Remember When…

Alumnae Don Gray Scarves with their Red Jackets

by Joe McGonegal on June 10, 2013

in Alumni Life, Remember When..., Tech Reunions

You may have seen hundreds of MIT alums sporting bright red jackets over Tech Reunions weekend. Harder to spot were the 1.5% of them also wearing gray scarves. Who were they?

They were women, but not just any women. These seven graduates from the class of 1963 who returned to campus – Frances Dyro, F. Margaret Hickey, Christina Jansen, Patricia Marzilli, Ruth Nelson, Vicki Peterson, and Joyce Wolf – were celebrating their 50th reunion.

Photo: Darren McCollester.

Photo: Darren McCollester.

To honor these distinguished women, the Association of MIT Alumnae hosted a special reception for them on June 6 in the Margaret Cheney Room overlooking Killian Court. There, AMITA president Sze-Wen Kuo ’73 presented each of seven alumnae with gray scarves to complement their red jackets on reunion weekend.

“When you graduated, MIT was 2.9% female,” said Kuo. “You are our forebears. This year, 48% of the graduating class is women.”

Clearly, the stat impressed. But one alum was quick to add, “Let’s have a bigger celebration when it gets to 50.”

Having hit the half-century milestone, the graduates were encouraged to participate in the Margaret MacVicar Memorial Oral History Project at MIT, an invitation extended to them by class of 2007 graduate Jean Choi.

Choi began her work on the project in a UROP for Professor Margery Resnick, who founded the program in 1990, but has continued to interview alumnae in the years since.

“It’s been a very interesting experience,” Choi said, “interviewing these women about their MIT experience and their lives, and transcribing them for the archives. I didn’t realize how much women went through so that I could be here. I’ve learned a lot of history.”

Housed in the Institute Archives and Special Collections, the women’s histories are available for public viewing and are becoming digitized as well. The oldest graduate interviewed comes from the class of 1922. In all, transcripts from over 30 interviews are available.

“We want to fill in the lacunae about women’s participation at MIT,” Professor Resnick said in an interview with the New York Times about the project. “We not only want to do women who have followed their career line as predicted by MIT…but women who have done different things that might be more interesting, but less visible, in terms of their MIT-ness.”

Thursday afternoon’s reception took place in a treasured space for MIT alumnae. The Margaret Cheney Room is named in honor of an 1882 graduate. After Cheney’s untimely death, MIT’s first alumna and Cheney’s instructor, Ellen Swallow Richards, lobbied the Institute to create a space solely for women to congregate, network, and feel at home.

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The Great Snow Hack Explained

by Jay London on April 26, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Hacks, Media, Remember When..., Student Life

The photo that appeared in the Boston Herald Traveler.

The photo that appeared in the Boston Herald Traveler.

Hacks at MIT are a pastime that prides itself on secrecy—watching a hack unfold in anonymity is part of the fun. Despite this, most recent hacks are well-chronicled. The online MIT Gallery of Hacks has summaries of more than 200 Institute hacks dating back to 1989.

There is less online information on hacks pre-1989, but they are no less imaginative and clever. Inspired by a recent revelation, one alumnus has provided Slice of MIT with detailed info a decades-old hack that briefly gained national media attention: The Great Snow Hack of 1968.

The alum requested anonymity and will be henceforth referred to as Mr. Snow.

Unlike many hacks that take months of preparation, the Great Snow Hack wasn’t planned. It was the result of boredom on a freezing-cold January night.

“It was a bitter winter, even for New England,” Mr. Snow says. “We were bored to death in the dorm and there was so much snow outside. So we thought, ‘Let’s go have a massive snowball fight—inside.’”

The students gathered buckets of snow and filled the dorm’s shower stalls. But the dry air made it difficult to mold a snowball and the students turned on the shower to get the snow more damp.

“It caused a huge amount of steam,” Mr. Snow says. “You couldn’t see two inches in front of your face. So we opened the windows and let a bitter wind into the stall. It looked like a complete blizzard.”

Sensing the opportunity for a hack, the students called the Boston Herald Traveler. “We called the paper and said, ‘We figured out a way to make snow in the shower.”

The Traveler sent a reporter and a photographer. When the photographer arrived, he entered the shower stalls and was met with a mix freezing wind, whirling snow, and hazy steam.

“The photographer said, ‘I can’t take a picture. You can’t see anything,’” Mr. Snow says. “We told him, ‘If you want to stop the snow, just shut the shower off.”

The students convinced The Traveler that they had invented a shower nozzle that makes snow. The paper fell for the gag and featured the crew in a photo and article in the next day’s paper. (The newspaper is occasionally on display at the MIT Museum.)

More publicity followed and the Baker House students were contacted by Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, and other wire services.

“It caused a big sensation in Boston—other schools around the city tried to recreate it,” he says. “Other schools called us and said, ‘How do you do it? We’re not doing it right.’”

Snow in the shower also became a hot topic on call-in radio and a subject of scorn from another Cambridge university.

“Harvard students got upset and call a few radio stations saying it was impossible—which it was,” he says. “Of course, we had some engineering majors call the same shows and say, ‘Of course Harvard can’t do it—they’re using the wrong-size nozzle. They don’t know how to engineer a correct shower system.’”

The Baker house students eventually got a cease-and-desist order from an MIT dean, but the hack had been accomplished. An evening or boredom resulted in a brief media sensation.

“The hack wasn’t making fake snow—it was the gullibility of the press,” he says, “They fell for the idea that the MIT students had created a snow-making machine. They were never smart enough to say, ‘Show us how to do this in another shower.’”

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Tug-of-War Victory over Harvard, 1887: Was This MIT’s Greatest Unknown Athletic Feat?

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 27, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

With a student body notable for athletes as well as scholars, MIT’s 33 varsity sports provide the most intercollegiate offerings among the country’s Division III schools. The Engineers have won 22 team national championships and produced 34 individual national champions, plus 23 Olympic athletes. Within the last 10 years alone, students accrued 464 All-America honors.

MIT's victorious tug of war team: R. M. Clement, 188 (clockwise from top left); H.G. Gross, 1888; F. L. Pierce, 1889; and P. H. Tracy, 1890.

MIT’s victorious tug-of-war team: R. M. Clement, 1888 (clockwise from top left); H.G. Gross, 1888; F. L. Pierce, 1889; and P. H. Tracy, 1890.

Although it has slipped from collective memory, one of Tech’s arguably most thrilling games occurred in 1887.

“The defeat of Harvard’s tug-of-war team by our four untrained and inexperienced men is the greatest athletic feat which the Institute has ever accomplished,” trumpeted The Tech in March 17, 1887. “…We have scored many triumphs in the same line, but never when it was so entirely unlooked for, and under such unfavorable circumstances.”

A photo of the champion tug-of-war team was published in The Tech‘s April 28, 1887, issue with this caption: “We take great pleasure in presenting the readers of THE TECH a phototype of our victorious tug-of-war team, which pulled the Harvard University tug-team 2-1/2 inches.”

When MIT decided to enter the 1887 meet just two weeks before the event, it took a full week to round up four volunteers for a team. They only managed three hours of practice together, while The Tech reported that Harvard’s team “pass the 16-pound shot for fifteen minutes every afternoon.” In addition, MIT’s team fell below the weight limit and therefore lacked the advantage of having all possible pounds where it really mattered.

This untrained and lightweight MIT team faced an opponent with the formidable reputation of “the champion team among colleges.” Then as now, MIT’s victories over Harvard proved particularly sweet.

Alas, tug-of-war contests were on their way out. In 1891 the MIT Athletic Club  joined Harvard and other prominent colleges in dropping tug-of-war from the sports roster. In the following spring, the American Intercollegiate Athletic Association officially replaced tug-of-war with bicycle racing.

While tug-of-war remained an Olympic sport until 1920, college competition peaked in the 1880s. Time magazine wrote in May 27, 1940, “Though few U. S. citizens can remember or believe it, tug-of-war was once the most popular of intercollegiate sports.”

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Birth of ATMs: John Reed Describes a Banking Industry Transformation

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 15, 2013

in Alumni Life, Remember When...

MIT Corporation Chair John Shepard Reed ’61, SM ’65 has long known that complex problems need solutions that fit their contexts. In his February 27 Brunel Lecture Series on Complex Systems, presented by MIT’s Engineering Systems Division, Reed related several turning points where fitting into the system was as important as developing the technical product itself.

Corporation Chair John Reed delivered the 2013 Brunel lecture.

Corporation Chair John Reed ’61, SM ’65 delivered the 2013 Brunel lecture.

During his career as head of Citigroup and then the New York Stock Exchange, Reed was a pioneer in fields including introducing computing into the banking industry. After he earned his MIT degrees at the Sloan school, he went to work for Citibank starting as a trainee. In 1967, the bank commissioned a report on the future of the industry. One finding raised the question of what impact computers might have on banking. The Citibank president gave Reed the findings and said, “You went to MIT, surely you understand computers…Read this and take some time and figure out what this means for the banking industry.”

Reed, who had only written a few lines of Fortran during his MIT studies, took a year to study the problem, returned to MIT to study with several faculty members, and visited equipment manufacturers who were developing computers. And he decided that online, interactive systems would have the most influence on banking, akin to the airline reservations systems then being developed. Reed launched a company, Citibank Systems Inc., on the edge of the MIT campus, since he thought he could hire good people there. “It was a very unusual project because we had a solution looking for a problem,” Reed noted.

Moving money online was an early successful application, and it still earns millions of dollars for banks every year. On the retail side, Reed’s startup looked at branches and how to replace cash registers with speedier equipment. The developments allow Citibank’s to take the lead in issuing credit cards that allowed customers to transact business without carrying cash.

For Automated Teller Machine (ATMs), the main proposition was this: “We decided that the electronic dispensing of cash was going to be a real change agent,” he said. In 1970, Citibank had 1,600,000 customers in New York City so that became the test site. Reed moved his operation to California to combine his startup team with a group of engineers who had just developed a related system. They designed computers and multiplexers and leased telephone lines from AT&T. And then they had to figure out how human beings were going to interact with the machines….and that was just the beginning.

Learn more about the ATM revolution in John Reed’s talk starting at 20:50, after the ESD award ceremonies.

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Fighting Flu: “Feet Dry” to Mass Vaccinations

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on March 4, 2013

in Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

Advice from MIT Medical: Got hands? Wash them!

Advice from MIT Medical: Got hands? Wash them!

Facing a potential flu epidemic in autumn 2012, MIT Medical mobilized to provide more than 13,000 vaccinations on campus to students, employees, and retirees. Years of planning and drills by the campus Emergency Operations Center plus advance preparation starting in summer, resulted in an impressive inoculation rate of 500 people per hour in several mass flu clinics.

Debbie Friscino, MIT Medical’s director of operations, described how clinicians and nurses from local nursing schools administered injections at 15 stations in the Student Center. Other groups distributed forms, directed people through the stations, and watched for reactions.

Although flu season has peaked this year, Friscino emphasized the ongoing public health effort to remind people about covering their coughs and frequently washing their hands. A popular video by Dr. Howard Heller, chief of internal medicine, explains how to minimize disease exposure even in airplanes with coughing flight attendants. It’s not too late to get a flu shot.

Hand sanitizer helps fight flu, says Dr. Heller.

Hand sanitizer helps fight flu, says Dr. Heller.

Long before mass inoculations, MIT coped with periodic flu epidemics through quarantines and similar advice about washing hands. But the Spanish flu pandemic required more extreme measures as it devastated Boston, killing tens of thousands of residents between September 1918 and January 1919. This flu strain disproportionately struck down young adults, so MIT faced a double threat because of its youthful population and barracks on campus for training World War I aviators.

To minimize exposure, MIT closed for three weeks at the start of the 1918 fall semester. The registrar ordered all students to “keep away from the Institute until further notice,” The Tech reported on Oct. 2, 1918.

Despite these precautions, flu swept through the student body. When the on-campus Naval Aviation hospital was torn down in spring 1919, The Tech described how during the previous semester, “out of the 800 or 900 aviation students stationed here, more than 300 [were] in the infirmary.”

A new, serious flu strain appeared in 1928. On January 7, 1929, The Tech warned that students who had traveled west were the “most likely to be exposed.”

To stave off local flu cases, Dr. George Morse, head of the Medical Department, urged students to “eat plenty of nourishing food,” wash their hands before dining, keep their feet dry, and get enough rest in well-ventilated rooms. In addition, they should avoid Pullman Sleepers [on overnight trains], and “cover telephone mouth-pieces with tissue paper, date with rubber stamp and change daily.”

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Facelift Complete: Great Dome is Better than Ever

by Amy Marcott on February 20, 2013

in Campus Culture, Design, Remember When..., Student Life

The Great Dome had been under renovation for quite some time and covered with scaffolding and a tarpaulin tent. Hackers finally just worked them into their creations. But the construction has ended and the finished product, which includes a restoration of the Barker Library reading room rotunda underneath, has been revealed.

Some photos are below, but check out the MIT News Office article by Larry Hardesty for a great slide show and a full rundown of the enhancements, which also included lifting the dome’s limestone cladding and injecting a waterproof membrane beneath it.

Then & Now

The reading room, back in the day. Photo: MIT Museum.

The original reading room, back in the day. Photo: MIT Museum.

Newly renovated Barker Library reading room. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington/MIT News Office.

Newly renovated Barker Library reading room. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington/MIT News Office.

Restoration Highlights

Research for the renovation began in 2007.

The newly renovated Great Dome. Photo: Benjamin Johnson/Shawmut Design and Construction.

The newly renovated Great Dome. Photo: Benjamin Johnson/Shawmut Design and Construction.

The 75-foot rotunda (diameter and height) now sports its original colors—seven shades of off-white and a patina green—thanks to work done by a paint-restoration company to determine just what these were.

As of Feb. 27 (and for the first time in its 97-year history) the reading room will be open to members of the MIT community any time, any day. There is seating for 55 people.

The dome of the reading-room rotunda is nested inside the 100-foot-wide Great Dome; the two domes converge at the room’s circular skylight, or oculus, which is 27 feet in diameter and set in the center of both.

The “luminous ceiling” that was installed in the early 1950s. Photo: MIT Museum.

The “luminous ceiling” that was installed in the early 1950s. Photo: MIT Museum.

In 1942, the oculus was covered over as a wartime measure. In the early 1950s, it was reopened but blocked by a “luminous ceiling,” a plastic disc suspended some 20 feet above the floor. The oculus was later sealed again.

According to the MIT News Office, “The glazing in the Great Dome actually consists of 1,042 blocks of glass, each 6.25 inches to a side and 1.25 inches thick. The blocks are grouped into six-by-six squares; within each square, the blocks are spaced 2.5 inches from each other. The borders between the six-by-six squares are thicker still, so that in fact, much of the 27-foot-wide opening in the dome is occluded by structural supports.”

The intricate glass blocks in the new steel skylight frame. Photo: Benjamin Johnson/Shawmut Design and Construction.

The intricate glass blocks in the new steel skylight frame. Photo: Benjamin Johnson/Shawmut Design and Construction.

The newly restored Barker Library reading room rotunda and dome. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington/MIT News Office.

The newly restored Barker Library reading room rotunda and dome. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington/MIT News Office.

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Is MIT the Most Romantic Place on Earth?

by Jay London on February 14, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Remember When..., Student Life

Warren Buffett lends a proposal assist to Will Smittinet MBA ’12.

A few weeks back, we asked for your most romantic moment at MIT. Our goal was to dispel the notion that MITers don’t have time for affairs of the heart.

Judging by the memories you shared, the Institute might be the world’s most romantic place. And these stories are decidedly MIT, with appearances from Smoots, theoretical calculus homework, and the Thirsty Ear Pub.

Thank you to everyone who shared their story, which are listed alphabetically by name below. Some small edits were made for grammar and brevity. Happy Valentine’s Day—enjoy the romantic side of MIT!

“I married my beautiful wife in the MIT chapel followed by dinner and dancing in Morse Hall. We are one of a handful of same-sex couples to have been married on campus and we were so lucky to have beautiful weather, romantic fireworks, and the support of an inclusive campus community. Surrounded by all the love of our friends and family, it was with full and open hearts that we made our vows to cherish and support each other for the rest of our lives. Today we are the proud moms of a beautiful baby girl and we feel so blessed to have kick started our family and to have celebrated our love, romance, and commitment at MIT.” – Abigail

“The love of my life is no more in this world. A few years back he visited Boston with his friends. He also visited MIT at that time. He shared his pictures with me. In one of them he was at the MIT dome. Now life brought me to MIT and whenever I walk by the dome, I can see him standing there, smiling at me.” – Anonymous

“It was a Thursday night at the Thirsty Ear and my Baker House friends and I were checking out the crowd. The one I was checking out came up to me and he said, ‘So, how was Africa?’ Great—this guy is either a weirdo or he thinks I am someone else. He mistook me for someone else, but we still left together that night to get some coffee and talk. More dates followed. Twenty-four years later, and we are in our 19th year of marriage and have four kids—but never did get to go to Africa!” – Allison

“Last day of Rush my senior year, the first time I looked into my wonderful husband David’s eyes. Don’t know how we didn’t meet until then, but after that shared thousands of romantic moments at MIT. Am I the only one who thinks Killian Court is SUPER romantic?” – Amy

“What Amy said.” – David

“I met my husband during R/O Week. We didn’t start dating until senior year. After all-nighters, he would sneak into my room and put freshly-cut lilacs next to my bed. Waking up to those lilacs was amazing!” – Angeli

“First date with my wife. Thornton Wilder’s ‘The Matchmaker’ at Kresge Little Theater. December 15, 1962.” – Bruce

“I was literally the first girl down the hall from my husband freshman year. We met at the first wing meeting, when he mentioned his love of Darkwing Duck (one I shared). We were friends first, but after hiding in his room on Freshman Shower Night, I started seeing him differently and we started dating the next day. The most romantic moment was when he took me to the top of the little dome to tell me he loved me the first time. It was raining, but he dressed up and even brought a bottle of sparkling apple cider.” – Darlene

“Three other students and I were waiting outside of our advisor’s office in Building 13. We commiserated about the upcoming semester, especially 3.185 with Prof. Szekely, which was supposed to be awful. One of the students, Derek, suggested exchanging phone numbers so that we could form a study group. Little did I know that I had just met my future husband and he never had any intention of using the other telephone numbers. We’ve been married for 19 years and have three daughters.” – Diane

“I met my husband my first week on campus. He almost ran me over to catch a Frisbee while I was napping in the sun on Killian Court. Though we didn’t start to date then, thirteen years later he proposed to me on the same spot.” – Elise

“Ken and I met in 5.41 recitation, but probably wouldn’t have gotten to know each other without a mutual friend. MIT is the beginning of our story—LSC movies, Mary Chung’s and Toscanini’s, and walking to Harvard Square on summer evenings.” – Gail

“Got engaged my senior year in Killian to my best friend (whom I met during dorm rush three years prior). Love you <3″ – J

“I was going to see one of my professors about an assignment. His assistant said, ‘He can see you, but that young woman is ahead of you.’ Unfortunately, the young woman wasn’t in a talkative mood, but she did leave her notebook on the bench when she went in to see the professor. Her name and dorm number were clearly written on the cover, so I took this as a sign. Forty-three years later, she still claims it wasn’t and our kids still delight in hearing this story.” – Jerry

“My favorite romantic moment connected to MIT was walking with a friend across the Harvard Bridge and realizing that we’d been speaking in IBM 360 Assembly Language for all 364.4 Smoots. Only at MIT!” – Jessica

“My boyfriend and I broke into the Green Building in the middle of the night to look out the top floor and get a good look at Comet Hale-Bopp. It turned out to be a bit too cloudy that night, but it sure was romantic to sit up there looking at the sky.” – Lucy

“Met my husband in the Course 10 class, ‘Separation Processes.’ I remember logging in to Athena and z-messaging before the Internet arrived.” – Margaret

“Walking down the main corridor and seeing my girlfriend walking toward me, actively engaged in conversation with another guy and noticing that I’m walking toward her. Seeing her face light up into a smile as we collide and kiss—a good kiss. We continue walking our opposite directions, and me thinking of the expression on the other guy’s face and smiling for the rest of the day.” – Marvin

“We met up at MIT for our third date during the last year of my master’s and six years after he had already finished his. He came with a picnic basket to Building 7 and took me to the Charles River for a walk. We stood by a tree across Killian Court, looking back at MIT and really absorbing the moment. Two years later, he took me to that tree, remembering our date. As we reminisced about our younger days at MIT, he asked me to marry him.” – Maryam

“I met my husband at MIT. With so many nice and talented people around, how can you not fall in love at MIT?” – Monica

“I was just off the plane following my high school graduation trying to acclimate to a new school, new city, and new life as a student. One of my classmates and I decided to take a walk into Boston to find an authentic Italian deli. During our stroll, we explored the city together, chatted about the lives we had left behind, the amazement at having been accepted to MIT, and our bewilderment about the future. As our legs were getting weary, we happened to pass the Esplanade as the Boston Pops were beginning their rehearsal for the July 4th events. We stayed and enjoyed the time together.

Later that night, she and I stopped in the middle of the Harvard Bridge and just enjoyed holding hands and being close to one another while gazing downriver towards downtown. It is that moment I regard as the picture-perfect example of young romance.

We eloped during our senior year on Valentine’s Day at the Cambridge City Hall. Together for nearly 20 years, married for 16 of those, we now have two daughters and recently relocated back to the Boston area. Perhaps nothing can be as romantic as finding someone to share your life with but I expect that we’ll keep trying to top that first day together.” – Michael

“We got married in 26-100 after sharing freshmen classes there 17 years earlier.” – Rebecca

“I used to live a block away from my now wife’s apartment for six years before attending MIT. Yet we never met. She started grad school at MIT in 2004 and I started in 2005 and we even had classes in the same building. And yet we never met. When I was visiting in Singapore after graduating from MIT in 2007, I attended an MIT alumni event. It was an incredibly boring meeting…then all jaws dropped when a tall, beautiful woman walked into the meeting.

She had just relocated to Singapore for a job and thought she could meet new people at this event. I talked to her to get a date but was immediately shut down because she was seeing someone else. Two and a half years later, we met again in Singapore, started dating, fell in love, moved back to U.S. in 2010, and got married at Killian Court at MIT on 1/1/11.” – Sam

“I met my future husband when he offered to help me do a proof of a*0=0 for my theoretical calculus homework. I dropped the class, but kept the guy! During a physics demonstration, the professor was showing a color spectrum on the projector, and the colors ranged from red to orange to yellow. It looked just like a sunset to me, so I turned to him and said ‘Isn’t it romantic?’ It’s those little moments that remain the best memories. We got married the week after graduation and have two kids.” – Shirley

“During an MIT Investment Club trip to see Warren Buffett, every candidate wrote Mr. Buffett a personal letter. I wrote: ‘To me, love and marriage are the most valuable investment that I could make and who better to help me ask for my girlfriend’s hand in marriage than you, Mr. Warren Buffett, the world greatest value investor?’

Mr. Buffett agreed to help me ask for my girlfriend’s hand in marriage. Attached (above) is the picture when Mr. Buffett helped me propose to my girlfriend, who was 6,500 miles away in Thailand waiting for me to return. On December 12, 2012, my wife and I got married and we sent Mr. Buffett a Thank You note.” – Will

Check out the the original post, “What Was Your Most Romantic Moment at MIT?,” for additional romantic stories from Jon and Saro—whose tales of devotion, love, and adventure can be read in full in the comment section.

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The Origins of Silicon Valley, Through the Eyes of MIT Alumni

by Jay London on February 5, 2013

in Alumni Life, In the News, Media, Remember When...

Because California’s Silicon Valley has become such an important part of the U.S. economy and culture, it’s hard to believe its roots are barely 60 years old. A new PBS documentary chronicles the origins of the valley and, as you might guess, many MIT alumni feature prominently in its story.

“Silicon Valley” highlights the eight men who abruptly left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957. Shockley Labs was led by William Shockley PhD ’36 and one of the first to work on silicon semiconductor devices. The men, who came to be known as the “Traitorous Eight,” include Jay Last PhD ’56, Robert Noyce PhD ’53, and Sheldon Roberts SM ’49, PhD ’52.

Those eight men formed Fairchild Semiconductor. Fairchild was located in a small building south of San Francisco and surrounded by farm fields with no electricity, phones, running water, or toilet. But within two years, a microchip co-created by Noyce helped put astronauts on the moon, aided the U.S. military, and made Fairchild an enormous success.

From siliconvalley.com:

“The birth of Silicon Valley is the story of pioneers who took a plunge into the unknown hoping to make a better life for themselves and for an untold number of others.”

Fairchild’s success led to more engineers and researchers moving to the region. Within a few years, an entire technology-based industry, now known as Silicon Valley, had developed just south of the San Francisco Bay.

From PBS American Experience:

“Noyce transformed the world with not only his invention, but also his management style, which launched the unique business culture for which Silicon Valley would come to be known—openness over hierarchy, risk over stability, jeans over suits.”

“Silicon Valley” premieres on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 9 p.m. (EST) on your local PBS affiliate (watch a preview). The documentary features appearances by Last and Roger Borovoy ’56, and archival interviews of Roberts, Shockley, and Noyce.

Part of the PBS documentary series American Experience, the program is co-produced by Tracy Heather Strain of MIT’s Music and Theater Arts program.

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How MIT Got a Front Door on Mass. Ave.

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on January 28, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Remember When...

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

With its dome, columns and limestone, MIT’s Building 7 entrance at 77 Massachusetts Ave. closely matches adjacent buildings from the original 1916 construction. Few people realize that the William Barton Rogers Building was erected over 20 years later to accommodate the School of Architecture, which had remained behind in the Back Bay after the rest of MIT had moved to Cambridge.

Aerial view of MIT in 1920 without Building 7 and the 77 Mass Ave entrance.

Aerial view of MIT in 1920 without Building 7 and the 77 Mass Ave entrance.

Letters exchanged in autumn 1936 between MIT President Karl Compton and architect Welles Bosworth Class of 1889, who designed the original campus, probed the possibilities of a new building. And they agreed that it should “be given a special architectural treatment as a main entrance.”

In April 1937, Bosworth proposed “a fairly dignified vestibule on the central entrance of the Mass. Ave. facade,” circular or octagonal and running “from the main floor up to a skylight, with galleries running around at the upper story levels.” Four sculptured figures in niches at the four corners would represent the spirits of Drawing, Modeling, Geometry and Calculation, “these being, to me, the essential things that an architect needs to know.”

Bosworth predicted in June 1937 that “the new entrance on Massachusetts Ave. will come to be used more than the entrance on the main court.” Asked to cut the design “down to the limit,” he complied but wrote, “Considering the size of the monument, it would be very hurtful to the impression of the institute as a whole to make it look too small and cramped.”

Despite austerity measures, the $700,000 building estimate in 1936 rose to $1.42 million by Aug. 1937. This sum included an extra $15,000 for ventilation to remove large quantities of heat from the Vannevar Bush differential analyzer, a room-size analog electromechanical device.

Students with slide rules gleefully reframed the building statistics in The Tech on Jan. 14, 1938, calculating that the 8,500 cubic yards of concrete used in construction would fill 18,250,000 12-ounce beer cans. “Assuming a height of five inches per can, they would stretch some 1440 miles if laid end to end, which would reach well beyond Chicago.” Keeping all that beer in Boston would provide each thrilled MIT student with about 6,300 cans.

Building 7 under construction in 1938.

Building 7 under construction in 1938.

Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., founded by Class of 1888 alumni Charles Stone and Edwin Webster, handled the construction. Work finished on time and on budget that fall, and the 1938 President’s Report proudly stated, “Real estate experts have described [the Rogers building] as the finest piece of building construction of greater Boston. Reports of its occupants indicate that drafting rooms, offices, classrooms, library, and laboratories are all splendidly adapted to their purposes.”

A reception with 700 guests and MIT’s top dignitaries helped inaugurate the Bldg. 7 in December 1938, with faculty wives recruited to pour tea for the visitors.

While the plinths in the lobby corners never acquired their allegorical figures, a student design competition in 2010 offered prizes for undergrads and grad students to design models of what could enhance the four spaces. See images of proposed designs—and the contest winner.

Thanks to the MIT Archives for information and the MIT Museum for photos.

 

 

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Giving Spacewar! Its Props

by Amy Marcott on January 7, 2013

in Alumni Life, Arts, Media, Modern Geekhood, Remember When..., Research

Playing the original Spacewar! game.

Playing the original Spacewar! game. Click to view the short video “Story of Spacewar!” on the Computer History Museum site.

If you’re living in or planning to visit New York between now and March 3, you might want to check out the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. Its interactive exhibit Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first digital video game, which was created at MIT, and examines how the game shaped science-fiction shooters and the industry.

View the games on exhibit. The list includes another with MIT ties: the 1980 arcade game Defender, codesigned by Larry Demar ’79.

All the games are playable, and each paid visitor receives four complimentary arcade tokens with the option to buy more.

According to a New York Times article about the exhibit, each game is presented in its original housing, not simply original code decked out in modern machines. (Though any replacement parts, like joysticks, are noted.) The only exception, unfortunately, is Spacewar! itself. Apparently, there is only one working Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1 (the computer on which the game was designed) and that lives at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. The Spacewar! game in the exhibit is a commissioned model offering “a reasonable facsimile of the original play experience.”

Check out the short video “Story of Spacewar!” on the Computer History Museum site and learn more about the development of the game. The video includes interviews with cocreators Steve Russell ’60, SM ’62, EE ’66; Dan Edwards ’59, SM ’66, EE ’67; and Peter Samson ’62 along with documentary footage from Tech and great gems of information, like how inspiration for the game came from Japanese Toho science fiction films, Disney’s Man in Space series, and E. E. Smith’s Lensman novels.

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Even More Groundbreaking Alumni-Developed Video Games

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