© Mark Ollig
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society acknowledged it as the first personal computer.
This computer represented a break from the generally accepted understanding that many users should connect to and share the resources of a single computer at the same time.
That design approach is known as “time-sharing,” linking multiple users to a single large computer known as a mainframe by rapidly switching the resources of the computer’s central processor from user to user.
In 1952, Wesley Clark worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developing the Memory Test Computer for the US Navy's Whirlwind Project, one of the first interactive digital electronic computers.
The mid-1950s saw Charles Molnar obtaining his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.
During the early 1960s, Wesley A. Clark and Charles E. Molnar were electrical engineers at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 1961 and 1962, Clark and Molnar were busy designing and building a new computer named LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), intended for use in scientific, medical, and research centers.
The LINC project received funding from a grant through the National Institute of Health, a biomedical research agency of the US federal government.
The LINC configuration comprises an enclosed six-foot by twenty-inch cabinet rack, four smaller metal boxes containing two LINC-Tape drive units, an oscilloscope-sized display monitor, a control panel, and a keyboard.
Clark and Molnar engineered their computer to be uncomplicated to program and communicate with while operating and maintaining.
The LINC is a stored-program binary-coded digital computer designed to operate in the laboratory environment as a research tool.
It is a 12-bit computer with a one-half megahertz processor and a network of hand-wired and assembled soldered components, and 16 analog input and two output channels.
LINC provided a typing keyboard and screen with an alphanumeric-graphical display for an operator's interactive use.
The LINC is equipped with two Tape Units using three by three-quarter-inch diameter pocket-sized reels magnetic tapes for storing programs and data. The tape units operate much as diskette units found years later on personal computers.
Each tape holds 131,072 l2-bit words of information.
The LINC was engineered with a transfer rate of 125,000 words per second.
This computer was groundbreaking because 60 years ago, scientists believed a large time-sharing mainframe computer was best for researchers to use, and the LINC was a miniature “stand-alone” computer.
The compact design of the LINC allowed its administration, operation, programming, and maintenance to be easily assumed by an individual researcher or small laboratory group.
Software used with the LINC was designed by Mary Allen Wilkes, a computer programmer.
She also devised the prototype LINC user console and wrote the operator's manual for the console's final design.
A total of 20 LINCs were installed in various biomedical research laboratories, where they efficiently processed biotechnical signals and other input data.
As a young engineer who also worked at MIT in the 1960s, Severo Ornstein recalled Mr. Clark as one of the first to understand the consequences of the falling cost and shrinking size of computers.
“Wes [Wesley Clark] saw the future 15 years before anyone else,” said Ornstein.
In 1976, Severo Ornstein worked at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, CA, where he designed a computer interface for an early production laser printer.
In 1965, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) built 50 LINCs and made them commercially available at $43,000 each, which today is equivalent to about $387,300.
Mary Allen Wilkes was 27 in 1965 and had a working LINC computer installed at her home in the living room next to the staircase.
During a 2012 interview, she said the LINC operated on a standard 15-amp circuit and “was designed to just plug in the wall.” My research said the LINC had a power requirement of 1,000 watts using 115 AC volts.
The typical hairdryer uses 1,875 watts on its highest setting.
Working at home with the LINC, Wilkes succeeded in developing a more highly advanced operating system software code for the computer.
Wilkes said her father, a clergyman, thought having a computer in the home “was absolutely fabulous” and told other people, “I bet you don't have a computer in your living room.”
I also noted with interest Wilkes saying she was a “Star Trek” fan.
In 1983, Molnar and Clark received the Director's Award from the National Institutes of Health for developing the first personal computer.
“PROGRAMMING THE LINC” is a 142-page report written by Mary Allen Wilkes and Wesley A. Clark. It can be seen at https://bit.ly/3r29Vs5.
In the early 1960s, MIT LINC engineers and programmers built a bridge from the era of sizeable complex mainframe computers generally inaccessible to the general public to today’s personal computers responding interactively with an individual user.
Charles Edwin Molnar passed away on Dec. 13, 1996. He was 61.
Wesley Allison Clark died on Feb. 22, 2016, aged 88.
Severo M. Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and is 92 years old.
Today, Mary Allen Wilkes is 84 and is considered the first person to work remotely from home with a personal computer.
The creation of the LINC provided a glimpse of the future we are now living in.
The Laboratory Instrument Computer, known as the LINC, is the predecessor, or ancestor if you will, of today's modern personal computer.
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| Wesley Allison Clark demonstrating the LINC in 1965 |
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| Specifications for the Laboratory Instrument Computer, known as the LINC. |
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| Mary Allen Wilkes in 1965 had a working LINC computer installed at her home in the living room next to the staircase. |