LCS/AI Lab Timeline
Categories:
Category Index > Key Publications > Articles
Category Index > Operating Systems
Group:
Group Index > CAD
Category Index > Key Publications > Articles
Category Index > Operating Systems
Group:
Group Index > CAD
MIT's (the world's?) first Operating System (1954)
John Frankovich and Frank Helwig wrote, for DFTI and general Whirlwind use, the Director Tape program, to use the Control-room Flexowriter's mechanical tape-reader in parallel operation with the new fast photoelectric tape reader (PETR, installed Fall 1952) to read DFTI's huge, spliced-together paper tapes, with emulated manual switch-settings, post-mortem tests, etc. interspersed and automatically controling the computer -- operator-free. Digital Flight Test Instrumentation project (DFTI), John Ward, Project Engineer, Doug Ross Lead Programmer, used ditital instrumentation hardware and Whirlwind computing to evaluate the effectiveness of the tail turret for the B-58 Hustler supersonic bomber, but mounted on B-47s with F-86 fighter nose strobe target -- on serial #3 ERA 1103 48-bit word computer at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. $10,000/hour flight-test costs! Frankovich and Helwig also wrote a symbolic assembler, based on Digital Computer Lab's Summer Session software, generating 1103 tapes, which then were flown to Florida for debugging and use. Ross wrote Save the Baby interruptive checker and patch assembler on the 1103, for quick fixes on site. ERA had no software; Flexowriter and plug-coded relay box punched 7-bit machine-code tape for input. Servo Lab's shop built elegantly simple manual winders and roller-lined, high-sided, deep-pocket tape holders for use with 200 cps. photoelectric tape readers, both places. (Contrary to Computer Museum mockup of Whirlwind's Control Room, the on-line Flexowriter keyboard never was used for input! Only the 10-cps. printer and tape-reader and tape-punch were live -- as was Operator Joe Thompson, manikin-rendered in the exhibit.)References:
A Personal View of The Personal Work Station: Some Firsts in the Fifties Invited paper for the ACM History of Personal Workstations Conference, January 1986. In A History of Peronal Workstations, A. Goldberg, Ed.m New York: ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, 1988, pp 51-114.Reported By:
Doug Ross
