Lessons from ‘Project Whirlwind’: A talented team produced many computer “firsts,” and added new chapters to R&D management texts

New technical and scientific perceptions often evoke practical engineering and management techniques that ultimately force the state of the art. Such was the impact in 1945 of the then new and revolutionary concept of the electronic digital computer upon a group of brash young engineers (as they so struck their elders), who proceeded to build a computer of maverick, pioneer design on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The computer was named “Whirlwind” by its Navy sponsors even before they knew how fast it would really be. Its design and construction were directed by Jay W. Forrester, inventor of magnetic-core storage, and Robert R. Everett, whose unique computer “block diagrams” would soon be showing a generation of engineers how to undertake the design of computers.