a life of somedays

Letter by Ouyang Xiu, 11th century. But who was Ouyang Xiu?

Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) was a prominent Chinese historian, writer, calligrapher, and politician of the Song dynasty. A leading literary figure of his time, he is regarded as a central member of the Eight Masters of the Tang and Song and helped revive the Classical Prose Movement, promoting its style in the imperial examinations.

As a historian, he was commissioned by Emperor Renzong of Song to compile the New Book of Tang and also privately wrote the Historical Records of the Five Dynasties. In literature he produced poetry in the cí and shi forms and influential prose works such as Zuiwengting Ji.

Whirlwind 75th Anniversary (1951 - 2026)

"We're still living with it. There was only one Whirlwind, but it's still with us." — Guy Fedorkow

I don't think any computing project changed as much between concept and delivery as Whirlwind, making its history somewhat challenging to follow. This is also the reason I'm as captivated with its story as I am, and find it miraculous that it developed the way it did, and impacted every computer that succeeded it.

Whirlwind's origins go back to 1943, with the Office of Naval Research (ONR). U.S. Navy Captain Luis de Florez pitched the project to his alma mater, MIT, as a universal flight simulator. This description caused me a bit of confusion - for a long time I assumed it was a flight simulator for training pilots (like a link trainer), and while that may have been Florez' initial concept, Project Whirlwind's objective was a flight simulator for modeling aircraft behavior.

The Whirlwind Program, Part 1, Volume 1, p. 7 and 1. (Source)

Nevertheless, the task of simulation would be carried out by an analog control system modeled on the link trainer, which had been in use since the late 1920s. By the year 1945, work on Project Whirlwind was underway at MIT's Servomechanisms Laboratory, overseen by Jay Forrester, Robert Everett and Perry Crawford.

Robert Everett with the original Whirlwind flight simulator. (source)

It soon became apparent there was no analog solution to the engineering problem posed. Having a control system that could realistically respond to the aircraft's reactions necessitated high speed input/output, something that could only be achieved through the use of an electronic, digital computer, which was out of MIT's wheelhouse in 1945. (These were the early days of such technologies, and MIT was particularly married to analog methods). Aware of the nascent ENIAC and EDVAC, Forrester sought out information from personnel involved in the project, and wrote to the Pentagon for technical reports relating to EDVAC.

The Whirlwind Program, Part 1, Volume 1, p. 8

The course of the project was re-charted in 1946. The heart of Project Whirlwind would be a digital electronic computer, construction on which began in 1948.

Like ENIAC, Project Whirlwind far outlived the end of the war that had borne it. While ENIAC was kept in use as an artillery computer even in the absence of active combat, Whirlwind was separated from its original purpose, the flight simulator aspects of the project scrapped completely in the late 40s. The ONR continued to fund Whirlwind as a high-speed, general-purpose computer, but grew dissatisfied with delays and a growing price tag amidst budget cuts, and dropped support for the project in 1950.

In 1950, MIT physicist and Radiation Laboratory alum George E. Valley recognized an unmet need for an automated air defense network and identified Whirlwind as the ideal computer for the task. After Forrester demonstrated Whirlwind's ability to process radar data via telephone line and display results on a cathode ray tube, The U.S. Air Force stepped in with funding in November of that year.

Thus Whirlwind was repurposed as the heart of Project Charles, a prototype air defense network. Air traffic data was transmitted to Whirlwind from a radar installation in Cape Cod. In 1952, Whirlwind was able to successfully auto-pilot a B-26 bomber (cast in the role of the interceptor) to its rendezvous point, serving as proof-of-concept for the SAGE network.

Chronology: From the Cambridge Field Station to the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory, 1945-1985, p. 10 (source)

There are a few implications I want to dig into. The most obvious being the role of computers in air defense & air traffic control. But with its data links to the radar station & B-26, this event also presaged the development of computer networks, possibly the first instance of a computer receiving and transmitting data remotely. The 1958 Bell 101 for the AN/FSQ-7 (SAGE) is cited as the first commercial modem, but Whirlwind was sending and receiving data over phone lines earlier.

This is the first instance of real-time computing. Until Whirlwind, the dominant mode of input/output was punched cards; it was the first computer that was interactive. It was the first computer with a "monitor" in any manner of speaking. I think there's irony in the primary mode of input being a light gun, a primitive forerunner of the stylus and touchscreen computing that would become ubiquitous about 60 years later. (Whirlwind had a keyboard, again the first computer to do so, but it was originally a numeric pad only.)

The third important point is Whirlwind's flexibility with what it could connect to. Radar antennae and airplanes were among its devices. So were light guns, CRTs, Flexowriters, radar scopes for the Project Charles experiments, paper tape, magnetic tape, magnetic drums and others. Guy Fedorkow referred to Whirlwind as something like "the first Arduino" (paraphrasing) and that comparison sticks with me. It was prescient to the ways we use computers today.

While Forrester had been experimenting with magnetic core memory since the late 40s, Whirlwind launched with electrostatic tube (CRT) memory, similar to the Williams tube memory used by other computers of the time. However it was expensive and unreliable. By 1953 its tubes had been replaced with a magnetic core memory stack, initially developed and tested on the Memory Test Computer, a small, special-purpose version of Whirlwind developed by Ken Olsen.

Left: Forrester, Youz & Dodd with two of Whirlwind's CRT memory tubes. (Source) Right: Unidentified technician weaving a pane of Whirlwind's core memory. (Source)

Here we see two other tributaries between Whirlwind and the wider world of computing. The popularization of core memory, which would become a dominant technology for the next quarter century, and Digital Equipment Corporation, which Ken Olsen would found after exiting the TX-0 and TX-2 computer projects, themselves influenced by Whirlwind.

Given Whirlwind's influence on the development of both large (IBM) and small (DEC) systems, Robert Everett's quote that "The millions and billions of computers that are around, and there are more and more all the time, in my opinion, really, descended from Whirlwind" rings true to me.

Whirlwind operated at MIT through the spring of 1959, at which point it was leased by William Wolf, who dismantled and moved it. Back in operation by 1963, it ran at Wolf Research and Development for the next decade, and was finally dismantled in 1976.

Countdown to shutdown, 1959. (Source)

As a physical object, Whirlwind computer survives as mere fragments. But it lives on through software recovered from original paper and magnetic tapes and a hardware simulator (with a PiDP-style physical simulator upcoming). Today, anyone can have their own Whirlwind computer, run original software, and even write new programs.

Left: "Bouncing ball" program, ca. 1949. (Source [PDF]) Right: The same program today on the Whirlwind simulator. (Own image)

This is only a brief introduction to Whirlwind, and I encourage anyone who's interested to investigate the wealth of available documentation. There's so much that I couldn't cover here, including the political intrigue surrounding its development; the story of its first hired operator, Joseph Thompson, an African American high school student; the saga of its afterlife and efforts to preserve its software.

The thing that most stands out to me is that no one ever gave up on Whirlwind. There are many heartbreaking stories in computer history, wasted potential, ideas too early or late for their time, but Whirlwind's feels like one of the triumphant ones. Its success was never certain, but there was always someone willing to fight for it. Despite immense change those involved with the project maintained a clarity of vision that carried it to completion. And even when it was destroyed, people refused to let it be lost to history. It's with us not only in the technology we use today, but the memory and imaginations of those who know it.

It's abundantly clear to me that I require a hobby again... And what hobby could be better than The Hobby? I saw the "Warhammer Challenge" forms in my local gamestore, and I'm actually getting a little hype to pick up my old hobby. I need to buy new paints and glue, but my Pile of Shame Potential is still patiently waiting for me...

In the meantime, enjoy the favourite mini my noob ass ever built, a little Slaanesh Iconbearer daemonette kitbash ^^

Unfinished and unpainted under the cut!

1: the most famous one is the first one we found and it was by a person named Nanni. I just think we should remember the person who wrote it

2: we wound up finding like, a whole closet full of complaints about Ea-Nasir

3: I read translations of several of them as well as suplemental information on Ea-Nasir by the professionals that studied him, and it's been a while, but i will now tell you a summary of his life story to the best of my ability as i remember it

He started off early in his career becoming one of the main copper dealers working directly for the palace, where he built up a good reputation for himself.

Then he moved into being more of a middleman, buying the copper from the outlying city states and then selling it to his old contacts at the palace. And also on the open market. Soon he was dealing in both the wholesale ingots (which is what most of the complaints are about) and finished copper products direct to both smaller merchants and the general public - things like decorated copper pots etc.

At some point he wound up in one of the city states buying copper and stayed there.

It was the island city state of Dilmun, in the Persian Gulf, downstream from his hometown of Ur.

There is absolutely no evidence to say i am right about this next point, but i know how people work, and given what follows, i strongly suspect he got in with the wrong crowd and developed either a gambling problem or a drug problem (or it could have just been women and beach parties, but i do suspect drugs or gambling more)

Anyway, what we do know is that he sort of stopped coming back to his old city, and started running a sort of scam. I really think it was basically like the bernie madoff thing, he would say "if you give me the money, i can buy you the best copper at a good price" and someone would give him the money, and then he would spend that money, and then he would get really really hard to track down, and then when the person finally did track him down he'd be like "fine!"

So he'd get someone else to give him money for top shelf copper, then he'd spend like half that money on bottom grade copper and send the shitty copper to the person who was hounding him to complete his contract. That person would write an angry letter, often threatening legal action, and Ea-Nasir would basically be like "listen, you gave me money for 100 ingots of copper, i sent you 100 ingots of copper; if you don't want them now, that's on you"

He did this a lot. Two of the guys in charge of buying copper for the palace itself (his old job) had to buy good copper with money out of their own pocket after he took the palace money they gave him and sent shitty copper to the palace. And remember, he KNEW what the palace standards were.

At some point in all this he got himself a business partner, and one of the tablets is from this business partner, and it basically says "i'm sending you a good customer with good money who is exactly what this business needs. Please, please do not be the asshole you usually are."

Another complaint tablet i liked is like the third one this author is sending him and among other things it says "do you not know how tired of you i am?"

Anyway, as you can imagine, he burned all his bridges, ruined his reputation, and drove himself out of business. At which point he had to move back home. My guess is he left some angry loan sharks in Dilmun holding a large IOU when he bailed.

Then he tried to start a lot of other businesses. I think he opened a restaurant briefly? He even did some speculative real estate.

Somewhere in here, he had to sell some of his house to his neighbors. All the houses were touching, like, they all had shared walls like an apartment complex, so he basically plastered over the doors to, idk, half his house, and they knocked a door in one of the shared walls to access it, and just like that half his property became part of his neighbors' home. He must have been very broke.

In the end, he wound up running a second hand clothing store out of what was left of his home.

So that's the tale of Ea-Nasir, people really have been living the same stories since always, haven't we.

here it is today