Reply #8: Get a grip. Wrong Wesley Clark [View All]

http://www.ncrr.nih.gov/newspub/apr02rpt/stories1.asp

Back in the 1950s, computers were like castles on the hill—large, expensive, and very mysterious. Since most biomedical scientists could not afford their own computers, they often shared a central computer and sometimes waited a day or so to get the results. Today, of course, small computers are found in practically every laboratory in the country, where they have revolutionized biomedical science. Researchers now routinely use computers to analyze experimental results and to perform such esoteric functions as viewing three-dimensional (3-D) models of complex molecules and “touching” chromosomes and viruses in virtual reality. Early NCRR support proved instrumental in transforming computers into a useful tool for the biomedical scientist.

It all started in 1961 when Wesley Clark, an electrical engineer at Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), designed a small computer for a brain researcher at MIT. Clark wanted his computer to be easy to program, easy to communicate with while it was operating, and able to process biological signals directly. At the time, no computer came close to fulfilling these criteria. Clark also wanted his machine to be short enough to see over and affordable enough for the typical university laboratory.

In 1962, Clark and his colleague, Dr. Charles Molnar, built a working model of the computer, using existing electronic modules rather than building new circuits. They dubbed their creation LINC, partly as a bow to Lincoln Laboratory and partly as a pun alluding to how the user could link closely to the machine. LINC was about the size of a refrigerator and used recording tapes that were small enough to fit in a jacket pocket, another revolutionary concept for the time.

With $400,000 in seed money from NCRR—and similar sums contributed by the National Institute of Mental Health and NASA—Clark and Molnar launched a plan to offer free LINCs to biomedical scientists. In exchange, researchers had to spend a summer building their own computers in a learning workshop and then evaluating them in their laboratories. Eventually 12 LINCs were built at the workshop, and users quickly discovered that the computers enabled more rapid and efficient execution of experiments. Also, LINC allowed users to fine-tune ongoing experiments, reformulating hypotheses “on the fly” as data accumulated. The LINC development team eventually relocated to Washington University in St. Louis, where, with Dr. Jerome Cox, Jr., they established the Resource for Biomedical Computing, funded by NCRR from 1964 to 1997.

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