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TX-0
The TX-0, for ''Transistorized Experimental computer zero'', but affectionately referred to as tixo (pronounced "tix oh"), was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64 K of 18-bit words of magnetic-core memory. Construction of the TX-0 began in 1955 and ended in 1956.Highlights from ''The Computer Museum Report'' Volume 8 Spring 1984 The Computer Museum, Boston, MA, archived at ed-thelen.org, retrieved 2010-2-19 It was used continually through the 1960s at . The TX-0 incorpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDP-1
The PDP-1 (''Programmed Data Processor-1'') is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BBN and elsewhere. The PDP-1 is the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell's ''Spacewar!'' Description The PDP-1 uses an 18-bit word size and has 4096 words as standard main memory (equivalent to 9,216 eight-bit bytes, though the system actually divides an 18-bit word into six-bit characters), upgradable to 65,536 words. The magnetic-core memory's cycle time is 5.35 microseconds (corresponding roughly to a clock speed of 187 kilohertz); consequently most arithmetic instructions take 10.7 microseconds (93,458 operations per second) because they use two memory cycles: the first to fetch the instruction, the second to fetch or store the data word. Signed numbers are r ... [...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] |
Early History Of Video Games
The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering many inventions and developments. Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s (''Pong'' and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972). During this time there was a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with large advances in computing technology, and the actual first video game is dependent o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expensive Tape Recorder
Expensive Tape Recorder is a digital audio program written by David Gross while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gross developed the idea with Alan Kotok, a fellow member of the Tech Model Railroad Club. The recorder and playback system ran in the late 1950s or early 1960s on MIT's TX-0 computer on loan from Lincoln Laboratory. The name Gross referred to this project by this name casually in the context of Expensive Typewriter and other programs that took their names in the spirit of "Colossal Typewriter". It is unclear if the typewriters were named for the 3 million USD development cost of the TX-0. Or they could have been named for the retail price of the DEC PDP-1, a descendant of the TX-0, installed next door at MIT in 1961. The PDP-1 was one of the least expensive computers money could buy, about 120,000 in 1962 USD. The program has been referred to as a hack, perhaps in the historical sense or in the MIT hack sense. Or the term may have been applied t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surface-barrier Transistor
The surface-barrier transistor is a type of transistor developed by Philco in 1953 as an improvement to the alloy-junction transistor and the earlier point-contact transistor. Like the modern Schottky transistor, it offered much higher speed than earlier transistors and used metal–semiconductor junctions (instead of p-n junction, semiconductor–semiconductor junctions), but unlike the schottky transistor, both junctions were metal–semiconductor junctions. Production process Philco used a patented process of applying two tiny electrochemical jet streams of liquid indium sulfate (electrolyte solution) on opposite sides of a thin strip of N-type germanium base material. This process would etch away and form circular well depressions on each side of the N-type germanium base material, until the germanium base material was ultra thin and having a thickness of approximately a few ten-thousandths of an inch. After the etching process was finished, the polarity applied to the electrol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
TX-2
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer was the successor to the Lincoln TX-0 and was known for its role in advancing both artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction. Wesley A. Clark was the chief architect of the TX-2. Specifications The TX-2 was a transistor-based computer using the then-huge amount of 64 K 36-bit words of magnetic-core memory. The TX-2 became operational in 1958. Because of its powerful capabilities, Ivan Sutherland's revolutionary Sketchpad program was developed for and ran on the TX-2. One of its key features was the ability to directly interact with the computer through a graphical display. The compiler was developed by Lawrence Roberts while he was studying at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Relationship with DEC Digital Equipment Corporation was a spin-off of the TX-0 and TX-2 projects. The TX-2 Tape System was a block addressable 1/2" tape developed for the TX-2 by Tom Stockebrand which evolved into LINCtape and DECtape. Role in cre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whirlwind I
Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era vacuum tube computer developed by the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the U.S. Navy. Operational in 1951, it was among the first digital electronic computers that operated in real-time for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems. It was one of the first computers to calculate in parallel (rather than serial), and was the first to use magnetic-core memory. Its development led directly to the Whirlwind II design used as the basis for the United States Air Force SAGE air defense system, and indirectly to almost all business computers and minicomputers in the 1960s, particularly because of the mantra "short word length, speed, people." Background During World War II, the U.S. Navy's Naval Research Lab approached MIT about the possibility of creating a computer to drive a flight simulator for training bomber crews. They envisioned a fairly simple system in which the computer would continually ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Expensive Desk Calculator
Expensive Desk Calculator by Robert A. Wagner is thought to be computing's first interactive calculation program. Alan Kotok (15 May 2006)The Mouse That Roared: PDP-1 Celebration Event Lecture Computer History Museum (Google Video link). Retrieved on 22 June 2006. Kotok's description begins at 1:02. The software first ran on the TX-0 computer loaned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by Lincoln Laboratory. It was ported to the PDP-1 donated to MIT in 1961 by Digital Equipment Corporation. Friends from the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, Wagner and a group of fellow students had access to these room-sized machines outside classes, signing up for time during off hours. Overseen by Jack Dennis, John McKenzie and faculty advisors, they were personal computer users as early as the late 1950s. The calculators Wagner needed to complete his numerical analysis homework were across campus and in short supply so he wrote one himself. Although the program has about three thou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Computer Museum, Boston
The Computer Museum was a Boston, Massachusetts, museum that opened in 1979 and operated in three locations until 1999. It was once referred to as TCM and is sometimes called the Boston Computer Museum. When the museum closed and its space became part of Boston Children's Museum next door in 2000, much of its collection was sent to the Computer History Museum in California. History The Digital Computer History Museum The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Museum Project began in 1975 with a display of circuit and memory hardware in a converted lobby closet of DEC's Main (Mill) Building 12 in Maynard, Massachusetts. In September 1979, with the assistance of Digital Equipment Corporation, Gordon and Gwen Bell founded the Digital Computer Museum in a former RCA building in Marlboro, Massachusetts. Though entirely funded by DEC and housed within a corporate facility, from its inception the museum's activities were ecumenical, with an industry-wide, international preservation mission. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lincoln Laboratory
The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as rapid system prototyping and demonstration. Its core competencies are in sensors, integrated sensing, signal processing for information extraction, decision-making support, and communications. These efforts are aligned within ten mission areas. The laboratory also maintains several field sites around the world. The laboratory transfers much of its advanced technology to government agencies, industry, and academia, and has launched more than 100 start-ups. History Origins At the urging of the United States Air Force, the Lincoln Laboratory was created in 1951 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as part of an effort to improve the U.S. air defense syste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Olsen
Kenneth Harry "Ken" Olsen (February 20, 1926 – February 6, 2011) was an American engineer who co-founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson and his brother Stan Olsen. Background Kenneth Harry Olsen was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and grew up in the neighboring town of Stratford, Connecticut. His father's parents came from Norway and his mother's parents from Sweden. Olsen began his career working summers in a machine shop. Fixing radios in his basement gave him the reputation of a neighborhood inventor. After serving in the United States Navy between 1944 and 1946, Olsen attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned both a BS (1950) and an MS (1952) degree in electrical engineering. Career Pre-DEC During his studies at MIT, the Office of Naval Research of the United States Department of the Navy recruited Olsen to help build a computerized flight simulator. Also while at MIT he directed the building of the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Chronicles
''(The) Computer Chronicles'' is an American half-hour television series, which was broadcast from 1983 to 2002 on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television and which documented various issues from the rise of the personal computer from its infancy to the global market at the turn of the 21st century. History and overview The series was created by Stewart Cheifet (later the show's co-host), who was then the station manager of the College of San Mateo's KCSM-TV (now independent non-commercial KPJK). The show was initially broadcast as a local weekly series beginning in 1981. The show was, at various points in its run, produced by KCSM-TV, WITF-TV in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KTEH in San Jose. It became a national series on PBS in 1983, running until 2002, with Cheifet as host. Gary Kildall, founder of the software company Digital Research, served as Cheifet's co-host from 1983 to 1990, providing insights and commentary on products, as well as discussions on the fut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
