The Jim Austin Computer Collection
Digital PDP 12
(from left - the machine - the back plane - the main monitor - inside the machine)
This is a very early Digital computer dating from the early 1970's. It arrived in the collection in 2001 from the Morton Family in Cambridge.
Sections
This machine was donated by the Morton family in 2001 after Professor Patrick Merton passed away. He had used the machine in his research for many years. When it was moved it lived in a house near the Microsoft's research centre in Cambridge, where Prof. Morton lived. There are very few of these machines in existence. In face the history of Digital does not even mention the system. Although it does talk about the LINC machine on which it is based.
The following comments were provided by Eleanor Morton in Sept 2005
It's lovely to see my father's PDP 12 computer listed and appreciated, along
with quite a lot of the rest of the clobber! Which reminds me, I've got
lots of photos of you, Jim, and the team wrestling it all into your truck in
back in 2001.
Unfortunately Pat Merton's detailed Royal Society obituary is still being
prepared, five years after he died. Once it is eventually published, it may
explain better the role the PDP12 played in his physiological career. Here,
however, is a very rough idea of what the PDP12 meant to Pat:
Pat's PDP 12 became a pivot point in Merton family life over decades, now I
look back at it. Pa would disappear off to London for days on end to nurse
the machine. He had customised it to suit his own ends and it provided the
most accurate information for its age, even surpasing later models built by
others which were supposed to improve on it. After his retirement and when
he had been unceremoniously booted out of the physiological labs both in
London and Cambridge, the PDP 12 took pride of place in the family sitting
room, so determined was Pa to keep it working. Every room in the house was
filled with tapes, books, papers, and large amounts of electrical debris
relating to the computer, truck loads of which Jim now has in his
collection. Despite frequent efforts, however, Pat was never really able to
get the systems working properly to any effect once they had been removed
from the lab, and the true worth of his experimentation was determinedly
undervalued by the Cambridge Physiology labs in his final years, which was
extremely tragic.
Despite his use of computers to process experimental data, Pat was one of
the few senior physiologists who knew the value of reproducing scienfic
findings as live demonstrations, not just relying on the increasing use of
computer generated models to show and explain results. He continued to
provide live demonstrations to the delight and fascination of his capacity
audiences at Physiological Society meetings right up until the mid 1990s, a
rare teaching skill few have the vision to match in this day and age.
There was a time, however, when Pa might have become a leading computer
scientist instead. As an undergraduate at Trinity College, considering what
he should choose as a career in the early 1940s, Pat was given the choice of
either concentrating on computers *or* physiology. Much to our eternal
amusement, he decided that computing was too easy: physiology was a far more
interesting challenge. And so he became one of the most talented
physiologists of his generation and applied his aptitude for computing to
assisting his physiological career. There is no doubt that had he
concentrated on the "easier" discipline, he would have made endless
breakthroughs in computing technology. But he would never have been
interested in personal computers, so the idea of him making a mint and out
billing Bill Gates is unrealistic. He was quite conservative in his way,
and found the impositions of email and the web alarmingly vacuuous and
inaccurate, avoiding them like the plague. Computers to him were scientific
instruments not toys although, ironically, he was always as excited as any
child in a toyshop when the PDP12 was running well.
Pat's greatest series of experiments analysed on the PDP12 concerned a
patient at the National Hospital, Queen Square, called Mrs Morris. Despite
computer development, particularly in the mid to late 1980s, Pa did not feel
the need to move Mrs Morris' data onto a different computer system, since
the PDP12 did exactly what he wanted and in many ways was more accurate. He
published most of his findings from these experiments with his various
partners in physiological crime in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly Bert
Morton and David Marsden, although I think I am right in saying Pa felt that
the biggest breakthrough for medical science, which would only have come
from analysis of the big picture left by Mrs Morris, never quite came about.
Sadly, David Marsden died a few years before Pa. Bert Morton died two years
after Pa, but not before he had visited our family home once more and been
able to switch on the PDP 12, listening approvingly to its beautiful hum.
I hope Jim's museum becomes a place of pilgrimage for all students who
appreciate the close relationship between physiology and computing, which my
father did so much to champion.
The PDP 12 is a laboratory computer used to collect data and display this on a monitor. It was launched in 1969 by digital.
Some PDP 12 pages
The Krten Collection. He has one, and seems to be doing a great job getting it going.
soon...