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Born
Born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts -
Tech Model Railroad Club
At MIT Samson joined the Tech Model Rail Club(TMRC) which would lead to him spending most of his time around computers. -
Period: to
MIT
He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where his "hacking" career would begin. -
TMRC Dictionary
Samson wrote the first edition of the TMRC Dictionary, and a year later he would write the second edition. -
Harmony Compiler
The PDP-1 arrived at MIT, this computer was more accessible than most at the time allowing Samson to create the Harmony Compiler computer Program. The program turned text into synthesized music. -
Spacewar!
Many Tech Model Railroad Club members had a hand in developing Spacewar! the first video game to be played at multiple computer installations. Samson specifically wrote a program to display real stars in the game called "Expensive Planetarium". -
TJ2
He published the Type Justifying Program (TJ2), one of the first word processing programs. -
PDP-6
The PDP-6 was released, Samson was a contributing architect and wrote the FORTRAN compiler. -
DEC
Samson would begin his career at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). -
Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee
Samson and 5 others set out to write a program to be able to ride the New York City Subway system in its entirety in the shortest amount of time possible. They programmed the PDP-6 with the subway schedules to achieve a time of 26 and half hours. -
Systems Concepts
While working at Systems Concepts, he programmed the first Chinese Character Digital Communication system and developed the Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer (Samson Box). -
NASA
While working at NASA, he oversaw hardware manufacturing most notably for the ILLIAC IV supercomputer complex and the NASA/Ames Research center. -
Samson Box
The Digital Synthesizer (Samson Box) was installed at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics Research at Stanford University. -
Autodesk
He contributed to rendering, animation, Web browsing, and scripting languages. He also received patents for software anti-piracy and Virtual Reality. -
Computer History Museum
Samson is a member of the PDP-1 restoration team and a docent at the museum. (Photo: left to right - Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, Stephen Russel)