The ‘Graphic 1’ computer system at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1968
01DOGG01 on YouTube posts an interesting film from 1968 detailing advancements in computer/digital technology, featuring the ‘Graphic 1’ computer system at Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Includes scenes of:
Digital musical composition
Electronic circuit design utilising a digital pen
Digital movie production
3D simulation of orbiting satellite
Conversion of pictures to mosaics composed of tiny images
Digital voice modulation
The Bell Labs ‘Graphic 1’ computer system consisted of a Digital Equipment Corporation ‘PDP-5’ computer coupled with input devices such as the ‘Type 370’ light pen and Teletype Corporation ‘Teletype Model 33’ keyboard, married to a Digital Equipment Corporation ‘Type 340’ precision incremental display backed by 36-bit Ampex ‘RVQ’ buffer memory capable of storing 4096 ‘words’. The resolution on the monitor was 1024×1024.
This system was designed to transform the graphics-based input into output to be fed into a IBM ‘7094’ (200 Kflop/s). It was all attached to a microfilm-based recorder – the Stromberg Carlson ‘SC 4020’, which took hours to read and record the data.
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