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Highlights from
Digital Computer Museum Report 1/1982



Contents of Highlights

Back of Front Cover

The Digital Computer Museum is an independent, non-profit, charitable foundation. It is the world's only institution dedicated to the industry-wide preservation of information processing devices and documentation. It interprets computer history through exhibits, publications, videotapes, lectures, educational programs, excursions, and special events.

Hours and Services

The Digital Computer Museum is open to the public Sunday through Friday, 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm. There is no charge for admission. The Digital Computer Museum Lecture Series Lectures focus on benchmarks in computing history and are held six times a year. All lectures are videotaped and archived for scholarly use. Gallery talks by computer historians, staff members and docents are offered every Wednesday at 4:00 and Sunday at 3:00. Guided group tours are available by appointment only. Books, posters, postcards, and other items related to the history of computing are available for sale at the Museum Store. The Museum's lecture hall and reception facilities are available for rent on a prearranged basis. For information call 617-467-4443.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

 Charles Bachman
 C. Gordon Bell
 Gwen Bell
 Harvey C. Cragon
 Robert Everett
 C. Lester Hogan
 Theodore G. Johnson
 Andrew C. Knowles, III
 John Lacey
 Pat McGovern
 George Michael
 Robert N. Noyce
 Kenneth H. Olsen
 Brian Randell
 Edward A. Schwartz
 Michael Spock
 Erwin O. Tomash
 Senator Paul E. Tsongas
 
 Staff
 
 Gwen Bell
 Director
 Jamie Parker
 Exhibit Coordinator
 Christine Rudomin
 Program Coordinator
 Jay McLeman
 Computer Technician
 John McKenzie
 TX-0 Technician
 Beth Parkhurst
 Research Assistant
 Sue Hunt
 Administrative Assistant

THE DIRECTOR'S LETTER

The museum's birth and parentage were responses to different needs that sprang from several sources. When Ken Olsen and Bob Everett saved Whirlwind from the scrap heap in 1973 and arranged to exhibit it at the Smithsonian, they also envisioned a place where all the treasures related to the evolution of computing could be preserved. Then Ken bought the TX-0, the first full-scale transistorized computer, when it came up for auction. Soon word went around that he was maintaining a warehouse for old computers and the industry responded with donations of a LILAC, a PDP-8, and other classic machines that otherwise would have been junked.

At the same time, Gordon Bell was also thinking about a computer museum, an idea which emerged while writing Computer Structures with Allen Newell between 1967 and 1970. They studied all the computers to that date and developed PMS, a notation capable of characterizing all information processing systems. While writing about the machines, Gordon started visiting them and bringing back artifacts. Soon his office and home were filled with modules of the Atlas, the IBM 650, the ILLIAC II, memory devices that predated the core, and calculators that preceded computers.

Still, Gordon was complacent with the thought of a potential museum until he travelled to Japan where Fujitsu proudly turned on its first relay computer for him to admire. He was convinced. If the Japanese could pull this off, then he, Ken Olsen, and Bob Everett should be able to display the TX-0 and other early machines. But there was no budget or space for the Museum.

This time, RCA saved the day. The Marlboro "tower building" constructed by RCA in 1970 and later purchased by Digital had a grand lobby and open balcony waiting to be used for exhibits. Gordon thought that it might somehow provide a setting for the TX-0, and he formed a volunteer committee to evaluate the space.

I was one of the volunteers. Having used the TX-0 in graduate school, I knew how the room felt at MIT, and the balcony area seemed reminiscent of that. The building's residents agreed to accommodate the museum collections. Two college students were hired for the summer to catalogue the artifacts in Gordon's office, photograph the computers that Ken had accumulated in the warehouse, and assemble exhibits with the aid of Digital's industrial designers. Gordon applied the PMS taxonomy from Computer Structures and wrote the text panels for the exhibits.

On September 23rd, 1979, the Digital Computer Museum opened with a lecture on the EDSAC by Maurice Wilkes. And while Ken and Gordon were very proud, that the collections had been assembled, no one was available to attend to the business of maintaining the collection, providing tours, or accepting new donations.

In November 1979, Jamie Parker, a recent Vassar College graduate, was hired as the first employee and the Museum became operable on a daily basis. A year later, the Operations Committee of Digital Equipment Corporation decided to develop a truly representative, industry- wide museum for the preservation of computing history and I was hired as the Director.

Digital Equipment Corporation not only provided start up funding, but encouraged employees in the legal, financial, marketing, public relations, administration, sales and service, and engineering departments to donate their time and talents to this cause. The birth of the Museum is coincident with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Digital Equipment Corporation; and the Museum is the corporation's twenty-fifth birthday present to the public as a way to insure the preservation of the history of computing for future generations.

Establishing the Full-Fledged Public Museum

My first task was to transform a private collection into a public foundation with full charitable status. A distinguished board of directors, representative of the diverse nature of the information processing industry, was assembled. The Members Association encourages participation by anyone interested in the Museum's focus and activities. These two groups provide the interface between the Museum's public and its staff, keeping the direction on course and responsive.

The staff has grown and taken on specialized roles. Jamie Parker, exhibit coordinator, planned the Pioneer Computer Timeline, and finds a place for each significant new acquisition. Chris Rudomin, program coordinator, organizes the lectures and seminars, the store, and educational programs. Sue Hunt is the Museum's coordinator of everything else and with a bank of word processors provides our day-to-day support. Jay McLeman, a full time staff member, cares for the operating machines. John McKenzie, who is TX-0's lifetime technician, is working on the long and arduous re-entry of the TX-0 into the world of operating computers.

A phalanx of students tackle special projects. Since the fall of 1980, Professor Mary Hardell of Worcester Polytechnic Institute has arranged that computer science students can complete their Interactive Qualifying Project at the Museum. These range from research papers on benchmark programs, such as Space War on the PDP-1, to preparing explanations of exhibits, such as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer breadboard. Beth Parkhurst has a part time position while she is a fulltime PhD candidate in the History of Technology at Brown University. She wrote the text for the Pioneer Computer Timeline and is editing a videotape of the ENIAC made from old newsreel films. Five additional college students will be hired for this summer.

As Director, I have focussed on acquiring artifacts, conceptualizing projects, and acting as the Museum's spokesperson. On a trip to England in February we acquired the micro-processor from the EDSAC 11 from the Science Museum, the console of the IBM 360/195 from Rutherford Labs, a full-scale Williams tube, and a logic door from the Ferranti Mark I' from the University of Manchester. Documentation services and a photo and film archive will be realized in the next year. In October I chaired a session on Computers in Museums at the Association of Science and Technology Centers meeting at the , Exploratorium in San Francisco and have consulted with other Museums including the Capitol Children's Museum, Washington; The Science Museum, London; the Ampex Museum, Redwood City; and The National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa.

Guidelines for the Future

Our main thrust is to develop the collection and continue the tradition of saving classic machines from the junk pile. We rescued the last operational STRETCH, saved the major components of the very first CDC 6600, and collected the Philco-Ford 212 before it was to be scrapped. The first priority is saving history, the second is to display it, and then the third is to interpret its historic role. The exhibits, therefore, are dynamic and evolutionary.

Five tested policies have crystallized.

  1. The major purpose of the Museum is the historical preservation of the evolu- tion of computers. To that end, the PMS notation forms the basis of the taxonomy determining the extent of the kingdom of computing and providing guidelines for exhibits. Jan Adkins of the National Geographic Society captured the essense of the venture when he said to me, "You must feel like the Director of the Museum of Natural History when he started to collect bones."

  2. The lecture series that started with talks on pioneer computers by people who had personally worked with them will be expanded to a series of seminars in a similar vein. Andy Knowles, a member of the Museum's Board, is fond of reminding me that, "There is no history, only biography." Thus, we are giving the podium to people who can give first-hand biographies of machines, programs, and languages they have known.

  3. The focal point of the Museum is the machines themselves. Frank Oppen- heimer, the Director and Founder of San Francisco's Exploratorium counsels, "Well-engineered machines speak eloquently of their own elegance. Museum designers can't equal them." Revealing the intrinsic beauty and functionality of the exhibited machines is our challenge and goal.

  4. The main audience for the historic and archival collections are computer scientists, programmers, history buffs, and those with a curiosity about computer evolution. The Museum will provide a sense of the feel of machines and programs from various eras. Spacewar, the first computer game, feels totally different run- ning on the 1961 PDP-1 than it feels on a small arcade machine. This is hardly apparent to a youngster whose only Spacewar experience is in an arcade, but it is the feel of the PDP-1 that almost brings tears to the eyes of those who were computing during its era. As board member George Michael says, "Hey, this is a Museum for us big kids."

  5. The Museum encourages broad-based involvement by maintaining a good working relationship between the enthusiastic volunteers, donors of artifacts, patrons, students, scholars and a staff that can keep stirring the soup. Harold Cohen, creator of our computer-designed murals, observed that the Museum doesn't. . . "have to convince the computer community to support the museum because its artists are worth supporting; they are the artists. It is completely different from any other museum that I know."
Because the Digital Computer Museum is unique, its rules need to be invented. This inaugural report provides a baseline from which the Museum can flourish in a multitude of directions. I hope that you will join me in this process.

Gwen Bell
Director

Unusual Photos

This 1953 transistor had its own serial number and was individually packaged. The tube was indented to hook the transistor over the side and keep its 'whiskers" from becoming bent.

The Pascaline (1645) is the first mechanical, single register calculator built that is still in existence. Roberto Guatelli reproduced this copy from an original in the collection of Thomas Watson stored by IBM. The calculator was designed by Blaise Pascal, the famous French scientist and philosopher, at the age of 19. Although a number were built during his lifetime, the tooling was such that they were unreliable, and became curiosities as much as calculators. The principles of Pascal machines were later applied to key punch calculators such as the Comptometer.

This drum is the only remaining portion of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the first electronic, digital calculator. Two drums were built, each with 32 50-bit tracks of small paper condensers, with the outer end connected to a contact stud and the inner ends connected together and brought out through the mounting plates. The space near the periphery, in which the condensers are mounted, contains a high grade of wax for moisture protection. A positive charge on the outer end of a condenser corresponds to zero, a negative charge to one. The drum rotates on an axis at a speed of one revolution per second. Brushes bear upon their contacts to read the charges and recharge them.

LECTURE SERIES

Maurice Wilkes spoke at the inauguration of the first exhibits, September 23rd, 1979. The eleven other lectures given to date include nine by people closely associated with the machines featured on the Pioneer Computer Timeline, one on the Computer Murals and one on the LINC. These lectures were recorded on video-tape for the Museum's archives. Six major lectures relating to the exhibitions at the Museum are planned each year.

Wesley Clark, November 18, 1981 The Design, Building, and Use of the First Laboratory Computer: LINC "The concept of putting this in one box that an experimenter could take away to his laboratory and work with in a personal way was the essence of it."
"One fellow looked at the LINC inside and out, and at this wire going over and to the other side. Then said, 'This thing can't possibly work, there is no way to get the data in.' He couldn't find any punched cards. We went back to Lincoln Laboratory exhausted but triumphant, wanting to do more."

Maurice Wilkes, September 23, 1979 The Design and Use of the EDSAC
"We realized that building the machine was only the start of the project; that there was a great deal to be learnt about writing programs, about how to use the machine for numerical analysis, numerical calculation, and all the rest of it"

"As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs."

George Stibitz, May 8, 1980 The Development, Design and Use of the Bell Laboratories Relay Calculators
"In 1939, it was funny to think of a machine that calculated in the ancient binary notation. I wasn't sure whether the idea was funny or not, and for several weeks I thought it over, drawing circuits at home for a real calculator with desk-top capabilities."

Jay Forrester, June 2, 1980 The Design Environment and Innovations of Project Whirlwind '
"The Whirlwind experience was a very good beginning because we learned the problems of pioneering, we learned the need for courage to stand up for what you believe." "Magnetic core storage, marginal checking, high reliability, cathode-ray displays, light gun, and a kind of time-sharing were all part of Whirlwind."

John Vincent Atanasoff, November 11, 1980 The Forces that Led to the Design of the Atanasoff-Berry Electronic Calculator
"I soon found that no machine or system available could solve the growing lists of problems of theoretical physics, technologies, statistics, or business." "There I was in 1936, turning my mind to invent a digital machine, not knowing how it would be built or how it would work .... In a larger sense no man invents anything; he builds and extends a little with his friends and on the shoulders of others."

Konrad Zuse, March 4, 1981 Designing and Developing Zl - Z4
"At that time, nobody knew the difference between hardware and software. We concentrated ourselves on purely technological matters, both logical design and programming. "

James Wilkinson, April 14, 1981 he Design and Use of the Pilot ACE
Right from the very start, Turing was very obsessed with getting the maximum possible speed. That wasn't the popular view at the time."

John Brainerd, June 25, 1981 Development of the ENIAC Project
"It was the world's first large-scale digital electronic general purpose computer. You have to put all those words in to tell some thing about it."

David Edwards, September 9, 1981 The Evolution of the Early Manchester Machines
"F C. Williams's contribution was that he recognized that if you looked at the patterns on the face of a tube after a millisecond, you could recognize what they were, and in looking at them you wrote them back again." "In June 1948, when the baby machine ran, our confidence started to develop."

T H. Flowers, October 15, 1981 Design and Use of Colossus
"During World War II, I became involved in code- breaking activities for which I conceived and built machines which became own as Colossus. Colossus had features w associated with digital computers - semi-permanent and temporary data storage, arithmetic and logic units including branching logic and variable programming. "

Arthur Burks, February 18, 1982 The Origin of the Stored Program
"This most important historical achievement [the stored program] did not come about in a straightforward way, but in a convoluted, indirect manner."

October 7 at 5 PM LECTURE: HISTORY OF THE SIEVE MACHINES D. H. Lehmer Professor Emeritus University of California j at Berkeley.
With an exhibition of the electro-mechanical machine used for finding prime numbers exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair of 1932 and the 1950 electronic prime number sieve.

October 8-9 EXCURSION: ANFSQ7 and NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Friday noon leave Hanscom Field for North Bay, Canada. Visit and tour the ANFSQ-7, vacuum tube computer in operation on the SAGE early warning system. Hotel accommodations in Ottawa. Saturday morning tour of the Computing Exhibition, National Museum of Science and Technology. Saturday noon leave Ottawa for Hanscom Field, Bedford. Contact Chris Rudomin for more information.

October 22 at 5 PM LECTURE: THE WATSON SCIENTIFIC LABORATORY, 1945-50
Herbert J. Grosch As the first assistant to Wallace Eckert and director of the computing program, Herbert Grosch will provide a narrative of the development of the Columbia Laboratories up to the time of NORC.

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