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Archival History of Computing at MIT, 1950–62
The MIT Digital Humanities Programs, together with the MIT Libraries Department of Distinctive Collections, have digitized and contextualized the majority of archived documents relating to the history of the
MIT Computation Center
from the 1950s and early 1960s.
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Humanities
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Whirlwind
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Laura
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Social science research
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Calvin
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704
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Physics
Behind the Scenes
How did undergraduates in 2019 immerse themselves in computation of the 1950s? Find out more here.
Digital Humanities: An Enduring Legacy
A time without digital humanities is a time long before commercial computers. Even at its earliest, when the hours of computation were meticulously counted and rationed, the investment of technology in the humanities thrived.
“Three Man-Months”
One might presume that the primary issue with the computers of the 1950’s was that they were slow. But lack of processing power was not necessarily the bottleneck here.
Beginnings of CS at MIT
Today, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is the biggest department at MIT, and the CS portion makes up the majority of it. To many, it would seem like this has always been the way of MIT, but that was not the case. CS at MIT is a rather recent development that had humble beginnings.
The Rise and Fall of Project Whirlwind
The development of the Whirlwind Project serves as a milestone in the computation history, as it was one of the first high-speed large-scale digital computers to be developed. However, there were many issues during the process of perfecting the machine that ended in its termination in 1959.
Qualifications of a 704 Programmer
The idea of a programmer today is much different than what is was 60 years ago in the time of the IBM 704. Instead of your typical college educated, introverted programmer, the MIT Computation Center sought out a different type of demographic.