Deane K. Smith Department of Geosciences The Pennsylvania State University Computer automation of x-ray powder diffraction has been one of the dominant topics of this conference for many years. In fact, the first description of such instrumentation dates back to 1967, Rex (1). The modern instruments are considerably more sophisticated than this early unit, but the goals of automation are essentially unchanged. They are to obtain better data at a faster rate with less effort than is possible with manual instrumentation. Indeed "laziness is the mother of invention. " The emphasis of most of the...