In fact, the ENIAC and UNIVAC represented a dead end in computer design. The Whirlwind, on the other hand, served as the template for the SAGE air defense computer. Building SAGE taught IBM how to design and manufacture first generation computers, and that led to its "scientific" line: the 701, -04, -09, 7090, and beyond. The Whirlwind was also the inspiration for the first modern minicomputer, Digital Equipment's PDP-1, which served as the design template for the entire PDP line of computers, and influenced all early microcomputer designs.

The Block Diagrams

The Whirlwind block diagrams were "published" in September 1947 as the capstone of the Whirlwind design process. The diagrams were produced by the designers of the Whirlwind computer and submitted to the Office of Naval Research. The original report was printed in two volumes, each bound with center staples. The covers were similar to those of other Whirlwind reports by the Servomechanisms Laboratory: blue stock printed with drawings of electronic components, waveforms, and mathematical symbols. One volume contained all of the diagrams and the other contained descriptive text.

Copies of this report were individually numbered, stamped Confidential, and distribution was officially restricted.

It is not certain that this report was strictly considered a classified document by the Navy. Although Confidential is an official security classification used by the Department of Defense today, it was often used informally in the late 1940s. If this report was officially classified Confidential when it was produced in 1947, then it would have been automatically declassified in 1959 according to the security regulations in effect at that time. This was verified with officials of the Navy Department in 1988.

One of the few published references to the block diagrams appeared in a brief history of computers written by Saul Rosen and published in Volume 1, Number 1 of Computing Surveys. Rosen reported that it was widely circulated among early researchers (in spite of official intentions, evidently) and that the report introduced the basics of computer design to many computer pioneers, including Rosen himself. Because of this, he considered the block diagrams to be one of the most valuable contributions of the Whirlwind project.

This reproduction came from a routine cleaning of obsolete U.S. Navy files of Albert E. Smith in the 1960s. Mr. Smith had worked for Mina Rees and Charles V. L. Smith of the Office of Naval Research during the period of the Whirlwind project, and had served as a Whirlwind project officer, as noted in Redmond and Smith's book, Whirlwind: History of a Pioneer Computer (Digital Press, 1977).

Click here to download the Block Diagrams (PDF, 7.9 MB)

Citation:

R. R. Everett, F. E. Swain, "Whirlwind I Computer Block Diagrams," Report R-127, Servomechanisms Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., September 4, 1947.

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