A Culture of Innovation Insider Accounts of Computing and Life at BBN

[28] part i. founders and the early days in computing
dozen national leaders in related fields and converged on him to direct their study. The
project began in late 1961 and concluded after two years. Licklider spent the second
year on leave from BBN, but wrote the final report in 1963. This report was published
as the book Libraries of the Future; itgives a prescient view of how future computer
systems he termed “procognitive” could facilitate the acquisition, organization, and use
of knowledge. 32
3.6 From “B” to “C” at BBN
Why should BBN, or any organization, attempt tomove to Cfrom B —tocomputers
from behavioral science or psychology? Consider the following factors. Psychologists
interested in communications had studied information processing. They thought of
computers assymbol processors — e.g., theorem provers andpattern recognizers —
rather than as number crunchers. They would use computers to model human cognitive
processes — dynamically rather than as previously via static mathematical equations —
and would lend what they knew about human perception, thinking, language, and
motor control to the design of computers that would augment or supplant human
behavior, for example, in libraries, process control, and robotics. Psychologists had in
their province the study of human and animal intelligence. They would contribute to
automated speech recognition and to other instances of pattern recognition. Computers
would bethe prime case of aneedfor human-machine integration; they had very far
to goin human-factors considerations to reach a semblance of user friendliness. The
seminal idea of human-computer “symbiosis”—suggesting how the two could work
together in complementary fashion — was forming in Licklider’s thinking. 33
3.7 Computers and time-sharing at BBN
Individuals arriving at BBN in the late 1950s to work oncomputers included Edward
Fredkin in 1958, a computer scientist/engineer from Lincoln Laboratory where he had
collaborated with Marill. Indeed, itwas an LGP-30 computer—which Fredkin had
ordered a bit earlier, before Licklider attracted him andwhenhethought he was going
into business for himself — that BBN agreed to buy as part of the hiring arrangement.
After amostly unsuccessful experience with that computer, Licklider jumped at
the chance, in 1959, tohave the Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC’s) prototype
PDP-1 on the BBN premises (see Figure 3.2). This computer (called a Programmed Data
Processor because the military was not buying “computers” at the time) stemmed from
the Whirlwind, SAGE, and TX-0 developments atLincoln Laboratory familiar to Licklider,
Marill, and Fredkin. The PDP-1 had a “thin skin,” meaning that itpermitted an individual
user tohave convenient access via typewriter, punched tape, display screen, and light
pen. (Not that itwas easy touse: For example, two long rows of toggle switches, 35
in all, were usedwith the octal number system to check and change the contents of
computer registers.) By 1959, apparently, the setting at BBN was one that DEC founder
Kenneth Olsen could recognize as an appropriate test site for the PDP-1.
Fredkin, like Marill, had a large impact on BBN’s assimilation and exploitation of the
PDP-1, as described by Walden elsewhere in this volume (Chapter 4).Notably, he worked
with DEC to specify the hardware changes that would berequired to makepossible
“time-sharing” of the computer among multiple users. Toemphasize the potential for
the PDP-1 to interact with its environment, he programmed it to cutitsownyellow
ribbon at aceremony held whenthe first production model was installed at BBN, in
1960.