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PDP-6
The PDP-6, short for Programmed Data Processor model 6, is a computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) during 1963 and first delivered in the summer of 1964. It was an expansion of DEC's existing 18-bit systems to use a 36-bit data word, which was at that time a common word size for large machines like IBM mainframes. The system was constructed using the same germanium transistor-based System Module layout as DEC's earlier machines, like the PDP-1 and PDP-4. The system was designed with real-time computing use in mind, not just batch processing as was typical for most mainframes. This made it popular in university settings and its support for the Lisp language made it particularly useful in artificial intelligence labs like Project MAC at MIT. It was also complex, expensive, and unreliable as a result of its use of so many early-model transistors. Only 23 were sold, at prices ranging from $120,000 to $300,000. The lasting influence of the PDP-6 was its re-impl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until forced to resign in 1992, after the company had gone into precipitous decline. The company produced many different product lines over its history. It is best known for the work in the minicomputer market starting in the mid-1960s. The company produced a series of machines known as the PDP line, with the PDP-8 and PDP-11 being among the most successful minis in history. Their success was only surpassed by another DEC product, the late-1970s VAX "supermini" systems that were designed to replace the PDP-11. Although a number of competitors had successfully competed with Digital through the 1970s, the VAX cemented the company's place as a leading vendor in the computer space. As microcomputers improved in the late 1980s, especially wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programmed Data Processor
Programmed Data Processor (PDP), referred to by some customers, media and authors as "Programmable Data Processor," is a term used by the Digital Equipment Corporation from 1957 to 1990 for several lines of minicomputers. The name 'PDP' intentionally avoids the use of the term 'computer'. At the time of the first PDPs, computers had a reputation of being large, complicated, and expensive machines. The venture capitalists behind Digital (especially Georges Doriot) would not support Digital's attempting to build a 'computer' and the term 'minicomputer' had not yet been coined. So instead, Digital used their existing line of logic modules to build a ''Programmed Data Processor'' and aimed it at a market that could not afford the larger computers. The various PDP machines can generally be grouped into families based on word length. Series Members of the PDP series include: ;PDP-1: The original PDP, an 18-bit 4-rack machine used in early time-sharing operating system work, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-10
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used. The PDP-10's architecture is almost identical to that of DEC's earlier PDP-6, sharing the same 36-bit word length and slightly extending the instruction set (but with improved hardware implementation). Some aspects of the instruction set are unusual, most notably the ''byte'' instructions, which operate on bit fields of any size from 1 to 36 bits inclusive, according to the general definition of a byte as ''a contiguous sequence of a fixed number of bits''. The PDP-10 was found in many university computing facilities and research labs during the 1970s, the most notable being Harvard University's Aiken Computation Laboratory, MIT's AI Lab and Project MAC, Stanford's SAIL, Computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
36-bit
36-bit computers were popular in the early mainframe computer era from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Starting in the 1960s, but especially the 1970s, the introduction of 7-bit ASCII and 8-bit EBCDIC led to the move to machines using 8-bit bytes, with word sizes that were multiples of 8, notably the 32-bit IBM System/360 mainframe and Digital Equipment VAX and Data General MV series superminicomputers. By the mid-1970s the conversion was largely complete, and microprocessors quickly moved from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit over a period of a decade. The number of 36-bit machines rapidly fell during this period, offered largely for backward compatibility purposes running legacy programs. History Prior to the introduction of computers, the state of the art in precision scientific and engineering calculation was the ten-digit, electrically powered, mechanical calculator, such as those manufactured by Friden, Marchant and Monroe. These calculators had a column of keys for ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
36-bit Computing
36-bit computers were popular in the early mainframe computer era from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Starting in the 1960s, but especially the 1970s, the introduction of 7-bit ASCII and 8-bit EBCDIC led to the move to machines using 8-bit bytes, with word sizes that were multiples of 8, notably the 32-bit IBM System/360 mainframe and Digital Equipment VAX and Data General MV series superminicomputers. By the mid-1970s the conversion was largely complete, and microprocessors quickly moved from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit over a period of a decade. The number of 36-bit machines rapidly fell during this period, offered largely for backward compatibility purposes running legacy programs. History Prior to the introduction of computers, the state of the art in precision scientific and engineering calculation was the ten-digit, electrically powered, mechanical calculator, such as those manufactured by Friden, Marchant and Monroe. These calculators had a column of keys for eac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Kotok
Alan Kotok (November 9, 1941 β May 26, 2006) was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation (Digital, or DEC) and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book '' Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution'', describes Kotok and his classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers. Kotok was a precocious child who skipped two grades before college. At MIT, he became a member of the Tech Model Railroad Club, and after enrolling in MIT's first freshman programming class, he helped develop some of the earliest computer software including a digital audio program and what is sometimes called the first video game ('' Spacewar!''). Together with his teacher John McCarthy and other classmates, he was part of the team that wrote the Kotok-McCarthy program which took part in the first chess match between computers. After leaving MIT, Kotok joined the computer manufacturer Digital Equipme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TOPS-10
TOPS-10 System (''Timesharing / Total Operating System-10'') is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlier "Monitor" software for the PDP-6 and PDP-10 computers; this was renamed to TOPS-10 in 1970. Overview TOPS-10 supported shared memory and allowed the development of one of the first true multiplayer computer games. The game, called DECWAR, was a text-oriented ''Star Trek'' type game. Users at terminals typed in commands and fought each other in real time. TOPS-10 was also the home of the original Multi User Dungeon, MUD, the fore runner to today's MMORPGs. Another groundbreaking application was called ''FORUM''. This application was perhaps the first so-called ''CB Simulator'' that allowed users to converse with one another in what is now known as a chat room. This application showed the potential of multi-user communication and led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incompatible Timesharing System
Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) is a time-sharing operating system developed principally by the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with help from Project MAC. The name is the jocular complement of the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). ITS, and the software developed on it, were technically and culturally influential far beyond their core user community. Remote "guest" or "tourist" access was easily available via the early ARPAnet, allowing many interested parties to informally try out features of the operating system and application programs. The wide-open ITS philosophy and collaborative online community were a major influence on the hacker culture, as described in Steven Levy's book ''Hackers'', and were the direct forerunners of the free and open-source software, open-design, and Wiki movements. History ITS development was initiated in the late 1960s by those (the majority of the MIT AI Lab staff at that time) who disagreed with the direction taken by Proj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WAITS
WAITS was a heavily modified variant of Digital Equipment Corporation's Monitor operating system (later renamed to, and better known as, "TOPS-10") for the PDP-6 and PDP-10 mainframe computers, used at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) from the mid-1960s up until 1991; the mainframe computer it ran on also went by the name of "SAIL". Overview There was never an "official" expansion of WAITS, but a common variant was "West-coast Alternative to ITS"; another variant was "Worst Acronym Invented for a Timesharing System". The name was endorsed by the SAIL community in a public vote choosing among alternatives. Two of the other contenders were SAINTS ("Stanford AI New Timesharing System") and SINNERS ("Stanford Incompatible Non-New Extensively Rewritten System"), proposed by the systems programmers. Though WAITS was less visible than ITS, there was frequent exchange of people and ideas between the two communities, and innovations pioneered at WAITS exerted enormo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lisp (programming Language)
Lisp (historically LISP) is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized prefix notation. Originally specified in 1960, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language still in common use, after Fortran. Lisp has changed since its early days, and many dialects have existed over its history. Today, the best-known general-purpose Lisp dialects are Common Lisp, Scheme, Racket and Clojure. Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by (though not originally derived from) the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became a favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order functions, recursion, the self-hosting compiler, and the readβ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Project MAC
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab). Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research. Research activities CSAIL's research activities are organized around a number of semi-autonomous research groups, each of which is headed by one or more professors or research scientists. These groups are divided up into seven general areas of research: * Artificial intelligence * Computational biology * Graphics and vision * Language and learning * Theory of computation * Robotics * Systems (includes computer architecture, databases, distributed systems, networks and networked sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gordon Bell
Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960β1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engineering 1972β1983, overseeing the development of the VAX. Bell's later career includes entrepreneur, investor, founding Assistant Director of NSF's Computing and Information Science and Engineering Directorate 1986β1987, and researcher emeritus at Microsoft Research, 1995β2015. Early life and education Gordon Bell was born in Kirksville, Missouri. He grew up helping with the family business, Bell Electric, repairing appliances and wiring homes. Bell received a B.S. (1956), and M.S. (1957) in electrical engineering from MIT. He then went to the New South Wales University of Technology (now UNSW) in Australia on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he taught classes on computer design, programmed one of the first computers to arrive in Aus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
