Project MAC

1. Formation

    a. Launched with a $2 million grant from ARPA, awarded by J.C.R. Lickliter

    b. Originally directed by Robert Fano, of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics

2. Research

    a. Time-Sharing

        i. Compaitable Time-Sharing System (CTSS)

        ii. Multics

        iii. Important people: Fano, Minsky, Lickliter, Corbato

    b. Artificial Intelligence

    c. Theory of Computation

3. Separation of the LCS and AI Lab

    a. As Project MAC grew, Minsky's AI group needed more space

        i. Led to a separate MIT AI Lab being formed under Minsky in 1970 and many Project MAC members leaving to join it

        ii. Most of the remaining members of Project MAC stayed to form the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) soon after

    b. AI Lab led to development of:

        i. EMACS & GNU (Richard Stallman)

        ii. Lisp & Lisp Machines

    c. LCS continued their research of operating systems, programming languages, and the theory of computation

4. CSAIL

    a. On the 40^th anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS re-merged with the AI Lab

    b. This merger created a new lab known as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL.

    c. This created the largest lab on the MIT campus and was regarded as a reuniting of the diversified elements of Project MAC.