As early as 1968, increases in the complexity of photoelectric observing programs and the variety of sophisticated photometric instruments in use at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory necessitated the acquisition of a digital data-recording and instrumentation-control system. The diversity of projects to be done with such a system and the obvious need of provisions for extensive future modification and expansion made apparatus oriented around hard-wired logic clumsy and uneconomical. Clearly, the heart of the system was to be a digital computer.