TheMIT Computation Center was organized in 1956 as a 10-yearjoint venture between theMassachusetts Institute of Technology andIBM to provide computing resources for New England universities.[1] As part of the venture, IBM installed anIBM 704, which remained at MIT until 1960.
After the successful launch ofSputnik on October 4, 1957, the race was on to calculate and predict where the first man-madesatellites would appear in the sky.Fred Lawrence Whipple, then director of theSmithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had gatheredamateur astronomers to track artificial satellites in an organization calledOperation Moonwatch. The aim was to get the position of thesatellite in order to obtain itsorbital elements. The first "satisfactory orbit" calculated by theIBM 704 as official tracker for the SAO occurred at 7AM on October 11, 1957.