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Software & Languages
The first operating system for the IBM 704 reflected the cooperation of Bob
Patrick of General Motors and Owen Mock of North American Aviation. Called
GM-NAA I/O, it allowed batch processing -- a simple way to combine existing
commands into new commands.
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MIT TX0
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Computers
MIT researchers built the TX-0, the first general-purpose, programmable
computer built with transistors. For easy replacement, designers placed each
transistor circuit inside a "bottle," similar to a vacuum tube.
Constructed at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, the TX-0 moved to the MIT Research
Laboratory of Electronics, where it hosted some early imaginative tests of
programming, including a Western movie shown on TV, 3-D tic-tac-toe, and a
maze in which mouse found martinis and became increasingly inebriated.
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IBM 305 RAMAC
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Components
The era of magnetic disk storage dawned with IBM's shipment of a 305 RAMAC to
Zellerbach Paper in San Francisco. The IBM 350 disk file served as the
storage component for the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control.
It consisted of 50 magnetically coated metal platters with 5 million bytes of
data. The platters, stacked one on top of the other, rotated with a common
drive shaft.
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MIT Whirlwind
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Software & Languages
At MIT, researchers began experimentation on direct keyboard input on
computers, a precursor to today's normal mode of operation. Doug Ross wrote a
memo advocating direct access in February; five months later, the Whirlwind
aided in such an experiment.
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