The digital computer is a common instrument in many laboratories; it is no longer necessary to describe its operating characteristics in detail. However, it is not yet generally used in an entirely satisfactory manner nor are its full capabilities understood and exploited in laboratory automation. Some of the more pressing issues to be understood and resolved are opti-minal trade-offs between hardware and software, dedicated computer automation versus automation via time-shared systems, single-processor time-shared systems versus multiprocessor hierarchical time-shared systems, and the development of a real-time high-level control language.