MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

MIT's Building 20: The Magical Incubator Story, Anecdote, or Reminiscence

First Computing Course and the Beginning of a Profession

Robert L. Baber
rlbaber@icon.co.za

When I arrived at MIT as a freshman in 1954, I was told that building 20 was a temporary building constructed during World War II and that it certainly would be torn down soon to make way for a more permanent building. When I graduated some years later, I was surprised that building 20 was still standing and assumed that in the meantime it had come to be considered a permanent fixture of MIT. Now I was very surprised to learn that it will, after all, be torn down -- over 40 years later than I had been led to expect when I first came to MIT.

In the spring term of 1956 I took the course 6.538 (Electronic Computation Laboratory) given by Prof. Frank M. Verzuh. Frank's office and the computer (an IBM 650) used for class work were located in building 20. He was my first teacher of computing and that IBM 650 was the first computer I programmed and worked with. This course and the work it involved in building 20 constituted the beginning of the major professional activity of my life. My first all night lab session was spent with a few other students in that class working on that computer in building 20. I remember a nearby diner (in the shape of an old railroad car) which provided us with very good Italian submarine sandwiches during that and our other lab sessions in 6.538.

In the winter semester of 1957-58, I took the course 6.59 (Bioelectric Signals) given by Prof. Walter A. Rosenblith. His office, his laboratory and our classroom were all located in building 20. I remember in particular one visit to his lab in which signals from the brain of an anesthetized, partially dissected cat in an anechoic chamber were being measured and recorded.

Finally, building 20 was for me the home of the ROTC offices and some ROTC class rooms.

Thus the RLE was by no means the only important occupant of building 20. Quite a few other major research, teaching and learning activities took place there. I presume that I was not the only student whose professional life was started off in building 20.