June 3rd, 2006
I don’t usually read the obituary section of the New York Times, but today it was on the back page of the first section — and a large slug caught my eye as I flipped the paper over to get to the editorial page (a slug which, by the way, doesn’t exist in the online version of the paper) : “One of the M.I.T. hackers who came up with Spacewar.” Intrigued, I looked at the headline, and read, “Alan Kotok, 64, a Pioneer in Computer Video Games, Is Dead.” There’s hardly anything like the unexpected death of a peer to make you reflect on your own mortality.
photo credit: Ralph R. Swick
Actually, Alan wasn’t really a peer: he was a couple years older, and a few years ahead of me at MIT (he skipped two years of early schooling, and entered college at 16; I skipped only one, and entered at the ancient age of 17). He was in Course VI, the preeminent major; I stumbled through Course XVIII, generally thought to be the major for those who weren’t good enough for Course VI (that’s “electrical engineering” and “math,” for those unfamiliar with the course-numbering system at MIT). He joined the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) before I even arrived at MIT; I didn’t get seriously interested in computers until my junior year, and never did join TMRC (the relevance of which I’ll explain in a few moments).
But I eventually learned who he was, when I got a summer job at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1964; he was large and rotund, and he walked the halls of DEC’s plant in the old Maynard, MA mill with authority. He was, after all, a hardware designer; I was a lowly programmer. After I graduated, I was transferred from the minicomputer group that focused on the PDP-5 and PDP-8 (where I had the dubious honor of developing the PAL-III assembler) to the “large computer” group that focused initially on the PDP-6. Alan was one of the hardware designers for the PDP-6; he went on to be the chief architect for the PDP-10, one of the best computers ever built.
Because we traveled in slightly different worlds, I never got to know Alan; I may have been introduced to him at some point, but I’m sure he paid no attention to me. I, on the other hand, did pay attention to him — for I had already learned, through an amusing coincidence, that he was well known to the Gods of the computer field. During my last semester in college, I took a graduate-level course in artificial intelligence from Marvin Minsky, whose lectures were widely reputed to put even the most attentive student to sleep within five minutes. But shortly before dozing off in one of his lectures, I heard Minsky pontificating about some aspect of palindromes (perhaps it was a discussion of how to determine whether an arbitrary string of text is a palindrome, as illustrated here; but more likely, it was a discussion of heuristic algorithms for constructing longer and longer palindromes, like the 17,259-word palindrome discussed here).
In any case, another lethargic student raised his hand in the midst of this discourse, and said he didn’t know what a palindrome was (why he bothered is still a mystery: we were all asleep from Minsky’s sonorous monotone a few moments later, so why did it matter?) But Minsky surprised us (or at least me) on this occasion: without a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Alan Kotok! You know him?” A few students shook their heads; a few students snored; and a few students nodded. I was one of the latter group, because I had already spent the previous summer programming at DEC, and I remembered hearing Alan’s name.
Minsky continued: “Kotok is a palindrome.” Apparently pleased with the concept, he repeated it, more loudly: “Kotok is a palindrome! Kotok is a palindrome!” It was enough to waken one or two slumbering students; but most simply yawned and nodded off. But I still remember thinking to myself, “Wow — if Minsky knows who this guy is, he must be some kind of big deal!”
And indeed he was … at least within the tiny universe built around Minsky’s AI lab (which had one of the early PDP-6 machines) … and TMRC. You can read all about the history of TMRC here, but suffice it to say that after its formation in 1946 to create automated operations of model trains, it morphed into an amateur computer club by the late 1950s. And to this day, its most famous development was Spacewar — which Alan Kotok and several other MIT undergraduates developed on TMRC’s PDP-1 computer, whose hardware capabilities seem pitiful in today’s world. You can read about the history of Spacewar here; suffice it to say that it was the inspiration for Nolan Bushnell’s subsequent commercial game of Pong, as well as serving as an endless source of amusement for the likes of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs at Stanford, untold numbers of MIT students and DEC programmers … and me.
But all of that, as the opening credits of Star Wars reminds us, was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Rest in peace, Alan Kotok, and may your journey to Starwars heaven be a pleasant one.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I spent the decade of the ’60s at the ‘Tute, and my history so nearly parallels your’s, it amazes me. Perhaps it does not amaze you. Perhaps there were many of us.
In my 2nd year, I managed to get a 10-hour a week job which morphed into two lovely summer jobs (2nd to 3rd and 3rd to 4th year) in the radio astronomy group of the RLE in Building 26. On the 4th and 6th floor, as I remember. It was wonderful. I too played Space War on the PDP-1 down on the 2nd floor. It was on the west side of the building, and near the north end, I believe.
When I graduated, I went to Woods Hole, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). Within a few months, I was flown to Durban, South Africa to join WHOI’s premier research vessel, Atlantis II. It had one of the 1st PDP-5 machines, with 7 banks of 12-bit, 4K words of memory. I thought I was in heaven. Spent every waking hour, when I was not on watch, learning by doing. VERY hands on. It was wonderful, and it caught the notice of the chief scientist, Henry Stommel. He invited me to return to Cambridge with him as his PhD student in the fall. Like a fool, accepted. In my defense, I should add that we were drinking gin and tonics in his cabin, in a lovely tropic sea (the Banda Sea, east of Borneo), and I had forgotten just how big the firehose on the Charles was. But that is a story for another time.
Thanks much for bringing up some grand memories. The farther they recede into the mists of time, the nicer they become. The Institute was tough on average guys such as me. I don’t know what you feel about the place, but your reference to VI and its place in the scheme of things certainly jibes with my own. The X guys thought they were pretty tough, too. And of course, VIII was right up there. In fact, the ones I knew though the rest of us were just a shade below them.
My first 2 EE courses (6.01, 6.02) were taught by Amar G. Bose, who at that time had not made a splash with his famous speakers. But he was well on his way. There were all kinds of point-source and plane-wave sources in his small office and in the anechoic chamber in Building 20. It was on the way to the TMRC, as I remember. He was the best teacher at MIT I had, by a long shot. I will go out on a limb, and add that I had very few good teachers there. They might have been Nobels, but many had a terrible time coming down to my level, or rather I had a hard time getting up to theirs.
But enough of this… Thanks for the wonderful memory jog. Feel free to write, if the spirit moves you. We could share a virtual gin and tonic…
Alex Brincko VI & XV
June 11th, 2006 at 12:41 am
I first met Alan at a DEC-10 DECUS meeting in the early 70s, though I doubt he remembered that. I joined DEC in 1976, and moved to the DEC-10/20 group in 1977 where, of course, Alan was the lead hardware designer. It’s very funny thinking about that time now, because I was 20 and a junior software engineer. We crossed paths numerous times while I was at DEC, and 17 years later I was a senior Consulting Engineer when my last project at DEC became a joint effort by Alan and I to create a transaction processing strategy for the Palmer-era company. It’s amazing when you get to work with the heros of your youth, and even more amazing when you get to do so from the earliest stages through being a peer. Working with Alan on that strategy paper is the last pleasant memory I have of DEC, and I’ll treasure it always.