Engineering applications II: Automatic production of meteorological contour charts

THE NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL CENTER has had a requirement since its inception for rapid volume production of contour charts of continuous fields. Forecasts of meteorological parameters are notoriously perishable commodities and the most accurate prediction is useless unless it is disseminated to the proper users in timely fashion. A system which uses a computer, the speed of which is measured in microseconds, is severely handicapped if each output forecast must undergo many minutes of post-processing before it is in proper form for dissemination.