TX-0

[7] Designed at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory[4] largely as an experiment in transistorized design and the construction of very SMALL core memory systems, the TX-0 was essentially a transistorized version of the equally famous Whirlwind, also built at Lincoln Lab.

While the Whirlwind filled an entire floor (occupying over 2,000 square feet (190 m2)), TX-0 fit in a single reasonably sized room and yet was somewhat faster.

[4] Initially a vacuum-tube computer named TX-1 was being designed to test the first large magnetic-core memory bank.

After a time, the TX-0 was no longer considered worth keeping at Lincoln Lab, and was "loaned" (semi-permanently) to the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in July 1958, where it became a centerpiece of research that would eventually evolve into the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and the original computer hacker culture.

Delivered from Lincoln Laboratory with only 4K of core, the machine no longer needed 16 bits to represent a storage address.

As part of its use in artificial intelligence research, the computer was used to write simple western playlets and was featured in the 1961 CBS television documentary "The Thinking Machine", and in the companion book by John Pfeiffer of the same title published by the JB Lippincott Company in 1962.