Artifact Details

Title

The RAYDAC by Louis Fein

Catalog Number

102695479

Type

Moving image

Description

The First International Research Conference on the History of Computing was a milestone in the history of computing, drawing a global elite of computer pioneers from the first generation of electronic digital computing. Most talks are approximately 45 minutes in duration and feature a lecture with a brief question and answer period afterwards.

Fein worked on sonar systems at the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory in World War II. He subsequently joined Raytheon, where he helped develop the RAYDAC computer for the Naval Air Missile Test Center at Point Mugu, California. Completed in 1953, the liquid freon-cooled RAYDAC contained 5,200 vacuum tubes, used acoustic delay-line memory and magnetic tape storage, and was one of the first digital computers to use error detection on all operations. Fein later became founder and president of Computer Control Corporation, an early and important maker of digital computing systems.

This lecture’s transcript was not included in the edited volume from the conference, viz. Metropolis, N., and Howlett, J., Rota, Gian-Carlo, A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, New York: Academic Press, 1980.

Date

1976-06-14

Credits

Fein, Louis

Participants

Fein, Louis, Speaker

Place of Publication

Los Alamos, NM, US

Identifying Numbers

Other number Reel 35 Original tape numbering

Duration

00:23:12

Dimensions

10 inches

Format

Betacam SP

Category

Lecture

Series Title

International Research Conference on the History of Computing

Lot Number

X5953.2011