NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 141 
continually received at the rate of one per day. Receipt of data at the 
present time may vary from as much as 1 month to several years after 
the data are taken. The basic reduced data were fed to a computer 
and the computations for density, dynamic depth, specific volume 
anomaly, and sound velocity were made as were interpolations of these 
values for internationally accepted standard depths. This in itself 
demonstrated that an oceanographic program for almost instantane- 
ous receipt of data was feasible. As the surveys progressed, the 
NODC developed an evaluation message which was communicated 
back to the ship at sea. During the Equalant II, both an American 
vessel and an Argentine vessel daily transmitted oceanographic data 
to the NODC. The messages returned to these ships consisted of an 
evaluation of the observed data against the historic data and served as 
a means of intership comparison of data. It is interesting to note that 
the observed data received from both ships showed a bias of very 
small magnitude in the same direction. The implication of this was 
that both ships were collecting high quality data. 
The finale of this experiment in quality control and communications 
occurred on September 19, 1963, during a combined operation of the 
Washington Laboratory of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, 
NASA, and the NODC. On that day, with time available on the 
Syncom II satellite communication system, the BCF ship, Geronimo, 
radioed station data to the Kingsport which was the Syncom surface 
station, which in turn communicated the data to Washington via Syn- 
com IT. The data were computed and evaluated by the NODC and 
salinities were found to deviate significantly from what would be the 
expected norm for the area. In other words, either a hitherto undis- 
covered oceanographic phenomenon was occurring in the area or some- 
thing was wrong with the chemical analysis. Shortly after the Geron- 
imo received the evaluation message—which was returned in about an 
hour—the oceanographers aboard that ship found that their salinome- 
ter was malfunctioning. 
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would at this time like to 
introduce for the record copies of the messages and some of the press 
reports of this experiment. In December 1963, Dr. Spilhaous, who is 
well known in the oceanographic community, presented it in his “Our 
New Age” syndicated strip which appeared in the Washington Post 
and other newspapers. 
Inasmuch as it costs so much to occupy a single oceanographic sta- 
tion, any program which can give a scientist an instantaneous evalua- 
tion and quality control of the data he has just taken pays for itself 
many times over. Once the scientist has left the station, he can never 
be really sure whether the data he has obtained are worthless or may 
reveal some new secret of the sea unless he goes back to the same spot 
and repeats his observations—and this at times at great cost. 
The NODC is constantly striving to insure the quality of the data 
both at the collection source and at the shoreside processing facility. 
One final word, if I may, on the NODC plans for the future. 
One of the major objectives of the NODC is the adoption by the 
oceanographic community at large of standardized coding forms; for 
this reason, in designing coding forms for use by NODC in data process- 
ing, the cooperation of as wide a spectrum as possible of the oceano- 
graphic community has been enlisted. NODC will continue to advance 
