Whirlwind (computer) - Legacy

Legacy

Whirlwind I ran in a support role for SAGE until June 30, 1959. A member of the project team, Bill Wolf, then rented the machine for a dollar a year until 1973. Ken Olsen and Robert Everett then saved the machine from the scrap heap and it became the basis for the Digital Computer Museum, which would later become The Computer Museum on Boston's Museum Wharf. Today it is in the collection of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, and a portion of the machine is currently on display. As of February 2009, one of Whirlwind's core memory units is on display at the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The Whirlwind used approximately 5,000 vacuum tubes. An effort was also started to convert the Whirlwind design to a transistorized form, led by Ken Olsen and known as the TX-0. TX-0 was very successful and plans were made to make an even larger version known as TX-1. However this project was far too ambitious and had to be scaled back to a smaller version known as TX-2. Even this version proved troublesome, and Olsen left in mid-project to start Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC's PDP-1 was essentially a collection of TX-0 and TX-2 concepts in a smaller package.

MIT's Barta Building (now building N42) which housed Whirlwind during the project's lifetime, was until recently home to MIT's campus-wide IT department, Information Services & Technology. In 1997–8, the building was restored to its original exterior design, and can be found at 211 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge.