Published: Cambridge, Mass., 1985 MIT is home to the planet’s most elite course in electrical engineering and computer science. “Course 6,” as it’s known in MIT-speak, attracts the very finest students and the most distinguished faculty associated with any such program. It retains its ranking as the best in the world, at least in part, through continuous adjustment and updating of its course offerings. During the early 1980s, as computing was becoming a ubiquitous activity that would transform the way people worked and lived their lives, Course 6’s curriculum underwent a major restructuring. Two of the signal events in that […]

Published: Secaucus, N.J., 1984 In this, his second gambling manual, Edward Thorp offers his readers plenty of practical advice, but he also spills some ink reminiscing about his days as a graduate student at UCLA. “In our mutual poverty,” he writes, musing on a study break with some fellow students, “the conversation readily turned to fantasies of easy money. We began to speculate on whether there was a way to beat the roulette wheel.” In 1962, Thorp, then a mathematics professor at New Mexico State University, published Beat the Dealer, now considered the first card counting manual. It addressed betting […]

Published: Berkeley, 1983 It’s no secret that some of the conquistadors who invaded Mexico in the 16th century were bent on the wholesale destruction of its native culture. Still, there were others – mostly priests – who sought to preserve the Aztec culture (albeit in order to use that knowledge to convert the natives from their pagan ways). Among the priests’ methods was the copying and creation of Aztec manuscripts. “These newly created manuscripts,” Elizabeth Hill Boone tells us, “were generally painted on European paper by Indian artists whose work reflects the indigenous style of pictorial representation.” Such is the […]

Published: New York, 1982 Donlyn Lyndon, the author of this guide to Boston’s built environment, headed MIT’s Department of Architecture from 1968 to 1975, and he knows his subject. The City Observed is more than just one expert’s opinion of Boston and its buildings, though. It’s also an extremely readable introduction to the language of architecture itself, and it includes a brief, highly useful, illustrated guide to common architectural elements. But it’s in Lyndon’s assessment of Boston’s buildings that the book shines. Of course he’s an astute critic of architectural form and function, but he’s a terrifically entertaining writer, too. […]

Published: Morristown, N.J., 1981 Before World of Warcraft, before Super Mario Brothers or Pac-Man, even before Pong, there was Spacewar! Not everyone knows it, but MIT holds a unique place in the history of video games. It was here that the first video game intended for computer use – Spacewar! – was invented. One of the creators of the game, J. Martin Graetz, tells the story of Spacewar!’s development in “The Origin of Spacewar.” The game was conceived by Graetz and his friends Wayne Wiitanen and Stephen R. (Slug) Russell, who referred to themselves as the “Hingham Institute,” named after […]

Published: Norwalk, Conn. and Washington, D.C., 1980 This lavishly illustrated catalog reads like a Who’s Who of scientific greats. The Burndy Library, from which these items have been selected, is the fruit of more than fifty years of collecting by Bern Dibner. A self-made Ukrainian immigrant, Dibner made his fortune as an inventive electrical engineer. He donated about 10,000 volumes – roughly a quarter of his collection – to the Smithsonian in 1974. The remainder of the collection, which was housed at MIT from 1992-2006, now resides at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. “The books described here,” the […]

Published: Cambridge, Mass., 1979 The Oxford English Dictionary defines “fanzine” as “a magazine for fans, esp. those of science fiction.” One thing the OED definition leaves out, though, is the fact that fanzines are as much by fans as for fans. MIT’s Twilight Zine fits this expanded definition to a “t”: it’s produced by MITSFS, the MIT Science Fiction Society. Fanzine is a portmanteau term combining “fanatic” and “magazine.” It first appeared in the early 1940s to describe the many amateur publications that were being written, illustrated, and printed by fans of science fiction. They were usually copied as cheaply […]

Published: Urbana, Ill., 1978 It’s difficult to hear the story of Zora Neale Hurston’s life without succumbing to feelings of sorrow and frustration. Had she written nothing except the magnificent 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston would merit a place on any list of important American writers. But she did publish a good deal more, and much of it was brilliant. Nonetheless, the year 1959 found Hurston, a woman of color by then approaching old age, writing in longhand to Harper & Brothers, asking them please to consider a book she was completing. In the 1972 critical anthology […]

Published:  Boston, 1977 North America’s largest oil field was discovered in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope in 1968, just 9 years into Alaska’s statehood. The discovery unleashed a heated environmental, legal, and political debate unprecedented in the state’s brief history. It took the shock of the 1973 oil embargo – and the accompanying sharp rise in crude oil prices – to clear a legislative path that would enable oil drilling, and ultimately, the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Stretching 800 miles, from north to south coasts, the pipeline took less than four years to build. As people flooded into […]

Theatrical release: November 3, 1976 It’s an iconic scene: Sissy Spacek as Carrie White, dressed in satin of the palest pink, has just been named Prom Queen. As she accepts the award, a smile lights up her face. Suddenly a bucket of pig’s blood showers over her, drenching her in red. All hell literally breaks loose as Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to wreak vengeance on the entire school. Today, Carrie is considered one of the finest horror movies ever made. It shocked audiences, was a box office smash, and earned Academy Award nominations for both Spacek and Piper Laurie, […]