User:Pgr0/sputnik

History of the M.I.T. Computation Center
The M.I.T. Computation Center, organized in 1956, housed an IBM 704 up until 1960.

The M.I.T. Computation Center and Operation Moonwatch
After the successful launch of Sputnik on October 4th 1957, the race was on to calculate and predict where the first man-made satellites would appear in the sky. Then Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge Massacusetts, Fred Lawrence Whipple had gathered amateur astronomers to track artificial satellites in an organization called Operation Moonwatch. The aim was to get the position of the satellite in order to obtain its orbital elements. The first "satisfactory orbit" calculated by the IBM 704 as official tracker for the SAO occured at 7AM on the morning of October 11th, 1957.