univac, eniac, illiac.

The last two letters in the names of many early computers were "AC"

at this time they had to stress that a computer works automatic, i guess. once in a while one comes back to basic questions

the illiac iv was installed at nasa ames research center in california. also john warnock, adobe was involved in the illiac iv project before he came to xerox parc. nasa used the supercomputer as a space flight training simulator and evans & sutherland, for whom warnock worked, for their airplane simulators.

warnock (audio/x-mpeg, 388 KB)

john gaffney tells the story about those days at ames, back in the 70s. written as a memento of pj zima.

"a tale of two eras" another story of illiac iv by cis news.