On June 6, 1946 Ted Williams hit the longest homerun—502 feet—in the history of Fenway Park. Seat #21, where it hit in the Fenway bleachers, was painted red to memorialize the feat and has remained that way ever since.

On the same day some three miles away in an old laundry building, a bunch of MIT-trained twentysomethings were readying to hit a homerun for digital computing: they were Home of the Bright Boysinventing Information Technology. In 1946 barely two-dozen people in all of the United States knew what a digital computer was all about. As for Information Technology? Forget it. Even the bright boys in the laundry building didn’t have a name for it, yet they were inventing it nonetheless.

The handful or so digital computers that did exist were being taught only to count real fast; the bright boys had a different notion: to teach their digital computer to do a real job. They would network their computer by telephone lines to distant radar antennas and then plot the digital signals of aircraft and their flight patterns on a computer screen. Computer screens with keyboards and light guns, and real-time digital networking were all going on behind the old laundry’s walls. All of it brazenly new and heretofore never even conceived of let alone attempted. And the bright boys were just getting started; much more was to follow, like the making of the future.

Last year I met 83-year old Bob Everett, who at 25 in 1946 was one of the original bright boys.
I felt like the wedding guest in The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner: “He holds him with his glittering eye…and listens like a three years’ child: the Mariner hath his will.” His story was utterly marvelous and the list of bright boy firsts that he humbly and matter-of-factly reeled off dropped my jaw.

Bright Boy Firsts
Bright Boy Firsts

First real-time digital computer. First magnetic-core memory (remained the dominant form of computer memory until 1973). First digital phone-line transmission and modems, first interactive graphical interface, first light pen, first computer keyboard, first duplexed computers. First real-time software, which evolved into assemblers, compilers, and interpreters. First software diagnosis programs, first time-shared operating systems, first structured program modules, first table-driven software, and first data description techniques.
...more Firsts
First operating manuals. First software manuals. First computer systems management organization. First user groups. First user training. First formalized the profession of software programming. First computer technicians. First factory-assembled computer system in commercial American computer and electronics industry (IBM manufactured 56 computers).
...and more again

First automated, national air defense system. First application of real-time command and control. First practical application of information theory. First use of systems engineering. First computer tracking for air traffic control. First real-time digital network. First application of and first systematic use of Information Technology.