Abstract: This disclosure relates to a station for a data transmission network which is adapted to operate in a cyclic mode for contending for access to the network channel along with other stations of the network. The three states of the cycle are the idle state, the packet-being-transmitted state and the acknowlegement period state. Each station will not begin transmission until it determines that the channel is in an idle state. Once the station has determined that the channel is idle, it will then delay for a period of time that is randomly chosen and, if the channel is still idle, will then begin transmission. In this way, contention conflicts between stations is minimized without unduly restricting communication between stations. Following transmission, the channel will again be quiescent a short period of time before the acknowledgement signal is transmitted from the receiver.

Abstract: A character-serial electronic digital computer utilizing four character vocabulary, each character being represented by two binary bits, is structured to process character-serial data arriving at the computer in a manner specified and initiated by the arriving data. Data structures that may represent program or operations to be performed on data arriving at the computer input are stored in the computer's storage area in the form of nested data structures that may be illustrated as tree structures in which each node of the tree structure represents an operation. Data structures that may represent operands are also supplied to the computer in a nested organization. This operand data addresses a certain node or operation resident in the computer storage area. The linking up of the arriving operand data with its program data triggers execution of the operation.