Oral History of Robert Everett - Computer History Museum

Oral History of Robert Everett
driven switch, you know, and they got into the same kind of trouble. And that was years later, and they
should have known better. We didn’t have any way to learn, but we learned about it. But they didn’t pay
any attention to us. And IBM, of course, ended up with tons of programmers. But it was done.
Hendrie: How were the specs on the machine itself done? Was that pretty clear, what you needed to do?
You said there was some mis-estimating of how big the memory needed to be, but other than that, did you
work out relatively clear specs for IBM up front that stuck? Or was there a lot of issues there?
Everett: Well, it wasn’t a case of writing a set of specs and giving it to IBM. It was a case of starting to
design the thing. The general spec for it was that this is a general purpose computer, and it’s got to the
fastest, most capacious thing that we think we can build. And so the original block diagrams and so on
were done by the Lincoln people, and we worked with the IBM people. And the picture I have is that it
starts out with all of the thinking being done by the Lincoln people, and it gets less, less and less, and the
IBM people got up and up and up, and they took over. And at first, as this thing was starting, there was a
certain amount of argumentation going on, because the IBM people were competent, and they’d built
computers, and they were proud and confident. And so there was a lot of head bashing going on. For one
thing they used square steel pipe for making their racks and we used L-shaped aluminum. And that was a
matter for argument. And we’d get together and – these were all meetings, they were called, I
can’t remember now. But we’d get, you know, dozens of Lincoln and IBM people together and thrash out
these problems.
Hendrie: Was the work at IBM done in the group that was doing the 701 and 702?
Everett: No, they set up a new group with a new building, High Street in Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie is
where these other things were going on, and I’m sure that some of the people came from there.
Hendrie: They would move some of the people over there.
Everett: But not the leaders. There were new people. I don’t mean new to IBM necessarily.
Hendrie: Yes, but they weren’t – they didn’t – people like Nat Rochester, etc., did not move over to this
project.
Everett: No.
Hendrie: Okay.
Everett: So anyway, one thing I remember is we went to visit the manufacturing people. IBM had built
this big new plant in Poughkeepsie where they were making 604s or something, and you could eat off the
floor. It was clean – I was used to – my previous experience with a manufacturing plant was the
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