TCA asked one of their communications engineers, Lyman Richardson, to study the booking problem, and he quickly came to the opinion that a computerized solution was the only one worth studying.
The FERUT-based system was demonstrated in 1953 and was a qualified success; while the programmed logic and data storage/retrieval worked well, input/output was a serious bottleneck that seemed to make the system no better than the mechanical Reservisor.