— Ch. 1 · A Poor Boy With Fireworks —
Edward Fredkin.
~4 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Edward Fredkin was born on the 2nd of October 1934 to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles. His mother worked as a concert pianist but never performed professionally for money. She died from cancer when he was only eleven years old. His father lost everything during the stock market crash of 1929 and became poor again. The family struggled financially, sometimes living with other families or his older sister. Young Edward showed an entrepreneurial spirit early by handling a large newspaper delivery route. He bought chemistry supplies at age ten to make fireworks that were illegal in Los Angeles. School did not suit him because he refused to do homework assignments. He graduated from John Marshall High School one semester early to earn money for Caltech tuition. Caltech later admitted him despite having the worst high school grades they had ever seen. He quit Caltech partway through his sophomore year without finishing his degree.
The Interrupt System That Changed Computing
Fredkin joined the United States Air Force in 1952 to become a fighter pilot before being drafted into the Korean War. His computer career began in 1956 when the Air Force assigned him to MIT Lincoln Laboratory. There he worked on the SAGE computer system. After completing his service in 1958, Fredkin was hired by J.C.R. Licklider to work at Bolt Beranek & Newman. He saw the PDP-1 computer prototype at the Eastern Joint Computer Conference in Boston in December 1959. Fredkin recommended that BBN purchase the very first PDP-1 unit. The new hardware arrived with no software whatsoever installed. He wrote a PDP-1 assembler language called FRAP which stood for Free of Rules Assembly Program. This became its first operating system. Working directly with Ben Gurley, the designer of the PDP-1, Fredkin designed significant modifications to support time-sharing via the BBN Time-Sharing System. He invented and designed the first modern interrupt system known as the Sequence Break. Digital Equipment Corporation later adopted this technology widely.