Wesley Clark, photograph taken in 2009.

Wesley Clark, photograph taken in 2009.

Detail map of Lexington, Massachusetts, United States Overview map of Lexington, Massachusetts, United States

A: Lexington, Massachusetts, United States

Wesley Clark Designs and Builds the TX-2 Computer for the Study of Human-Computer Interaction

1959
Ivan Sutherland working with Sketchpad on the TX-2

Ivan Sutherland working with Sketchpad on the TX-2 computer. The lightpen and the keyboard function control are the precursors for the mouse and right and left mouse-clicks.

In 1959 Wesley A. Clark designed and built the TX-2 computer at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. It had 320 kilobytes of fast memory, about twice the capacity of the biggest commercial machines. Other features were magnetic tape storage, an online typewriter, the first Xerox printer, paper tape for program input, and a nine inch CRT screen. Among its applications were development of interactive graphics and research on human-computer interaction.

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