Development
With the successful completion of the TX-0, work turned immediately to the much larger and far more complex TX-1. However this project soon ran into difficulties due to its complexity, and was redesigned into a smaller form that would eventually be delivered as the TX-2 in 1958. Since core memory was very expensive at the time, several parts of the TX-0 memory were cannibalized for the TX-2 project. After a time, the TX-0 was no longer considered worth keeping at Lincoln Lab, and was "loaned" (semi-permanently) to the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in July 1958, where it became a centerpiece of research that would eventually evolve into the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and the original computer "hacker" culture.
Delivered from Lincoln Laboratory with only 4K of core, the machine no longer needed 16 bits to represent a storage address. After about a year and a half, the number of instruction bits was doubled to 4, allowing a total of 16 instructions, and an index register was added. This dramatically improved programmability of the machine, but still left room for a later memory expansion to 8K (the four instruction bits and one-bit indexing flag left 13 bits for addressing). This newly-modified TX-0 was used to develop a huge number of advances in computing, including speech and handwriting recognition, as well as the tools needed to work on such projects, including text editors and debuggers.
Meanwhile the TX-2 project was running into difficulties of its own, and several team members decided to leave the project at Lincoln Lab and start their own company. After a short time selling "lab modules" in the form of simple logic elements from the TX-2 design, the newly-formed Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) decided to produce a "cleaned up" TX-0 design, and delivered it in 1961 as the PDP-1. A year later, DEC donated the engineering prototype PDP-1 machine to MIT. It was installed in the room next to TX-0, and the two machines would run side-by-side for almost a decade.
Significant pieces of the TX-0 are currently on display in the Library at Lincoln Laboratory. The library is only accessible to Lincoln Lab employees.
Read more about this topic: TX-0
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