Editing TX-0 (section)

==Development==
Initially a vacuum-tube computer named TX-1 was being designed to test the first large [[magnetic-core memory]] bank.  However, the design was never approved and the TX-1 was never built.  Instead, the TX-0 was designed for the same purpose, except using transistors. With the successful completion of the TX-0, work turned immediately to the much larger and far more complex [[TX-2]], completed in 1958.<ref>{{Citation
| last       =Ornstein
| first      =Severo
| date       =November 15, 2002
| title      =Computing in the Middle Ages: A View from the Trenches 1955-1983
| publisher  =1stBooks | publication-place =Bloomington, Ind.
| page       =80 | isbn =978-1-40-331517-5 | oclc =51823994
| url        =https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/03/102785079-05-01-acc.pdf
| via        =ComputerHistory.org Archive
| url-status =live | archive-date=2021-02-15 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20210215075637/https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2019/03/102785079-05-01-acc.pdf
}}</ref> Since core memory was very expensive at the time, several parts of the TX-0 memory were cannibalized for the TX-2 project.

After a time, the TX-0 was no longer considered worth keeping at Lincoln Lab, and was "loaned" (semi-permanently) to the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) in July 1958, where it became a centerpiece of research that would eventually evolve into the [[MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab]] and the original computer [[hacker culture]]. Delivered from Lincoln Laboratory with only 4K of core, the machine no longer needed 16 bits to represent a storage address. After about a year and a half, the number of instruction bits was doubled to four, allowing a total of 16 instructions, and an [[index register]] was added. This dramatically improved programmability of the machine, but still left room for a later memory expansion to 8K (the four instruction bits and one-bit indexing flag left 13 bits for addressing). This newly modified TX-0 was used to develop a huge number of advances in computing, including [[speech recognition|speech]] and [[handwriting recognition]], as well as the tools needed to work on such projects, including [[text editor]]s and [[debugger]]s.

Meanwhile the TX-2 project was running into difficulties of its own, and several team members decided to leave the project at Lincoln Lab and start their own company - [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC).