Computer History Museum

This panel was conducted on November 29th, 1990 at the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Massachusetts to mark the 30th anniversary of the creation of the PDP-1 minicomputer. Tape 1: John T. “Jack” Gilmore, Jr. provides the opening remarks. Steven Levy, who had then recently published his book Hackers, moderated the panel of key MIT professors and student “hackers” associated with the PDP-1. Jack B. Dennis speaks beginning at the 5:07 mark. Edward “Ed” Fredkin speaks at 16:20. Stephen “Slug” Russell speaks at 25:28. J. Martin “Shag” Graetz speaks at 31:55. David Gross speaks at 43:33. General discussion at 58:15. Tape 2: The tape begins with Marvin Minsky’s recollections about the PDP-1. John McCarthy speaks at 5:25. Richard Greenblatt speaks at 8:15. John McCarthy speaks again at 9:48. Ted Johnson speaks at 12:04. Edward “Ed” Fredkin speaks at 18:40. General discussion at 19:35. Dan Murphy speaks at 24:50.

Type
Moving Image
Format
Mini-DV
Catalogue number
102664307
30th Anniversary of the DEC PDP-1 Panel

<p>Babbage Engine shoot.</p>

Type
Moving Image
Format
Gigapixel
Catalogue number
102717236
Babbage Engine shoot

In the late 1980s, prior to the invention of compressed digital video on personal computers, the Apple Multimedia Lab created a number of multimedia software titles that involved a LaserDisc player being controlled by hypermedia software on a Macintosh computer, allowing video to be played alongside text and still graphics. This represented a transitional stage for multimedia, which would be transformed by Apple's invention of QuickTime video only a few years later. Dr. Andrew Lison, an Assistant Professor of Media Study at the University of Buffalo, has been researching this moment of multimedia's transition in the geopolitical context of the end of the Cold War. Dr. Lison demonstrates and discusses two such videodisc/software hybrids produced by the Apple Multimedia Lab: the Visual Almanac, and The Encyclopedia of Multimedia.

Type
Moving Image
Format
MOV
Catalogue number
102738853
Video Ethnography of Visual Almanac

This interpretive production was created from archival footage of Eric Bier, PARC research scientist, demonstrating the Cedar integrated environment and programming language on January 24, 2019. Cedar was an evolution of the Mesa environment/language, developed at PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory originally for the Xerox Alto. Mesa was modular and strongly-typed, and influenced the later Modula family of languages. Cedar/Mesa ran on the D-machine successors to the Alto (such as the Dorado) and added features including garbage collection, and was later ported to Sun workstations. Cedar/Mesa’s integrated environment featured a graphical window system and a text editor, Tioga, which could be used for both programming and document preparation, allowing for fonts, styles, and graphics to be embedded in code files. The editor and all its commands were also available everywhere, including on the command console and in text fields. The demo itself is running through a Mac laptop remotely logged into Bier’s Sun workstation at PARC using X Windows. Bier demonstrates the Cedar development environment, Tioga editor, editing commands using three mouse buttons, sophisticated text search features, the command line, and the Gargoyle graphics editor, which was developed as part of Bier’s UC Berkeley Ph.D. dissertation. Bier is joined by Nick Briggs, Chris Jacobi, and Paul McJones.

Type
Moving Image
Format
MOV
Catalogue number
102781041
Eric Bier demonstrates Cedar

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) occupies a special place in the history of computing in part for its technical accomplishments but also for being at the center of a landmark legal case. It was built by Iowa physics professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry. Technically, the ABC was an electronic equation solver. It could find solutions to systems of simultaneous linear equations with up to 29 unknowns, a type of problem encountered in Atansasoff's physics work. Construction of the ABC began in 1938 at Iowa State College (now University) in Ames, Iowa. It was about the size of a large desk, weighed 750 lbs, computed 0.06 operations per second (sustained) and had 0.37 KB of memory. It could also do 30 add/subtract operations per second. While not a computer in the modern sense (since it did not store its own program), it pioneered various techniques in digital computer design including binary arithmetic, parallel processing, and electronic (vacuum tube) switching elements. The device was completed in 1942 and worked, although its spark-gap printer mechanism needed further development. The legal dimension to the ABC story involves a lawsuit between two computer makers, Honeywell and Sperry-Rand. In 1967, Honeywell sued Sperry over their ENIAC patents using the ABC as evidence of prior art. (ENIAC was an early digital electronic calculator completed in 1946). After years of proceedings, on October 19, 1973 the judge in the case, Earl R. Larson, agreed with Honeywell that some of the ideas in the ENIAC, which had been considered the 'world's first computer,' in fact came from Atanasoff during a four-day visit ENIAC designer John Mauchly made to Atanasoff at Iowa State before ENIAC was designed. There was also months of correspondence between the two in which Mauchly expressed his desire to build a similar device. The net result of this judgment was that no one owned the patent on the computer: it was free to be developed by all. Gordon Bell has called this the 'dis-invention of the computer.' In 1993, Iowa State University began a historically-accurate reconstruction of the ABC, which it finished in 1997. The project cost $360,000 and involved about a dozen people in its realization. This film shows the ABC Reconstruction in operation, solving a simple algebra problem.

Type
Moving Image
Format
MP4
Catalogue number
102781093
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer In Operation

This video opens with a demonstration, sans audio, of the game Spacewar!, played on the restored PDP-1 at the Boston Computer History Museum.

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102621987

Produced in 1999, this documentary presents the Year 2000 Problem (Y2K Problem) for an audience of laypeople.

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102639843

Old label text: "DEC was founded in 1957 by Ken Olson and Harlan Anderson. They began by building small circuit modules for laboratory use and, in 1961, released their first computer, the PDP-1. During the 1960s, DEC produced a variety of machines, mainly aimed at the laboratory market, culminating in 1964 with the introduction of the PDP-8, often regarded as the first true minicomputer. In 1976, they moved into the high-end computing market with the VAX series of machine. In 1990 a series of late releases of a new disk storage system put financial pressure on the company and, despite releasing their powerful Alpha microprocessor, DEC struggled. It sold off various sections of the company and, in 1998, the firm itself was bought by Compaq which, in turn, was bought out by Hewlett-Packard in 2002."

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102639844

Label text reads: "Jack Gilmore, researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and DEC senior engineer, gave a lecture at Siggraph '89 on early computer graphics on the TX-0 and the PDP-1."

Type
Moving Image
Format
U-Matic
Catalogue number
102639872

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102639880

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102639882

This short film contains several interviews with Fortran developers, describing the environment and process of Fortran's development at IBM. Interviewees include John Backus and Cuthbert Hurd. The film opens with a text scroll which reads "In 1953 an IBM research project led by John Backus began to develop the world's first high-level programming language for a computer. Its aim was to make computers more accessible, and to create a system that would make programming easier and more economical. This is a story of the creative process at work, told by the people who made it possible. They developed a language. They named it FORTRAN." This version of the film was presented at the National Computer Conference

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102645545

This documentary follows the growth and downfall of a typical dot-com company in the late 1990s, and the aftermath for its founders, Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVD
Catalogue number
102645729

This documentary focuses on the internal environment at the Atari, Inc. in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The four episodes on this disc feature segments on the Atari workplace, internal conflicts between employees, game design during the 1970s and 1980s, and the technical details of programming the Atari 2600 video computer system (VCS). It includes interviews with Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Trip Hawkins, Tod Frye, and game engineer Carla Meninsky.

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVD
Catalogue number
102651129

Short documentary describing the use of Mathlab. The documentary was written by Carl Engelman and Robert Coltman and produced by The Mitre Corporation.

Type
Moving Image
Format
U-Matic
Catalogue number
102651701

Label text reads: "Jack Gilmore, researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and DEC senior engineer, gave a lecture at Siggraph '89 on early computer graphics on the TX-0 and the PDP-1."

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVCAM
Catalogue number
102651742

Label text reads: "Jack Gilmore, researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and DEC senior engineer, gave a lecture at Siggraph '89 on early computer graphics on the TX-0 and the PDP-1."

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102651743

Label text reads: "Jack Gilmore, researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and DEC senior engineer, gave a lecture at Siggraph '89 on early computer graphics on the TX-0 and the PDP-1."

Type
Moving Image
Format
Betacam SP
Catalogue number
102651744

Type
Moving Image
Format
VHS
Catalogue number
102651751

This is a color moving image with audio. From abstract: "Introduced in 1959, the DEC PDP-1 computer is truly the mouse that roared, a powerful, easy-to-operate computer with a host of new abilities that allowed its users to interact with a computer all to themselves. This was a novelty in the early 1960s when mainframe-based batch processing was the norm and the idea of a computer dedicated to a single-user was heretical, akin to having a personal aircraft carrier. Our panel comprises key figures in the development and use of the PDP-1. Moderated by computer science legend Dr. Ed Fredkin, panelists will explore the creation and impact of this unique machine and how most of its features, functionality and DEC’s philosophy of interactive computing were eventually adopted by other companies years later."

Type
Moving Image
Format
DVCAM
Catalogue number
102654189