Gene Amdahl at the Mountain View Reception
Gene Amdahl (PhD '52) gave a humorous and insightful talk about his experiences at UW.
Tasked with performing an extremely tedious calcuiation by hand, Dr. Amdahl was convinced there had to be a better way. To avoid having
to perform a similar calculation again, he designed the Wisconsin Integrally Synchronized Computer (WISC) in 1950. WISC's construction began in 1951 and took
four years to complete. The machine could perform up to 60 calculations per second, a speed limited by the 1024 (55 bit) word drum memory.
For the full story on the Mountain View reception, please see page three of the
Fall 2008 Badger Bytes.
The UWCS Alumni Connection is a place where you can connect with old friends or network with new ones.