Forrester Jay Wright

Jay Wright Forrester (Forrester Jay Wright) (p. July 14, 1918, Anselmo, pc. Nebraska), an American electronics engineer and an expert on management. Invented by a mass storage device on the magnetic cores, used currently in most digital computers.

Forrester studied electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, after which he taught and conducted research.

In 1945, founded a laboratory digital computer at MIT, where he designed one of the first general-purpose computers - Whirlwind I ( "Whirl-1"), created to order the U.S. Navy. In this machine the first time used a cathode ray tube to display the data on the screen and a typewriter with a computer tape, the forerunner of future I / O devices. This was the first computer operating in real time. For the communion of man with "Whirlwind" was constructed light gun with which you can specify the desired object on the screen.

During this work, Forrester knew that slow and unreliable storage systems that were used in early computers, impeding their further development. In 1949 he started the development of magnetic storage device, which in its final form, introduced in 1953. Since then, mass storage devices for magnetic cores have been used for storage and for switching.

From 1951 to 1956, Forrester worked in the Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington (Mass.), and also collaborated with MIT in the project on the application of electronic technologies for national defense.

Forrester first to use computers in management. He developed the technique of computer simulation of real processes. For example, the flow of materials in the factory seemed like a series of interrelated mathematical equations that can be processed on a computer.

Since 1956, Forrester - Professor Slounovskoy School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Proceedings:


Industrial Dynamics (1961);
Principles of Systems (1968);
Urban Dynamics (1969);
World Dynamics (1971);
Collected Papers (1975).