The MIT Computation Center was organized in 1956 as a 10-year joint venture between the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
IBM to provide computing resources for New England universities.
As part of the venture, IBM installed an
IBM 704, which remained at MIT until 1960.
Operation Moonwatch
After the successful launch of
Sputnik on October 4, 1957, the race was on to calculate and predict where the first man-made
satellites would appear in the sky.
Fred Lawrence Whipple
Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for more than 70 years. Amongst his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the " dirty snowball" h ...
, then director of the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge Massachusetts, had gathered
amateur astronomers
Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers ...
to track artificial satellites in an organization called
Operation Moonwatch. The aim was to get the position of the
satellite in order to obtain its
orbital elements. The first "satisfactory orbit" calculated by the
IBM 704 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
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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