Oral History of Robert Everett - Computer History Museum

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Everett: And that happened gradually. Hendrie: ...with the storage tubes, or was this still debugging the rest of the machine? Oral History of Robert Everett Everett: The rest of the machine was running pretty well, but we were starting to put things on it, more displays and operator consoles and all kinds of stuff which were adding to it. So there was all that had to be done. And it came along just in the nick of time, shall I say, because we were building what we called a Cape Cod System, which was the prototype air defense system in New England, which various radar scattered around New England were brought into the machine, and the Air Defense Command sent a colonel and a whole squadron of people to operate it, all those things that made a first order difference in the reliability of it. Hendrie: What I'd like to do is maybe we could go back a little bit in time, and you could trace the metamorphosis of Whirlwind I and its uses up to the talk about the evolution of the idea of the SAGE system and that becoming a project. And then it will meet the core memory coming into the machine on the machine side. Everett: Well, as I say, the original intent of Whirlwind was the airplane stability control analyzer. But by 1947, we had thought of many other applications for it, including tracking aircraft and intercepting. We were still working for the Navy at that time, and so, we had a simulation, which had been done, you understand. These things were planned out, reports written about them. Communication system, which used the computer to manage the communications. Simulator for anti-sub warfare that, you know, ran destroyers around and dropped depth charges and calculated the probability of damaging the submarine. This one for running a task force which we might be attacked by enemy airplanes, and so they... so, it was really a SAGE system in miniature, not very much of a miniature. And it had all the pieces, and these pieces were described in reports, not built. Hendrie: Yes. Okay. And so, at some point... Everett: But, we did see lots of things with the computer, things we invented ourselves. It was set up as a facility in which people could bring in programs and run it on the computer some of the time. And, you know, for instance, the Museum of Science was putting in a planetarium, and Whirlwind computed some of the gear ratios and so on for it. And it did a lot of other things, you know. So these were brought in by people from the outside, and our guys would help them with the problems, teach them how to do it. There were lots of people I'd met from who told me that their first experience with a computer was Whirlwind. First learned how to program on it. So, if the Air Defense problem had not come along, I don't know what would have happened. It probably would not have justified the machine for calculating what people brought up. I don’t know. Anyway, just about the time the Navy got sick of putting up the money. The air defense problem came along. The Air Force came along and rescued us and gave us money. Hendrie: About what time did that transition occur? What year? CHM Ref: X3877.2007 © 2007 Computer History Museum Page 26 of 56
Everett: Oh, 1950? Hendrie: Okay. Everett: Started in 1949, then went…1950. Hendrie: Okay. So then the... Oral History of Robert Everett Everett: Lincoln was started in 1951. And Lincoln was set up to do air defense. And, you know, basically, the creation of Lincoln is dependent on Whirlwind because it was the existence of this computer, it could be used for managing the tracking and intercepts and data gathering and everything, of an air defense system. Luckily the Air Force would be willing to support this. Hendrie: Now, when Lincoln, when this SAGE project started receiving more funding and Lincoln Lab was set up, was Whirlwind moved? Was Lincoln ever running at MIT before it had its own facilities out at Lincoln? Everett: Well, Whirlwind was built in the Barta Building on campus, and we never moved it. Eventually, Bill Wolf moved it. Hendrie: Okay, so it always stayed at the Barta Building, yes. Everett: MIT . Hendrie: Yes. Everett: And so that we kept the Barta Building. . Hendrie: Okay. Everett: And, in fact, I started a small piece of …I was unhappy about losing the contact with the campus, and the graduate students that were the heart of the digital computer lab staff. So, I set up a group at MIT to continue doing research on computers. And we kept that up for a while, but it didn't work out very well, because the professors on the campus wanted to do their own thing, and I wanted to do something that was useful to me. So, the result was that we decided to call it quits, stop funding it and they got funding somewhere else. Hendrie: We need to take a pause and change the tape. CHM Ref: X3877.2007 © 2007 Computer History Museum Page 27 of 56
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