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Birth
Peter Samson was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts -
Samson joins The Model Railroad Club (TMRC) in the fall of 1958
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Work ethic/dedication
Samson worked 40 hours in his first weekend with TMRC, granting him key access to their clubroom -
TMRC Lingo
TMRC came up with special lingo that seemed foreign to outsiders. Words like 'munged', 'cruft', and 'hack' all had special meanings to this group of students -
Period: to
Samson attended MIT between 1958 and 1963
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PDP-1
Samson wrote the Harmony compiler which enabled users to code music with the PDP-1 -
TX-0
Samson and his friends are introduced to the TX-0 and are given more freedom to experiment with programming. -
Computer Programming
In the spring of 1959, MIT offers the first computer programming course that was available to freshman students- taught by John McCarthy -
Spacewar!
Samson wrote the Expensive Planetarium star display for the video game "Spacewar!" -
Samson joins the Digital Equipment Corporation
In the same year, he wrote the first Fortran compiler for the PDP-6 which was one of the DEC's computers -
Used the PDP-6 to win an online contest designed to see who could travel the New York subway system the quickest
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Started with Systems Concepts Inc
Became their Director of Marketing and Director of Program development (San Francisco, CA) -
Samson programmed the first Chinese-character digital communication system
While working at Systems Concepts -
NASA
Samson manufactured engineering for ILLIAC IV supercomputer at NASA/Ames research center -
Current
Samson is a part of the Computer History Museum PDP-1 restoration team. He is also a docent at the museum
