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May 11, 1951: RAM Is Born
- hga 16y agoBoy, there are many things wrong with this account; here's two things, for the full story get a copy of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Project-Whirlwind-History-Pioneer-Computer/dp/0932376096/ http://www.amazon.com/Project-Whirlwind-History-Pioneer-Comp... And I'll note it's still relevant, we still build computers in the general approach this team developed. At a talk I attended in the '80s, Forrester said that he got out of hardware after Whirlwind since all the interesting (to him) problems had been solved. And I can see why he'd think that. Anyway: Jay Forrester and company initially sold it to the Navy for flight simulators, but they knew this sort of computer would be needed for much more. Whirlwind initially used CRT based storage, as did IBM's first two computers. The UNIVAC I used mercury delay lines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory