Franklin F. Snyder
that they're writing the mathematics for and then solving with computers, it's out
of this world.
Q ..
They can do an awful lot, can't they?
A ..
Yes, of course, sometimes it's not all that good. I mean sometimes the mathematics
is not right. There's that saying, what you put into computers is what you get out.
The main trouble is you don't know whether something has gone wrong internally.
Take hydrologic problems such as forecasting. Unless you have some practical
knowledge and are able to recognize when the computer is giving you a bad answer,
you can really go haywire.
Q ..
l
We found that out with the Intel pentium chip.
l
A ..
Yes.
Q ..
Of course, those were calculations to the what, ninth decimal point?
A ..
That was in a limited area; but it was there nevertheless.
`.
Q ..
How about other Federal agencies beyond the Corps? How did they mature in their
use of hydrology?
A
I think everybody sort of came along together. The Weather Bureau started setting
up river centers to replace the local offices who maybe had only one river basin.
The river centers developed programs for flood forecasting. But I think I mentioned
when there was a large flood, the center at Harrisburg, which includes the Potomac
River and the Susquehanna River, got flooded out and lost their computer. All of
the agencies had competent people. There were probably people from time-to-time
that led the way, but I don't know of anyone that fell way behind.
The Soil Conservation Service was always active in all of these interagency
activities. They still are. I still see peoples' names writing papers and stuff. They
developed a procedure for estimating the amount of runoff from rainfall and had a
family of curves and it has survived pretty well. I still see people referring to it in
articles. Each department on the Interagency Committee had a representative on the
subcommittees. We received permission for the TVA to be on the subcommittees.
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