Mr. Kern served as the communications architect for the initial EDMICS implementation. Mr. Kern guided network implementation and interfaces. His involvement covered the period of first article test and implementation at NOSL in Kentucky.
EDMICS was the Engineering Document Management Information Control System. Later it became joint and adopted the moniker JEDMICS. JEDMICS is still in use today as perhaps the worlds largest repository of engineering drawings, used across the US Department of Defense.
The original EDMICS used large format plotters and scanners to import and export large size engineering drawings including ANSI A through J sizes. EDMICS also had fiche card readers and printers for microfiche embedded in an IBM style punch card, and microfiche scanners. EDMICS replaced massive physical storage units for fiche and cards and drawings- warehouses full of storage.
Mr Kern rewrote some drivers for this equipment, and also provided some hardware interface devices to interconnect these expensive peripherals. He specified interfaces to vendors and managed network interconnections. He wrote a study rejecting the adoption of the OSI protocols for EDMICS. He was also involved deeply with WORM and optical jukebox interfaces and formats. Lastly, he was involved in the import and export of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and graphics exchange format files. (Most of this interface work was driven by MOM (Message Oriented Middleware) and workflow technology through the next decade, and Mr. Kern became deeply involved with this predecessor to EAI and ESB technologies. Hi work on EDMICS and at Control Data on store and forward data monitoring made this somewhat inevitable.)
This work lead to Mr. Kern acting as the system architect of a great many engineering document management systems. Later work also involved integration of user software from the now defunct Image Machines Corporation of Reston Virginia and the still extant Spicer Corporation of Canada. This software manipulated the tiled image formats for engineering drawings adopted from FAX standards and hardware.
At the time, this was the hot intersection of engineering geekdom, high-dollar integration and defense logistics technology. I guess all things must eventually pass. See www.JEDMICS.net for the JEDMICS homepage.
"If you do anything long enough, you eventually get good at it." MK