3.3 Users' Associations
In a report, signed June 4th 1960, Klaus Appel from the Quantum Chemistry Group, University of Uppsala (then temporarily at University of Florida) describes a meeting of Alwac Users' Association organized at Oregon State College in May, 1960. Some 25 people attended with 14 from the Math. Dept. and 1 from Electrical Engineering of OSC, 3 from Uni. of British Columbia, 2 from Federal Departments, 1 from Israel, 2 from private companies, 1 representing Alwac Corp. Division, Eltronics Inc., and Appel. The discussions focused on further development of Alwac, programming, and program exchange. Appel acknowledges financial support from Firma Teledata, AB Nymanbolagen making participation in the conference possible.In May-June, 1961 Stenvik made a tour to Sweden and Norway with the aim to collect views on closer co-work and more efficient program exchange between Wegematic and Alwac computer centers in the Nordic countries. One of seven points he suggests should be discussed at a planned meeting in Oslo during the NordSAM (Nordiskt Symposium över Användningen av Matematikmaskiner) Congress 18-22.8 was the founding of an Association, NordSAC (Nordisk samarbetsgrupp för Alwac-Wegematic Computers) for Wegematic and Alwac users. Several NordSAC meetings were then held in the Autumn 1961 and Spring 1962. On September 28-29 1962 the rules for NordSAC were accepted and Appel was elected chairman. Important questions that were considered were administration aid from Wenner-Gren Center for NordSAC, creating a service center, and program exchange. At a meeting between NordSAC and ABN on January 11, 1962 ABN's Alan O. Mann announced that a service group consisting of 3 persons had been hired. At a meeting on February 21, Mann announced that a Wegematic 1000 was to be placed at KTH to be used by the service group and that space for spare parts had been acquired. The Wegematic was to be used for trying out ferrite core memory and magnetic tape units and for training technical personnel for the NordSAC members.
A meeting was held in Wenner-Gren Center, Nov. 1962. Axel Wenner-Gren had passed and therefore a letter behalf of this was sent to Margurite Wenner-Gren. One other point on the agenda was information from the service group through Eng. L. Hägglund on the relation to ABN and Fulcrum. He informed that ABN and the estate wanted to close all activities needed financial resources and that he was prepared to continue privately under some conditions. No decision was made in this matter but it is clear that the situation was problematic. In a closing report dated April 18, 1963 the total expenditures of Fulcrum for NordSAC administration until May 30 are shown to be 78,115.83 Skr.
In June 1963 Klaus Appel wrote a letter to the members where he opposed re-election because of general uninterest among members in exchange of programs. This was the end of NordSAC.