| Laboratory INstrument Computer (LINC) A computer which was originally designed in 1962 by , , Severo Ornstein and others at the , to facilitate scientific research. With its and , the LINC is accepted by the to be the World's first . The machine was developed to fulfil a need for better laboratory tools by doctors and medical researchers. It would supplant the 1958 , and was designed for individual use. Led by William N. Papian and mainly funded by the , Wesley Clark designed the logic while Charles Molnar did the engineering. The first LINC was finished in March 1962. In January 1963, the project moved to , and then to (in St. Louis) in 1964. The LINC had a simple , four "knobs" (which was used like a ), a (for alpha-numeric data entry), two drives and a small display. It originally had one of , but this was expanded to 2 Kb later. The computer was made out of (DEC) hardware modules. Over 24 LINC systems had been built before late 1964 when DEC began to sell the LINC commercially. After the introduction of the , at DEC produced a rather frightening hybrid of the LINC and PDP-8 called a LINC-8. This really was not a very satisfactory machine, but it used the new PDP-8 style DEC cards and was cheaper and easier to produce. It still didn't sell that well. In the late 1960s, Clayton brought the design to its pinnacle with the PDP-12, an amazing tour de force of the LINC concept; along with about as seamless a merger as could be done with the PDP-8. This attempted to incorporate into the machine. The end of the LINC line had been reached. Due to the success of the LINC-8, {Spear, Inc.} produced a LINC clone (since the design was in the ). The interesting thing about the Spear was that it used II logic. MECL logic was known for its blazing speed (at the time!), but the Spear computer ran at very modest rates. In 1995 the last of the classic LINCs was turned off for the final time after 28 years of service. This LINC had been in use in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory of Auditory Physiology (EPL) of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. On 15 August 1995, it was transferred to the MIT where it was put on display. {LINC/8, PDP-12 (http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8/section-7.html)}. {Lights out for last LINC (http://rleweb.mit.edu/publications/currents/6-1linc.HTM)}. ["Computers and Automation", Nov. 1964, page 43]. (1999-05-20) |
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