The electronic computer won another small battle in its drive to take over Harvard College Friday, as a human error in programming led to a of the Spanish placement test results for 25 freshmen.

After error in "gang-punching" the conversion of raw test scores, 25 of the 150 freshmen taking the Spanish placement test last Wednesday were informed incorrectly that they had fulfilled their language requirement. The Office of Tests will notify these freshman today that they had actually, in the harsh and cold statistical world of the computer, failed their tests.

The mistake in computation was first noticed by the Office of Tests after it received several phone calls from mystified freshmen into Friday afternoon. "The students refused to believe," Office spokesman said, "that they had so highly." The computer staff; which had already puzzled over the high results, discovered an error in the digital evaluation of the raw and their subsequent conversion late a normal test curve.

According to the Office of Tests, this mistake by their computer programmers is entirely unprecedented in the history of the computer at Harvard. The Office had no comment, however, on the relative reliability of electronic machines and their human counterparts.