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The acronym "MAC" is glossed variously as Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognition, and in later years Minsky Against Corby (a joke based on two of the principal figures in the two semi-competing computer science laboratories in the building).
Project MAC was started on July 1, 1963 with initial funding from a two-million-dollar DARPA grant. Project MAC's original director was Robert Fano. The program manager responsible for the DARPA grant was J.C.R. Licklider, who had previously been at MIT and would later succeed Fano as director of Project MAC. Project MAC was principally funded by DARPA and the National Science Foundation. (Fano decided to call MAC a "project" rather than a "laboratory" for reasons of internal MIT politics -- if MAC had been called a laboratory, then it would have been more difficult to raid other MIT departments for research staff.)
Project MAC's founders -- Fano, Fernando J. Corbato, and Marvin Minsky (with inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy), among others -- envisioned the creation of a "computer utility", which would be as reliable as source of computational power as the electric utility was a source of electrical power. To this end, Corbató brought the first computer time-sharing system, CTSSThis article is about the MIT Project MAC operating system. CTSS may also stand for the Cray Time Sharing System, a separate system developed for Cray supercomputers''. CTSS which stood for the C ompatible T ime S haring S ystem was one of the first time-, with him from the MIT Computation Center, using the DARPA funding to purchase an IBM 7094The IBM 7094 the fourth member of the most popular family of IBM's large second-generation transistorized mainframe computers and was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The first 7094 installation was in September 1962. for research use. One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS, MulticsMultics Mult iplexed I nformation and C omputing S ervice) was an extraordinarily influential early time-sharing operating system. Overview Initial planning and development for Multics started in 1964. Originally it was a cooperative project led by MIT (w, which was to be the first high availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium including General ElectricGeneral Electric Company or GE is a multinational technology and services company, one of the world's largest corporations. While it still uses its full name for legal purposes, it prefers to use the abbreviation GE in the names of its component businesse and Bell Laboratories.
In the late 1960s, Minsky's artificial intelligenceThis article is about modelling human thought with computers,. For other uses of the term AI see Ai''. Artificial intelligence also known as machine intelligence is defined as intelligence exhibited by anything manufactured (i. artificial) by humans or ot group was seeking more space, and was unable to get satisfaction from project director Licklider. University space-allocation politics being what it is, Minsky found that although Project MAC as a single entity could not get the additional space he wanted, he could split off to form his own lab and then be entitled to more office space. As a result, the MIT AI LabThe MIT Artificial intelligence Laboratory was an interdisciplinary research entity at MIT founded in 1959, and one of the most influential and accomplished in the field. The AI Lab (as it is commonly abbreviated) was originally a subdivision of Project M was formed in 1970Events January events January 1 Construction begins on Arcosanti, by Paolo Soleri, in Mayer, Arizona, located 65, miles north of Phoenix, Arizona. January 1 Unix epoch at 00:00:00 UTC. January 12 Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian civil war. January, and many of Minsky's AI colleagues left Project MAC to join him in the new lab, while most of the remaining members went on to form the Laboratory for Computer Science. Two professors, Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, chose to remain neutral --- their group was referred to variously as Switzerland and Project MAC for the next 30 years, until the two labs ultimately re-merged as CSAIL.
In later technical work, the Lisp dialect MacLisp was developed by Project MAC.
In 1975, the remainder of Project MAC was renamed the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), and went on to do further ground-breaking work, including a significant role in the development of the Internet.
On the fortieth anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS re-merged with the AI Lab to form the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. This merger created the largest laboratory (over 600 personnel) on the MIT campus and was regarded as a reuniting of the diversified elements of Project MAC.