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The following timeline provides a capsule narrative
of RLE’s notable events and achievements, and
some of the individuals who have played key roles in
the Laboratory’s development and growth.
1946 - The Research
Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT is founded as
the successor to the Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) of
World War II. RLE becomes the first, great inter-departmental
laboratory of the modern Institute, and serves as the
incubator for new research directions and organizations
at MIT.
1948 - RLE doctoral
student Thomas Cheatham, Jr. builds the first electronic
analog correlator, paving the way for Henry Singleton's
digital correlator in 1949.
1950 - RLE's
Norbert Wiener begins studies to convert speech into
a sequence of tactilely perceptible patterns that a
totally deaf person might learn to interpret.
1950 - J.C.R.
Licklider joins RLE from Harvard's Psycho-acoustic Lab,
and stimulates communications biophysics research at
RLE. Walter Rosenblith will follow in 1953.
1951 - RLE research
in continental air defense, associated with MIT's Project
Charles, helps to spawn Lincoln Laboratory.
1952 - RLE's
Jerrold Zacharias, James Yates, and R.D. Haun produce
the first practical atomic clock, based on atomic beam
frequency standards developed by Zacharias.
1954 - The TX-0
computer, constructed at Lincoln Laboratory, moves to
RLE, where it hosts early imaginative tests of programming,
including a Western movie shown on TV and 3-D tic-tac-toe.
1955 - RLE's
Norbert Wiener, John Barlow and Walter Rosenblith observe
the auto-correlation function of brain waves, promoting
the application of statistical communication techniques
to communication biophysics.
1955 - Joseph
R. Applegate comes to MIT to join RLE's mechanical translation
project. He becomes MIT's first African-American faculty
member when he is appointed Assistant Professor of Modern
Languages the following year.
1956 - RLE's
Dudley A. Buck invents the cryotron, the first practical
device exploiting superconductivity, which becomes a
revolutionary component for miniaturizing the room-sized
computers typical through the early 1950s.
1956 - Claude
E. Shannon joins RLE's Processing and Transmission of
Information group. RLE begins collaboration with the
new Eaton-Peabody Laboratory at the Massachusetts Eye
and Ear Infirmary, where RLE's Nelson Y.S. Kiang is
the first director.
1957 - RLE moves
into the Compton Laboratories (Building 26) with the
Laboratory for Nuclear Science and MIT's Computation
Center.
1958 - RLE's
John McCarthy develops the LISP programming language
that can manipulate symbolic expressions as well as
code and debug major subroutines.
1959 - Robert
N. Noyce, who had been a graduate research assistant
in RLE's Physical Electronics Group from 1949 to 1953,
co-invents the integrated circuit at Fairchild Semiconductor
which he co-founded in two years earlier. He later co-founds
Intel in 1968.
1959 - RLE's
Jerome Lettvin and Walter Pitts publish their landmark
neurophysiological research in the paper, "What
the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain."
1959 - Julius
A. Stratton, RLE's first Director, is appointed eleventh
President of MIT.
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