“Since TMRCies were known for their creativity and ingenuity Digital was kind enough to donate to TMRC the first PDP 11 to appear at MIT; this made the Club the first MIT student group to ever have a computer! Soon TMRCies combined the operation of WECo’s donations and Digital’s PDP 11 to create cab assignment and switching though the computer. The computer also allowed the implementation of ‘phone operation’ – that is, switches could be thrown via the telephone system within the club room! (This phone system, to be named MaRoto, was also a TMRC customized item.)”
http://tmrc.mit.edu/bldg20.html
“Here’s what I found: the building was hastily-constructed of plywood. It leaked. It had bad acoustics and was poorly lit, inadequately ventilated, very confusing to navigate (even for people who had been working there for years) and was scorching in the summer and freezing in the winter.”
https://www.architects.org/stories/serendipity-when-walls-get-in-the-way
Occupants of Building 20 in 1963 (from Staff Telephone Directory, compiled by MIT Institute Archives)
Army, Military Science
Campus Patrol (20C-128)
Data Processing (20C-220)
Ice Research Lab (20E-206)
Industrial Hygiene Lab (20B-245)
Lab for Nuclear Science, linear accelerator (20D-014)
MIT Press (20B-120)
Model Railroad Club TMRC (20E-214)
Occupational Medical Services (20B-238)
Physics Labs
Research Corporation (20B-111)
Research Lab of Electronics
“The PDP-1 that originally went to Bolt, Beranek & Newman to be used in a more formal environment than at MIT was eventually retired to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1968 during my own tenure there and was connected to a model railroad. It still had SpaceWar! as the primary program.
(J.A.N. Lee, ibidem, p. 272)”