Peter Samson
American computer programmer
title: "Peter Samson" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["computer-designers", "american-video-game-programmers", "american-video-game-designers", "1941-births", "living-people", "massachusetts-institute-of-technology-alumni"] description: "American computer programmer" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Samson" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary American computer programmer ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Peter Samson |
| birth_name | Peter R. Samson |
| birth_date | |
| birth_place | Fitchburg, Massachusetts |
| field | computer science |
| work_institution | Autodesk, Computer History Museum, Digital Equipment Corporation, NASA, Systems Concepts |
| alma_mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| known_for | music, Autodesk, NASA, Spacewar!, New York City Subway |
| :: |
| name = Peter Samson | image = | image_size = | caption = | birth_name = Peter R. Samson | birth_date = | birth_place = Fitchburg, Massachusetts | death_date = | death_place = | field = computer science | work_institution = Autodesk, Computer History Museum, Digital Equipment Corporation, NASA, Systems Concepts | alma_mater = Massachusetts Institute of Technology | known_for = music, Autodesk, NASA, Spacewar!, New York City Subway | spouse = Peter R. Samson (born 1941) is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software for the TX-0 and PDP-1.
Samson studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) between 1958 and 1963. He wrote, with characteristic wit, the first editions of the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) dictionary, a predecessor to the Jargon File. He appears in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution{{cite book | last = Levy | first = Steven | title = Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution | url = | date = 2 January 2001 | publisher = Penguin (Non-Classics) | isbn = 0-14-100051-1
Career
The Tech Model Railroad Club
As a member of the Tech Model Railroad Club in his student days at MIT, Samson was noted for his contributions to the Signals and Power Subcommittee, the technical side of the club. Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution outlines Samson's interest in trains and electronics, and his influence in the club. Levy explains how the club was in fact Samson's gateway into hacking and his ability to manipulate electronics and machine code to create computer programs. Levy explains how Samson discovered his programming passion with the IBM 704, but frustration with the high level of security around the machine. Only those with very high clearance were able to actually handle the computer, with all programs submitted to be processed through the machine by someone else. This meant Samson would not find out the results of his programs until a few days after submitting them. Because of these restrictions to the IBM 704, it was not until Samson was introduced to the TX-0 that he could explore his obsession with computer programming, as members of the Railroad Club were able to access the computer directly without having to go through a superior.
Dawn of software
Working with Jack Dennis on the TX-0 at MIT Building 26, he developed an interest in computing waveforms to synthesize music. For the PDP-1 he wrote the Harmony Compiler with which PDP-1 users coded music.{{cite newsgroup | title = Debuggers (Was: blinking lights ...) | author = Morris, Joe | year = 1996 | newsgroup = alt.folklore.computers |message-id= 5629h5$ju2@top.mitre.org | url = http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/ce577239845cd6ff | accessdate = 2006-12-22
He wrote the Expensive Planetarium star display for Spacewar!.
Also for the PDP-1 he wrote TJ-2 (Type Justifying Program), the predecessor of the troff and nroff page layout programs developed at Bell Labs, a War card game, and, with Alan Kotok, T-Square, a drafting program that used a Spacewar! controller for an input device.
DEC
Samson was a contributing architect to the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-6, and wrote the machine's first Fortran compiler, for Fortran II.{{cite newsgroup | title = A History of TOPS | author = Stevens, Jack H. | year = 1996 | newsgroup = alt.sys.pdp10 |message-id= 1995Jan13.151041.8661@eisner | url = http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sys.pdp10/msg/17a1d08377234f79 | accessdate = 2006-12-22
Chinese
At Systems Concepts, he programmed the first Chinese-character digital communication system, while he was director of marketing and director of program development.
Synthesized music
Samson designed the Systems Concepts Digital Synthesizer. Built at Systems Concepts, for ten years it was the primary engine for the computer music group at Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
NASA
Samson oversaw manufacturing and engineering for hardware, including the central memory subsystem for the ILLIAC IV supercomputer complex at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Autodesk
At Autodesk, he contributed to rendering, animation, Web browsing, and scripting languages. He received U.S. patents in software anti-piracy and virtual reality.{{cite web |publisher = Computer History Museum |title = Peter Samson |year = 2004 |url = http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?spkid=4&ssid=1142978073 |accessdate = April 21, 2011 |url-status = dead |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20071001023440/http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?spkid=4&ssid=1142978073 |archivedate = October 1, 2007
Subway racing
In 1966 Samson attempted to ride all lines of the New York City Subway in the shortest possible time. True to the MIT hacker culture he enlisted a computer in planning for the event. Despite missing out on the then fastest time, Samson's attempt was to act as the inspiration for many similar subway racing attempts.
Current
Samson appears in the Computer History Museum Mouse That Roared panel discussion recorded in May 2006 to celebrate the restoration of a PDP-1. For the restoration project he reverse-engineered music tapes from the PDP-1 era and built a player for the museum where he is currently a docent.
Notes
References
- Computer History Museum. (2006). "Peter Samson".
- "TMRC Dictionary".
- {{gutenberg. [[Steven Levy]]
- Levy, Steven (1984) Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Anchor Press/Doubleday, New York, pp 3-36.
- Graetz, J. Martin. (Spring 1983). "The origin of Spacewar!". [[Creative Computing]] and Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games.
- Smith, Daniel P. B.. (1993–1997). "TJ-2: A Very Early Word Processor".
- (2006). "The Mouse That Roared: PDP-1 Celebration Event Lecture 05.15.06". Computer History Museum.
- Miscione, Michael. (October 2010). "The Golden Age of the All-System Subway Races". NYP Holdings, Inc.
- ''[http://www.gricer.com/anysrc/anysrc.html The Rise and Fall of the Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee]'', Personal Web Page of Peter R. Samson
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::