Linc

Linc

The LINC (Laboratory INstrument Computer) is a 12-bit, 2048-word transistorized computer. The LINC is considered by some the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer. Originally named the "Linc", suggesting the project's origins at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, it was renamed LINC after the project moved from the Lincoln Laboratory. The LINC was designed by Wesley A. Clark and Charles Molnar. The LINC and other "MIT Group" machines were designed at MIT and eventually built by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Spear Inc. of Waltham, Massachusetts (later a division of Becton, Dickinson and Company). The LINC sold for more than $40,000 at the time. A typical configuration included an enclosed 6'X20" rack; four boxes holding (1) two tape drives, (2) display scope and input knobs, (3) control console and (4) data terminal interface; and a keyboard. The LINC interfaced well with laboratory experiments. Analog inputs and outputs were part of the basic design. It was designed in 1962 by Charles Molnar and Wesley Clark at Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts, for NIH researchers. The LINC's design was literally in the public domain, perhaps making it unique in the history of computers. A dozen LINC computers were assembled by their eventual biomedical researcher owners in a 1963 summer workshop at MIT. Digital Equipment Corporation (starting in 1964) and, later, Spear Inc. of Waltham, MA. manufactured them commercially. DEC's pioneer C. Gordon Bell states that the LINC project began in 1961, with first delivery in March 1962, and the machine was not formally withdrawn until December 1969. A total of 50 were built (all using DEC System Module Blocks and cabinets), most at Lincoln Labs, housing the desktop instruments in four wooden racks. The first LINC included two oscilloscope displays. Twenty-one were sold by DEC at $43,600 (equivalent to $422,000 in 2022), delivered in the Production Model design. In these, the tall cabinet sitting behind a white Formica-covered table held two somewhat smaller metal boxes holding the same instrumentation, a Tektronix display oscilloscope over the "front panel" on the user's left, a bay for interfaces over two LINC-Tape drives on the user's right, and a chunky keyboard between them. The standard program development software (an assembler/editor) was designed by Mary Allen Wilkes; the last version was named LAP6 (LINC Assembly Program 6).

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Linc »