The appeal is allowed. No. 8471.20.00 as a digital automatic data processing machine, as claimed by the appellant. Mr. Harvey L. Pollock testified on behalf of the appellant, which he founded in 1963. In other words, the Monolith functions as an efficient method of transmitting, simultaneously, a large volume of data from many sources to many destinations. The connections in the Monolith must be established prior to its operation, in accordance with a program that is set by the user and which may be reprogrammed by that user.
Transparency means that the information or data transmitted through the apparatus remains unchanged.
As to the various components of the Monolith, Mr. Pollock mentioned, inter alia , the switch interface card. This card, as he explained, carries out the actual mixing of the data within the apparatus. Mr. Edwin H. Morton, Director of Sales and Applications Engineering with Kylain Inc., and Dr. David T. Gibbons, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ottawa, testified as expert witnesses on behalf of the respondent. Mr. Morton told the Tribunal that, in his opinion, the Monolith is not a device that lends itself to being freely programmable by the user. In discussing the nature of the Monolith as an interconnecting device, he repeated the view laid out in his expert report, namely, that the Monolith could be regarded as a telegraphic switching device or as a telegraphic switch, and not as data processing equipment.