History of the M.I.T. Computation Center

The M.I.T. Computation Center, USA, organized in 1956http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/, housed an IBM 704

IBM 704

The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in 1954. The 704 was significantly improved over the IBM 701 in terms of architecture as well as implementations which were not compatible with its predecessor.Changes from the 701 included...

 up until 1960http://www.kotok.org/AI_Memo_41.html.

The M.I.T. Computation Center and Operation Moonwatch

After the successful launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957, the race was on to calculate and predict where the first man-made satellites would appear in the sky. Fred Lawrence Whipple

Fred Lawrence Whipple

Fred Lawrence Whipple was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for over 70 years...

, then director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory is a research institute of the Smithsonian Institution headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it is joined with the Harvard College Observatory to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics .-History:The SAO was founded in 1890 by...

 (SAO) in Cambridge Massachusetts, had gathered amateur astronomers to track artificial satellites in an organization called Operation Moonwatch

Operation Moonwatch

Operation Moonwatch was an amateur science program formally initiated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in 1956 . The SAO organized Moonwatch as part of the International Geophysical Year which was probably the largest single scientific undertaking in history...

. The aim was to get the position of the satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

 in order to obtain its orbital elements

Orbital elements

Orbital elements are the parameters required to uniquely identify a specific orbit. In celestial mechanics these elements are generally considered in classical two-body systems, where a Kepler orbit is used...

. There were three separate orbiting objects which resulted from the launch of Sputnik: The satellite with radio transmitter, a nose cone and a booster rocket. The first "satisfactory orbit" calculated by the IBM 704

IBM 704

The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in 1954. The 704 was significantly improved over the IBM 701 in terms of architecture as well as implementations which were not compatible with its predecessor.Changes from the 701 included...

as official tracker for the SAO occurred at 7AM on the morning of October 11, 1957 and was for the booster rocket.

External links

• BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH of Dr. Fernando J. Corbató
• Memo 41 - A Chess Playing Program
• Selected Artifacts and References
• The Tech (MIT) "Compton Lab 704 Will Compute Orbit of Satellite Sometime Today" and "Scientists Ready With 704 When Russians Launched Satellite" Vol. 77 No. 30 Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, October 8, 1957, page 1
• The Tech (MIT) "Insufficient Data for 704, Moon Orbit Search Keeps On" Vol. 77 No. 31 Cambridge, Mass., Friday, October 11, 1957, page 1
• Sky & Telescope (Online Article) "50 Years of Satellite Tracking" October 11, 2007.