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MIT Whirlwind I: A High-Speed Electronic Digital Computer (1951) [pdf]
- stmw 9mo agoAlso see the much larger digital archive of Whirlwind documents https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/1157/digitized?&page=170 https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/2/resources/1157/...
- ggm 9mo agoNot implying whirlwind is the ur-machine, or originated terms of art, just noting that a lot of language in 1951 could be understood to apply in a domain-specific sense to a modern computer scientist: the jargon we use now, includes terms of art that these people use. They are therefore at least 75 years old.
- stmw 9mo agoIt kind of was, at least enough so to be an IEEE Milestone https://ethw.org/Milestones:Whirlwind_Computer,_1944-59 https://ethw.org/Milestones:Whirlwind_Computer,_1944-59
- radiator 9mo agoThe booklet looks great.
- aap_ 9mo agoLove the Whirlwind! i think of it as the original microcontroller, except not very micro of course. The 2kw address space is a bit small for bigger programs unfortunately, but it's still great fun to play with anyways.
- jecel 9mo agoTwo years after this booklet, the CRT memory it describes was replaced by core memory (becoming the first computer to use that technology).
- stmw 9mo agoIndeed, for those interested, the Whirlwind archives include a lot of details on Jay Forrester's core memory, as well.
- timbit42 9mo agoThe SAGE computers were scaled up versions of the MIT Whirlwind I. Later, the transistorized TX-0 and TX-2 computers were based on the MIT Whirlwind I. The DEC PDP-1 was based on the TX-2.
- MarkusWandel 9mo agoMy read on this is that Whirlwind was radical because it was 16 bit parallel. Previously anything to get a compute machine working would do, and bit serial is pretty natural. This one was designed from the get-go for speed.
- stmw 9mo agoI think it's even more than that - it birthed SAGE and many other descendants. The wild thing is how readable and recognizable the ISA is. Someone ought to build an emulator...