Information Please: The Presidio - San Francisco, Its Mission in the '50's?

My father died when I was very young. One of the few things I know about him (by way of my mother) is that he graduated High School in 1952, worked for a short time at a local AFB and was drafted into the US Army.

After boot camp, according to my mother, he was immediately posted to the Presidio in San Francisco, California. He served out his entire term there, was discharged and went to work for a major aerospace firm.

The only thing I know regarding the nature of his service, was that his assignment had something to do with computers.

Computers in the mid-to-late 1950's were rare things. I believe that there were only a handful in existance at the time.

Can anyone of our military experts give me a clue as to what my father might have been working on way back then? What was the mission of the Presidio that would have utilized one of the earliest computers?

My mother never asked about my father's job, and he, to the best of her memory, never volunteered any details.

I will be requesting his service record from the gov't; but I'm afraid that my lack of familiarity regarding military classifications, grade, ranks and acronym's will leave me none the wiser without some context.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

OK, this thread dropped like a lead weight.

Doesn't anybody have an idea about what was going on at this base in the '50's that would require one of the world's few computers?

And again, thanks for any help you all can give.

A guy ougth to look into cyptology. Computers of that era were for ballistic tables for artillery and missiles/rockets AND communications.

They did no ballistic work at the Presido and it's a post not a base.

Thank you, Hinky!

Post/base...As I said, I'm not too familiar with military terminology.

San Francisco seems a long way from Washington, D.C.. I would have thought back then that most of that crypto stuff would have been kept "Close to Home" (the Pentagon).

Learn something new every day!

At some point, the Defense Linguistics School landed there. Linguists - "dingy lingies" learned foreign languages there, so they could translate intercepted foreign radio communications.

That dingy lingies name was applied by decidedly non-elite soldiers. Guys too dumb to know smart when they saw it. The few lingies I met were soooper-geniuses.