Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation Center

In 1950, Provost Julius Stratton formed the Committee on Machine Methods of Computation to study the introduction of computers for general use by faculty and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Six members were appointed including Jay W. Forrester and Zdenek Kopal from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Chia-Chiao Lin and Eric Reissner from the Department of Mathematics, and Herman Feshbach and Philip M. Morse from the Department of Physics. Philip Morse was named chairman. The establishment of the committee followed the successful research and development of the high-speed digital Whirlwind I computer at MIT. In 1954 the committee recommended to the provost that a special computation center be built on the MIT campus. The stated goals of the Computation Center were “to aid faculty in keeping up to date on computer use within their fields and to assist them in introducing the use of computers into their courses; to educate all MIT students in computer use; and to explore and develop new ways of using computers in engineering and scientific research.”

President James Killian, in his 1956 annual report, described the facilities being built to house the new Computation Center. In 1957 the Computation Center was formally dedicated at MIT with Philip Morse as director, a position he would hold for the next ten years. The construction of the Karl Taylor Compton Laboratories (MIT building 26), which housed the new center, was funded in part by IBM, which also paid for the Computation Center’s equipment and support staff; IBM also donated the machine initially installed in the center, an IBM 704 computer. Part of IBM’s agreement with MIT under which they provided funding for the project allowed other New England schools, as well as IBM researchers, to share the use of the facility free of charge. This arrangement eventually became NERComp – the New England Regional Computing Program. Project funding also came from the National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as from charging computer time to internal department accounts.

IBM was petitioned on several occasions to provide the center with newer faster computers. The Computation Center received an IBM 709 to replace the initial 704 model in 1960. This was followed in 1962 by the installation of an IBM 7090, and finally in 1966 IBM System/360 Model 65 was donated to MIT.

An early version of the Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS) devised by Professor Fernando Corbató to maximize the use of available computing time was demonstrated in November 1961 at the Computation Center. After ten years MIT reorganized its computer services, and in 1967 the Computation Center transitioned into a central Office of Information Processing Services. Richard G. Mills, formerly the assistant director of Project MAC, was appointed to a new post as Director of Information Processing Services to coordinate all computer facilities at MIT.

Computation Center

Phillip M. Morse, Computation Center Director, 1957-1967; Frank M. Verzuh, Computation Center Assistant Director, 1956-1960; Fernando J. Corbató, Computation Center Associate Director, 1960-1966.

From the guide to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation Center records, 1950-1962, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute Archives and Special Collections)