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Goodbye to the PDP7: A Computing Pioneer RetiresJoyce Winslow At the end of this year, when a DEC PDP7 computer leaves campus, a part of the UO's computing history will disappear. Since 1963, when it was purchased with funds from a National Science Foundation grant, the PDP7 computer has served as an invaluable research tool for physics professor Harlan Lefevre and his colleagues. Four years after Prof. Lefevre came to the University of Oregon in 1961, and three years before the UO built the Computing Center, the PDP7 was installed in the basement of what was then the Student Health Center (now Volcanology). The computer, which has a magnetic core memory with a capacity for 8000 18-bit words of code, was first linked to an IBM 360-50 and later was linked in real time to the Computing Center. For more than 30 years, the PDP7 served the university as a vital research tool. Initially, the computer was used to analyze neutron physics data, and 20 Ph.D. candidates used it to complete their theses in nuclear physics. Subsequently, the PDP7 was put to work in a Federal Aviation Administration safety project to detect the presence of explosives in luggage. The venerable computer analyzed data from a special scanner that recorded the presence of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen in sample suitcases. |
Professor Lefevre prepares to test the PDP7's paper tape drive Prof. Lefevre, happy to demonstrate the machine's virtues, can easily coax it to life again. At his bidding, it lights up and hums with the same vitality it exhibited nearly 40 years ago. Sadly, this bit of computing history will be gone forever by the end of this year, when it will be removed from its longtime home with the accelerator that was its partner in research for so many years.
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