Historians have not lacked for superlatives to describe the Whirlwind Computer project that began in 1944 in the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory under the leadership of Jay Forrester. The project started as an attempt to design a new type of fligh simulator for the Navy at the end of World War II but as work proceeded in the immediate post war years, what began as an analog computer project became a digital computer project. Unlike a commercial development project, the Whirlwind Computer was never really "finished". Once it was running in 1949, however, Whirlwind was widely recognised as the first high-speed electronic digital computer to be able to operate in "real time".
One of the most significant features of Whirlwind was the introduction of magnetic core memory. Forrester had come up with the idea of random- access magnetic-core memory and he had a cadre of creative graduate students dedicate themselves to researching various aspects of this concept beginning in 1949. Three years of research yielded a highly promising design but by this time, MIT and military researchers were making constant use of the computer.
This led to the construction of a special Memory Test Computer in 1952 - 1953 enabling the engineers to test the new 16,384-bit core memory without affecting the operations of the original Whirlwind Computer. This artifact is one of two Memory Test Banks, which were first tested by the Memory Test Computer and then wired into Whirlwind in 1953. In 1959, MIT decommissioned the Whirlwind and the computer was used by private industry until 1973. This display is of the most recent adaptation and has a newer version of core memory planes than the original.
The Whirlwind Computer led directly to the SAGE Air Defence System computer, the creation of Lincoln Laboratory and many important military applications as well as commercial spin-offs. Perhaps most significant was education and training of a dynamic community of talented and creative engineers whose post-Whirlwind careers reshaped the computer industry and the computer itself.
From the Digital Equipment Corporation Museum Collection. A gift of Compaq Computer Corporation