Interview with Jay Forrester, inventor of the Whirlwind computer

Mary Brandel   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Computerworld Stories  

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July 16, 2001 Few people encompass the richness of America's past
as Jay Forrester, currently a Germeshausen professor
emeritus of management at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
After growing up on a cattle ranch in the Nebraska
Sandhills, Forrester earned a degree in electrical
engineering at the University of Nebraska, followed by a
research assistantship at MIT. As he puts it, "I haven't
gotten away [from MIT] yet."



While at MIT, Forrester led the group that built MIT's first
digital computer, the Whirlwind. That led to the creation
of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory for Air Defense, which built
the air defense system installed across Canada and the
U.S. in the late '50s.



By 1956, Forrester decided the pioneering days in
computers were over. He joined the MIT Management
School, where he founded the field of system dynamics.
We recently spoke with Forrester about the early days of
computing at MIT.



CW: Was there a sense of excitement that
surrounded the invention of the Whirlwind?



Forrester: There certainly was because we saw
Whirlwind as the first reliable high-speed computer.
There had been digital computers before, but they were
either slow or not reliable. We were working in a totally
new area -- the application of computers to the military,
which required a high level of reliability. The whole staff
was very much on the frontier and well aware of it.



CW: Was it frustrating to you at the time that critics
doubted the reliability of digital computers in
real-life situations?



Forrester: There was a small number of people who
shared [our] enthusiasm and an overwhelmingly large
group that didn't. The number who began to believe in it
steadily grew until 1949-50, when the Air Force joined in
as financial sponsor to shift Whirlwind toward the
American air defense system.



CW: You have been known to say that the
pioneering days of computers ended in 1956. Are
you disappointed in the advancement of
computers since then?



Forrester: Of course there's been vast improvements.
But the decade from 1946 to 1956 had a larger multiple
increase than any decade since in terms of reliability,
speed, capacity and various other measures that you
might want to make. Probably the biggest multiple of
performance happened in that decade.

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