Preserving computer history

This team of researchers, (from left) Wesley Clark, Maury Pepper, Scott Robinson (seated), Jerome R. Cox Jr., Gerald Johns and Tom Chaney, recently restored the Laboratory Instrument Computer (LINC) — recognized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society as the world’s first interactive personal computer — for display at the 10th Vintage Computer Festival Nov. 3-4 in Mountain View, Calif. Cox, senior professor in computer science and engineering, participated in a panel discussion at the festival. LINC was designed in 1962 by a group of MIT scientists, which included Clark and the late Charles Molnar. Clark and Molnar would go on to work together at Washington University and helped found the Computer Systems Laboratory in 1964, the same year Cox founded the Biomedical Computer Laboratory at the School of Medicine. WUSTL was home to LINC in the mid- to late-1960s.