Description

This item is a computer workstation that includes an integral keyboard upon which a flat-topped monitor stands. There is a beige box attached to the monitor and keyboard combination, and it sits to the left of the object. These are the Hewlett Packard 9836U computer and monitor and the 9888A Bus Expander.

Harold Abelson and Gerald Sussman first offered "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (6.001) in the 1980-81 academic year. For that class, they asked Hewlett Packard to donate 48 customized computers that had a then-unheard-of 4 megabytes of RAM. Though the computer was later given the designation HP-9836, its internal code name used by Hewlett Packard was “chipmunk.” That name stuck, and for the next decade, these computers were known at MIT (and elsewhere) as Chipmunks.