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The PDP-1 was also the original hardware for playing history's first computer game, Steve Russell's Spacewar.
It used punched paper tape as its primary storage medium. Unlike punched card decks, which could be sorted and re-ordered, paper tape was difficult to physically edit. This inspired the creation of text-editing programs such as Expensive Typewriter and TECO. Because it was equipped with online and offline printers that were based on IBM electric typewriter mechanisms, it was capable of what, in eighties terminology, would be called "letter-quality printing" and therefore inspired TJ-2, arguably the first word processorA word processor (also more formally known as a document preparation system is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of viewable or printed material. They are descend.
The console typewriter was the product of a company named Soroban Engineering. It was an IBM Model B electric typewriter mechanism modified by the addition of switches to detect keypresses and solenoidIn engineering, a solenoid is a mechanical device that converts energy into linear motion. Solenoids can be constructed to use electricity, compressed air (pneumatic solenoids), or pressurized fluids (hydraulic solenoids). An electrical solenoid is a forms to activate the typebarTypebar s are the 'arms' inside a typewriter which have characters on the end of them. There are generally two characters per typebar; one which will be printed if the according key is struck, the other of which will be printed if the key is struck whiles. It used a traditional typebar mechanism, not the "golfball" IBM Selectric typewriterThe IBM Selectric typewriter (occasionally known as the IBM Golfball typewriter is the electric typewriter design that brought the typewriter into the electronic age starting in 1961. Selectric I Selectric II Instead of typebars it had a pivoting typeball mechanism which was just starting to become popular. Case shifting was performed by raising and lowering the massive type basket. It was equipped with a two-color red-and-black ribbon, and the interface allowed color selection. Programs commonly used color coding to distinguish user input from machine responses. The Soroban mechanism was unreliable and prone to jamming, particularly when shifting case or changing ribbon color, and was widely disliked.
Offline devices were typically Friden FlexowriterThe Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter based on a 1940s IBM product that was spun off as an independent company and later sold to the Friden Corp. It could punch and read 6-bit paper tape. Unlike teletype machines that use the 5-bit Baudot code, the Fles that had been specially built to operate with the FIO-DEC character coding used by the PDP-1. Like the console typewriter, these were built around IBM electric typewriter mechanisms. However, Flexowriters were highly reliable and often used for long unattended printing sessions. Flexowriters had electromechanical paper tape punches and readers which operated synchronously with the typewriter mechanism. Typing was performed about ten characters per second. A typical PDP-1 operating procedure was to output text to punched paper tape using the PDP-1's "high speed" (60 character per second) Teletype model BRPE punch, then carry the tape to a Flexowriter for offline printing.
MIT hackers also used the PDP-1 for playing music in four-part harmony, using some special hardware--four flip-flopThis article is about the electronic component. For other meanings, see flip-flop (disambiguation). In electronics and computing, the flip-flop or bistable multivibrator is a pulsed digital circuit capable of serving as a one- bit memory. A flip-flop typis directly controlled by the processor (filtered with simple RC filters). Music was prepared via Pete Samson 's Harmony Compiler, a sophisticated text-based program with some features specifically oriented toward the efficient coding of baroque musicBaroque music is Western classical music from the Baroque era, after the Renaissance music era and before the Classical music era proper. This roughly covers the time period from Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) through Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).. Several hours of music were prepared for it, including Bach fugueFor the use of the word in psychology see fugue state In music, a fugue is a type of piece written in counterpoint for several independent musical voices. A fugue begins with its subject (a brief musical theme) stated by one of the voices playing alone.s, all of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Christmas carols, and numerous popular songs.
It had an 18-bit word and had 4 K words as standard main memory (equivalent to 9 kilobytes), upgradable to 64K words (144 KB). The magnetic core memory's cycle time was 5 microseconds (corresponding very roughly to a " clock speed" of 200 kilohertz); consequently most arithmetic instructions took 10 microseconds (100,000 operations per second) because they had two memory cycles: one for the instruction, one for the operand data fetch.
The PDP-1 was built mostly of DEC 1000-series system modules, using Micro-Alloy and Micro-Alloy-Diffused Transistors. Rated switching speed: 5 MHz.
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