The Hardy Cross, or Moment Distribution, method of frame analysis offers interesting possibilities, when used on an automatic digital computer. For a number of years the analysis of elastic hyperstatic frames by computer has been mainly carried out by methods which require the explicit solution of large sets of simultaneous equations. If conventional techniques are used to solve the equations, the storage space required in the memory of the computer is approximately proportional to the square of the number of joints in the frame. This means that in practice, with present-day computers,
only relatively simple frames can actually be analysed by these methods.