DOME COLLECTIONS

Institute Archives & Special Collections or Project Whirlwind



COLLECTION

Project Whirlwind, (Archives collection number: MC 665)

Content

Records related to the work of Project Whirlwind.  An MIT research project which produced MIT's first high-speed digital computer and "magnetic core memory".  Project directed by Jay Forrester.  See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Whirlwind  

Size

1800 PDFs of research memos and reports; 5,000 photo negatives,  # boxes of paper documents

Age

1944-1958

Source

MITRE Corporation Archives held material since 1958; paper documents and digital files on 8 CDs were transferred to the Institute Archives Research in 2007 and 2008. Project Whirlwind research itself was carried out at MIT in the Servomechanisms Laboratory, the Digital Computer Laboratory, and in Lincoln Laboratory Division 6

Rights

MIT Research; government funded (all documents have been de-classified)

Anticipated Audience

Researchers interested in the history of computing and MIT's role 

Benefits

Promotional, first foray into documenting computers and making that information available on-line.

Format Risk

Completeness of paper collection has not yet been completely discerned. It is not clear if all digital images have paper originals It's possible some digital items are stand alone.

Format

PDFs.  Photo negatives.  Paper

Metadata

Needs descriptive metadata, there are lists of administrative, report, memo, and engineering note series, as well as information on the documents themselves

Funding

?

Other Comments

The Institute Archives has related  material:  the papers of Jay Forrester, and records of the MIT Digital Computer Laboratory, MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory

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