This article describes the Flyable TRADIC research project from inception through flight test. It includes technical descriptions of the design as well as the author's personal recollections of those early days of stored-program control. This work was done while the author was with Bell Telephone Laboratories, which at that time was the research and development arm of AT&T and now is the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies.
1. J.H. Felker, "Performance of the TRADIC Transistor Digital Computer," Proc. Eastern Joint Computer Conf., 1954, pp. 46-49. J.R. Harris, "TRADIC: The First Phase," Bell Laboratories Record, Vol. 36, Sept. 1958,
pp. 330-334.
2. P.K. Giloth, and R.C. Townley, TRADIC—Flyable Research Model Program, Summary Engineering Report, U.S. Air Force, Air Materiel Command, Dec.1 1958.
3. [Editor's note: I met Dr. Maury Irvine when he was given the George R. Stibitz Computer
Pioneer Award by the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana (see
Annals, Vol. 19, No. 4, p. 72) and asked him to write up some of his experiences for us.
Being a quiet, unassuming man, he asked his former colleagues (Jim Harris and L.C.
Brown) to do it instead. This resulted in this article and the previous article in
this issue.]