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- Key People:
- Alan Jay Perlis
- Related Topics:
- computer
- first-generation computer
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Whirlwind
computer
Whirlwind, the first real-time computerāthat is, a computer that can respond seemingly instantly to basic instructions, thus allowing an operator to interact with a ārunningā computer. It was built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1948 and 1951. Whirlwind was designed and built by Jay Forrester of MIT and Jan Aleksander Rajchman of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), who had come up with a new kind of memory based on magnetic cores that was fast enough to enable real-time operation.
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