| | {{infobox |
| | | title = PDP-1 |
| | | maker = Digital Equipment Corporation — designed by Ben Gurley |
| | | produced = 1959–1969 · 53 built · $120,000 |
| - | | architecture = 18-bit · 187 kHz · 4K words core · first machine sold with a display (Type 30 CRT) |
| + | | architecture = 18-bit · 187 kHz · 4K words core · first commercial machine with a graphics display (Type 30 CRT) |
| | | lineage = MIT TX-0 → TX-2 → PDP-1 — Whirlwind's grandchildren |
| | | fame = the birthplace of hacker culture — and Spacewar! (1962) |
| | }} |
| | |
| | # PDP-1 |
| | |
| - | The **PDP-1** — *Programmed Data Processor-1* — was DEC's first computer and the machine that taught computing to play. Ben Gurley designed it in 1959 straight from MIT's **TX-0/TX-2** lineage (themselves descendants of [[Whirlwind I|Whirlwind]]), priced it at a then-astonishingly-low **$120,000**, and shipped it **with a CRT display standard** — the Type 30 — at a time when most computers' output was a typewriter or a deck of cards. Fifty-three were built.[[cite: [PDP-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1) and the [bitsavers PDP-1 docs](https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp1/) — the Gurley/TX-0 lineage, price, production count, and the Type 30 display]] |
| + | The **PDP-1** — *Programmed Data Processor-1* — was DEC's first computer and the machine that taught computing to play. Ben Gurley designed it in 1959 straight from MIT's **TX-0/TX-2** lineage (themselves descendants of [[Whirlwind I|Whirlwind]]), priced it at a then-astonishingly-low **$120,000**, and made it the **first commercial machine with a graphics display** — the Type 30 CRT — at a time when most computers' output was a typewriter or a deck of cards. Fifty-three were built.[[cite: [PDP-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1) and the [bitsavers PDP-1 docs](https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp1/) — the Gurley/TX-0 lineage, price, production count, and the Type 30 display]] |
| | |
| - | The hardware was honest minimalism: 18-bit word, 187 kHz, 4K words of core — a machine you could sit in front of, hear running, and watch. That last part is what changed culture: the first unit went to **BBN** in 1960, and the MIT installation became the gymnasium of the first hacker generation — the TMRC crowd who named themselves for the word "hacker." On this machine they wrote **Spacewar!** (Steve Russell, 1962) — one of the first real video games, spread by hand to every PDP-1 site — plus the first chess programs, the first timesharing experiments, and [[MUMPS|MUMPS's]] own ancestors (BBN's TELCOMP line).[[cite: [PDP-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1) — the BBN first sale, the MIT/TMRC hacker community, and Russell's Spacewar!]] |
| + | The hardware was honest minimalism: 18-bit word, 187 kHz, 4K words of core — a machine you could sit in front of, hear running, and watch. That last part is what changed culture: the first unit went to **BBN** in 1960, and the MIT installation became the gymnasium of the first hacker generation — the TMRC crowd who named themselves for the word "hacker." On this machine they wrote **Spacewar!** (Steve Russell, 1962) — one of the first real video games, spread by hand to every PDP-1 site — plus the **first text editor, the first word processor, and the first interactive debugger**, one of the very earliest time-sharing systems (the BBN Time-Sharing System), some of the earliest computer music, and [[MUMPS|MUMPS's]] own ancestors (BBN's TELCOMP line). The **ARPANET IMP software** was composed, edited, and assembled on BBN's PDP-1d — the machine the internet's first packet switches were written on.[[cite: [PDP-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1) — the BBN first sale, the MIT/TMRC hacker community, and Russell's Spacewar!]] |
| | |
| | # The machine games began on |
| | |
| | Spacewar! deserves its own paragraph: two toroidal-wraparound rocketships, a starfield, a gravity well, hyperspace — written in PDP-1 assembly by Russell with the TMRC crew, running on the Type 30's vector display. It is possibly the first program written purely to be *fun* — and it propagated the way software now does: copied to every PDP-1 installation, patched and improved at each one (gravity, hyperspace, scoring), making it also one of the first **open-source-style collaborative programs**. The game is a canonical ancestor of the entire industry that followed.[[cite: [PDP-1 / Spacewar!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1) — Russell's 1962 game and its distribution across PDP-1 sites]] |
| | |
| | ```fact |
| | The PDP-1's price broke the priesthood's monopoly: at $120K — an order of magnitude below a mainframe — it was the first machine a lab could own *outright* and let graduate students touch directly, without a scheduler. Hacker culture needed cheap interactive machines to be born on; the PDP-1 was the first. |
| | ``` |
| | |
| | # Where it sits |
| | |
| | The PDP-1 is the hinge between the mainframe priesthood and the minicomputer congregation — Whirlwind's real-time DNA commercialized, the first display-native computer, and the birthplace of games, hacking, and everything interactive computing became. DEC built an empire on the series it founded. |
| | |
| | ## Check your understanding |
| | |
| | - [ ] Who designed the PDP-1, and from what lineage? |
| | - [ ] What made it culturally different from every computer before it? |
| | - [ ] What was Spacewar! — who wrote it and when? |
| | - [ ] How much did it cost, and why did that matter? |
| | |
| | ```hide Show answers |
| | 1 — **Ben Gurley**, from the **TX-0/TX-2** line at MIT (Whirlwind's descendants). |
| - | 2 — a **CRT display standard** + a price a lab could own — the first machine hackers could sit *at*. |
| + | 2 — a **graphics display** (Type 30) + a price a lab could own — the first machine hackers could sit *at*. |
| | 3 — one of the **first real video games** — Steve Russell & the MIT TMRC hackers, **1962**. |
| | 4 — **$120,000** — an order of magnitude below a mainframe: the price point that let labs own computers outright. |
| | ``` |
| | |
| | [[Category:Hardware]] |
| | [[Category:Computing]] |
| | [[Category:History]] |
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