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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