bring...

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A unique packaging methodology was developed by MRC Engineering to mount the newer Dual-In-Line (DIP) Integrated Circuits (replacing circular TO-5 & TO-18 packages) onto a logic panel for the custom-built Model 650-E Scanner for Document Reading Services, Ltd., an MRC Customer in England. This 5-page Tech Report, and two large MRC Drawings describes the concept. Copy in a pocket folder

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A brief 2-page description of the MRC Engineering Department activities and accomplishments, with references to WLC interactions and projects, such as the short-lived WLC PLAN (Programmed Learning According to Needs) project. The Media Disc Folder by this name contains an MS Word file: 1969_FALL_MRC-Engineering Report_JVM.doc, and a hard-copy printout is also included in this U of I Accession Set

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This was a one-of-a-kind high-performance OMR Scanning System custom-built for an MRC customer, Document Reading Services, Ltd., in London, England. The 10-section Table of Contents describes the product. Several formal fold-out MRC Drawings are included. This system was installed by the MRC Product Development Manager, John V. McMillin, at the Customer's site. The initial business arrangement for the sale of this system was conducted by Dr. E. F. Lindquist, MRC Founder & President, prior to the acquisition of MRC by WLC in June 1968. The DVD Folder 1969_11_SPECIFICATIONS_650-E Scanner contains only a few JPEG Images

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This is a 71-page companion document to the above Specifications Manual for the Model 650-E System. The Archival DVD Folder, 1969_MRC-WLC 650-E OPTICAL SCANNER-MECHANICAL, contains JPEG-Image scans of fifteen of the superb drawings in the 650-E Manual that the MRC Drafting Dept. produced

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An Original Copy of an internal WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP. that featured a 1-page overview about the various operations and activities of the Group-W, Broadcast, Learning, & Leisure Time empire run by Donald H. McGannon, President - reporting to WEC Chairman Donald C. Burnham in Pittsburgh, PA. MRC Iowa City was a division within the 'Learning' portion (namely, Westinghouse Learning Corporation) of McGannon's large operation. This overview presents a 'glowing account' of the businesses controlled by McGannon, and paints a bright future for all. Even the 7-UP Bottling Plant in Indiana! My 4-page MS Word file 1969_12_09_WEC NEWS_Page#2_ORG.doc is in the Media disc folder: 1969_12_09_WEC News

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IBM was 'King of the Hill' with their new, powerful mainframe computers, the IBM-370 line. The MRC Division of Westinghouse Learning Corporation (WLC) ordered an IBM-370 in anticipation of handling all of the central processing for the ill-fated Westinghouse Project PLAN (Programmed Learning According to Needs). As stated in this Press-Citizen article, dated July 9, 1970, "In PLAN, a typical unit may be an experiment in chemistry, a math lesson or a specific English lesson such as the use of adverbs. A student completes an assignment at his own speed and the computer evaluates his progress and provides the teacher with daily management reports." Fortunately, MRC had many other uses for a more powerful mainframe computer than for WLC's pet Project PLAN, as the MRC business continued to grow and prosper, despite Corporate WLC's meddling and misguided activities

Scope and Contents This 20-page undated document was prepared by Roland M. Smith, Inc. Iowa Realtors at the time. Basically, it is a WLC Facilities Description Summary of the SEVEN buildings (with photos) occupied by WLC/MRC, prior to the new building being occupied in the spring of 1971. A description of each building is given, along with their assessed values, and the Iowa City ZONING ORDANCES in effect for the locations of the properties owned by WLC. Presumably, this document was prepared as a planning aid and marketing-disposal guideline as part of the proposal for WLC-Corporate to fund and construct a new central Facility at the north edge of Iowa, on the west side of Highway #1 & Interstate 80, address 2510 N. Dodge Street. NOTE: My estimate of the date-range is speculative, as it could have conceivably been prepared by the Realtor Agency after full occupancy of the new facility (May 1971, according to a Press-Citizen article), as a handout to potential buyers of the seven buildings owned...

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This set of 6-pages of hand-written notes is included for the sake of WLC/MRC Engineering archival completeness, more than other reasons. The topics are related to OMR reading issues, such as inks, pencils, printing, and other critical parameters, such as student 'doodles', humidity factors, controlling the incidence level of paper jams, etc. All worthy topics to present to initiates to the world of OMR, but not presented in a very legible format

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During the 1970s a chorus of criticism arose about the racial unfairness of objective testing, such as conducted by MRC, and especially ETS, who took the brunt of Ralph Nader's attacks. This folder, 1970s_Nader Criticism of Testing_ETS, on the JVM Archival Media disc, contains a JPEG-scanned image of a photocopied article by columnist Chuck Stone from an unknown 1970s publication - the article reporting on Nader's efforts to meet with ETS (Educational Testing Service) in Princeton, N. J. to probe further into their practices. I transcribed the text of the photocopied article into an MS Word file: 1970's_NADER Criticism of ETS_ORG.doc, and included other relevant reference information in this file for historical background

Scope and Contents Prior to the acquisition of MRC by Westinghouse Learning Corporation in June 1968, the proprietary MRC OMR Scanning Technology (hardware & software) to only a few select customers who posed no direct competition with MRC, such as Science Research Associates, Chicago, IL, and Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois. However, following the WLC-MRC acquisition, a more aggressive 'hardware-delivery' approach was begun, and one of the early (contentious!) sales was to Educational Testing Service (ETS), in Princeton, NJ. MRC had recently developed (and later patented) a novel turn-around concept for a high-speed scanner, initially dubbed RASCOL, which permitted the independent reflective scanning of both sides of each OMR sheet on a single pass through the feed mechanism. ETS Management expressed an interest in purchasing two of these systems from WLC in favor of purchasing a less capable product from MRC competitor, National Computer Systems. The enclosed JVM-to-UI...

Scope and Contents The MRC/WLC discrete cell reading-head technology steadily advanced over the years - starting with the temperamental Sylvania germanium-based 1N77B photodiodes [via 'through the sheet' mechanical shutter-gated transmitted light reading on the MRC Mod-I], through a succession of improvements: replacement of the unreliable mechanical slide shutter with a greatly improved rotary Ledex-solenoid operated shutter, to finally eliminating the mechanical shutter altogether by replacing the Sylvania photodiodes with silicon-based Texas Instruments 1N2175 photodiodes (no 'blinding' by direct light exposure between sheets, and no 'dark current' leakage), to yet later switching the primary mark-detection means from transmitted light to reflected light. Other novel designs used fiber-optics techniques (patented), rather than a bank of tungsten 'headlight bulbs', and/or high-wattage heat generating quartz-halogen tubular lamps. The culmination of this progress was the development of the so-called...