Title
Jan Rajchman : Memories : 1945-1950, lecture by Jan Rajchman
Catalog Number
102695236
Type
Moving image
Description
Jan Rajchman joined RCA Laboratories in 1936 where he was assigned to work on electron multipliers, and he soon became an early pioneer in electronic computation. He invented what is considered the first read-only memory, and during World War II, he and his team shared many of their innovations with the creators of the ENIAC. Rajchman discusses the Selectron, a vacuum tube computer memory he conceived of at RCA and began developing in 1946. With technology similar to Williams tube memory, the Selectron tube was used in computers such as the Johnniac. Shortly after, Rajchman made contributions to the development of magnetic core memory, an idea he concurrently but independently conceived along with innovators An Wang, Way-Dong Woo, and Jay Forrester. He details how the introduction of the transistor reshaped how memory was made, and Rajchman concludes with speculations on the future of computer memory and a question-and-answer session with the audience.
Date
1985-03-07
Credits
Rajchman, Jan A.
Publisher
Computer History Museum
Place of Publication
Boston, MA, US
Duration
01:01:38
Dimensions
10" cassette
Format
Betacam SP
Category
Lecture
