The MIT Computation Center was organized in 1956 as a 10-year

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

between the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

to provide computing resources for New England universities. As part of the venture, IBM installed an

IBM 704 The IBM 704 is the model name of a large digital computer, digital mainframe computer introduced by IBM in 1954. Designed by John Backus and Gene Amdahl, it was the first mass-produced computer with hardware for floating-point arithmetic. The I ...

, which remained at MIT until 1960.

Operation Moonwatch

After the successful launch of

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (, , ''Satellite 1''), sometimes referred to as simply Sputnik, was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space progra ...

on October 4, 1957, the race was on to calculate and predict where the first man-made

satellites A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scientif ...

would appear in the sky. Fred Lawrence Whipple, then director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had gathered amateur astronomers to track artificial satellites in an organization called Operation Moonwatch. The aim was to get the position of the

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

in order to obtain its

orbital elements Orbital elements are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit. In celestial mechanics these elements are considered in two-body systems using a Kepler orbit. There are many different ways to mathematically describe the same o ...

. The first "satisfactory orbit" calculated by the

as official tracker for the SAO occurred at 7AM on October 11, 1957.

References

* Christian Science Monitor, "Soviet Space-Satellite Rocket Sighted By Observation Teams in Cambridge", Oct 11, 1957, page 1 * Tech Talk (MIT Newsletter), October 22, 1957 "A Lucky Seven" * Tech Engineering News, "moon track", March 1958, Vol XXXIX No. 6, p68 * Beyer, Jean-David and Sidney Shinedling, "The i.b.m 704 computer at m.i.t" tech engineering news, May 1958, Vol XXXIX No. 8, p26 * NASA Article Citation "Technical aspects of satellite tracking on IBM computers at Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts" Feb 26, 1960

External links

Archive.org: selected articles and references on Sputnik
{{authority control Computation Center Computer science institutes in the United States Research institutes in Massachusetts 1956 in computing Research institutes established in 1956 Scientific organizations established in 1956 1956 establishments in Massachusetts