Abstract
January 19, 1963. On a cold and snowy day, all alone, Louis Pouzin boarded a Boeing 707. Destination: The United States. He went to Cambridge, to work with the research team of the late lamented Fernando José Corbató, deputy director of the computing center at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the famous university and research institution specializing in science and technology. The two men had already met at the Fourth Congress of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) in Munich, on Tuesday, August 28, 1962. “We were introduced by a mutual acquaintance from Bull, the director of the company’s Electronic Computing Center, Philippe Dreyfus, who had been a professor of computer science at Harvard in the years 1943–1944. Professor Corbató told me about his work. I didn’t speak English very well, but we still exchanged for a moment, during which I told him, in my own way, that I was interested in his research and more than keen to go to the United States to work in his team. A few months later, he sent me a letter inviting me to join him as a system programmer.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“Fernando Corbató, a Father of Your Computer (and Your Password), Dies at 93”, Katie Hafner, The New York Times, July 12, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/science/fernando-corbato-dead.html
- 2.
(International Federation for Information Processing - Fédération internationale du traitement de l’information).
- 3.
In 1990, Dr. Corbató received the A. M. Turing Award, widely considered the computing field’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
- 4.
“Ainsi naquit l’informatique: histoire des hommes et des techniques”, René Moreau, Bordas, 1987.
- 5.
Charles Babbage Institute, “Oral history interview with Fernando J. Corbató”, 1990, http://hdl.handle.net/11299/107230
The Whirlwind was able to perform several functions in real time. It was at the origin of the machines used by the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) network, the United States Air Force’s real-time radar system.
- 6.
Awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Turing Award is presented annually to an individual selected for his or her (technical) contribution to the IT community.
- 7.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency is part of the US Department of Defense, independent of the armed services.
- 8.
Fernando J. Corbató, Marjorie Merwin-Daggett, Robert C. Daley, “An experimental time-sharing system”, Spring Joint Computer / AFIPS Conference Proceedings, 1962. http://larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/sjcc62/
- 9.
John A.N. Lee, Robert Rosin, “The Project MAC Interviews”, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 1992.
- 10.
“Time-sharing: réalités et perspectives”, Le Monde, October 11, 1966.
- 11.
The French National Center for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
- 12.
Valérie Schafer—La France en réseaux, CIGREF, 2012. Digital Economy and Foresight Collection, ISSN 2111-6814.
- 13.
Steven Levy, “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution”, Globe, 1984/2013.
- 14.
Interview with Glenda Hughes, October 17, 2017.
- 15.
Originally intended for General Electric GE 635 family General Electric computers, then used in the 1970s by the Honeywell 6180.
- 16.
“The Origin of the Shell”, Louis Pouzin, Multicians web site, 2000. www.multicians.org/shell.html
- 17.
Computer multitasking is the concurrent execution of multiple tasks over a certain period of time. New tasks can interrupt ones already started before they finish, instead of waiting for them to end.
Indeed, before, CPU time was expensive, and peripherals were very slow. When a computer was running a program that needed access to a peripheral, the central processing unit (CPU) had to stop executing program instructions while the peripheral processed the data. It was generally very inefficient. The first computer using a multiprogramming system was the British “Leo III”, owned by J. Lyons and Co, in 1961.
- 18.
“The scariest thing is that we have made the computer extremely easy to use. It will therefore be used more and more”, Professor Corbato told John Fitch of the MIT Science Reporter in 1963 about Multics and Project MAC. “A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks”—Science Reporter TV Series: https://youtu.be/FTcLzZOQTvk
- 19.
Interview with Glenda Hughes, October 17, 2017.
- 20.
“Project MAC Progress Report”, Volume 4, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Advanced Research Projects Agency, July 1967, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/681342.pdf
- 21.
On this subject, John Day, an American researcher, former member of the Arpanet project, now a friend of Louis Pouzin’s, with whom he is developing the RINA project (see later in the book), told us:
There were liberal enclaves in Boston at the time, but certainly not at MIT. Louis ∗was∗ correct, especially during this period. Boston didn’t really begin to ‘open up’ until after the mid-1970s. It is still much less so than the Midwest. A friend left Silicon Valley and returned to New England for the same reason. Another friend found the same thing… about Europeans. Actually, Louis’ description of American society at that time is not that different than an American’s description of France.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lebrument, C., Soyez, F. (2020). The American Years (1963–1965). In: The Inventions of Louis Pouzin. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34836-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34836-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34835-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34836-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)