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"There was the seminal R-127 report, and the forward-looking
L-1, L-2, and L-3 reports, but they hardly scratched the surface of the volumes of paper produced. There were progress reports, trip reports, and conference reports, master’s theses stemming from work done in the laboratory, technical memoranda, and discussions with visiting experts from industry, academe and government. Everything was categorized and filed either as an M-Note, C-Note, E-Note, or Bi-Weekly Report.
"This unorthodox, high level of communication remained consistent from the skeleton of shelves that was early Whirlwind to a continent filled with FSQ-7s. All of it “word processed” by hand on clunky typewriters and then duplicated on mimeo machines.
"Forrester even conducted weekly affairs called Friday afternoon teas where he’d
speak informally one-on-one
with individual researchers.
"It was all about discipline in pursuit of reliability, which was the all-abiding goal to which all early computing ventures aspired, yet few ever achieved. Forrester and Everett demanded reliability.
"If an engineer worked himself into an electronic dead end, his own notebooks and the circu-lated knowledge of others were his only salvation. There was no running to a bookstore or library for the latest on digital circuit design and no cash to re-do something over and over again until it worked.
" And their machine showed it: Whirlwind’s reliability was legend in the industry"
from Chapter 8, Bright Boys |
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Jay Forrester and Bob Everett hold court at Whirlwind reunion with tales from the frontier of computing.
The provenance of every modern computing device from desktops to iPads to servers and even to Smartphones can be traced back to a building a scant fifty feet from MIT's Museum of Technology. On October 15th, in the shadow of the Barta Building, the Museum's main hall was filled with an audience eager to hear all about the life and times of the world's first, real-time computer and the young Barta Building digerati who built it.
See: Behemoth & Wonder Machine
The audience got an earful from the two leaders of the boys in the Barta Building: Jay Forrester and Bob Everett. Late in 1945, Jay kicked it all off when he announced to his colleagues to put a stop to their efforts at constructing an analog computer. Instead, they would henceforth set about building a digital computer, to which Bob Everett famously replied: "What's that?" They all soon learned. See: Dreamers and Doers Who Built the Future.
The Moore School lectures of 1946 pointed the way forward for their 1947 computer design that they then began putting together in 1948. And as others hurriedly started building rival computers seemingly everywhere, Jay and Bob and their mates would leap ahead again, this time building the world's first digital network. Watch the video at: The Beginning that Changed Everything.
Moderated by the Museum's director, John Durant, Jay and Bob wisked the audience back in time to when computers were as big as a gymnasium; when binary arithmetic was viewed as alien scribble; and when no prior experience or education was needed to enter the field of electronic digital computing... because there was no prior experience or education to be had anywhere.
See free "Bright Boys" book chapters.
In reminiscences shaped with insight and wit, Jay and Bob regaled the audience with tales from the frontiers of computing; legendary tales from a pair of legends that culminated in a lively Q&A session followed by a tour of the Whirlwind exhibit upstairs.
Copies of "Bright Boys," courtesy of CRC Press, were given away in a drawing: Jay and Bob pulled a dozen names of winners from an MIT Museum bag and then autographed copies for the many who asked. Durant remarked on the book's expansive layout of period photography, drawings, sketches and well-wrought story. One copy, signed by all of the bright boys present, will be kept in the Museum's archive and used to help visitors bridge the distance between the partial exhibit on the 2nd floor and its place of origin next door.
Dave Walden reported on the event for the "Annals of Computing". His news story and pictorial will appear in the January 2012 issue. Also, event podcast coming soon.
MIT Museum Whirlwind display
1. Video interview with Jay Forrester (2009)
2. Video interview with Bob Everett (2009)
3. Tribute from Lincoln Laboratory: Reflections on SAGE
Bright Boys in the Archives
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MIT's Archive has not only dilligently boxed nearly every scrap of paper from Whirlwind/SAGE, as here with "The Guide to the Project Whirlwind Collection," but also has digitized and made accessible decades of notes, memos, meeting minutes and reports. It's like peering over the bright boys' shoulders while they plotted to pull off their amazing skein of high-tech innovations and collaborations.
Take a peek for yourself: "Digitized Documents Of Projects Whirlwind and SAGE."
Be there as they form Group 63 The Advanced Development Group, which became "a wonderbox of unintended consequences." And watch some of those "wonders" emerge meeting by meeting, note by note.
Be there when Wes Clark prepares to give TX-0 away to MIT: the very first computer that MIT students ever had. TX-0 at MIT would go on to spring more than a few careers in computing. Or, grab Chapter Eight of Bright Boys and watch the fabric of those stories unfold.
Archival Video of the Whirlwind Family
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Before Whirlwind and its family's bones were consigned to museums as relics or scattered over Hollywood as props for sci-fi movies and TV programming, they were honest to goodness machines that lived and worked...and pointed the way forward. Whirlwind, TX-0, TX-2 and SAGE were real and fascinated us with their computing prowess. Here in these vintage films they live on. From 1951 to 1961, as this amazing footage shows, they reigned supreme. They were a cross between a royal family and a long-running TV drama: respected by all and tuned into constantly.
 1951 Edward R. Murrow's popular CBS-TV news show "See It Now" pays a visit to Whirlwind and its 38-year-old maestro, the ever dapper Jay Forrester in his double-breasted suit, as he chats up Murrow and puts his machine through a command performance.
 1961The CBS-produced "Tomorrow" TV series aired, "The Thinking Machine" with screen actor David Wayne and MIT Professor Jerome Wiesner reporting on developments in computer research and artificial intelligence. "The program features the TX-O digital computer, an instrument that for the first time is enabling scientists to explore new frontiers of the human mind by showing what machines do that looks like "thinking."
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