History of Computing at Bell Labs (1997)

> And of course that machine required interesting optimization, because it was a nice thing if the next program step were stored somewhere -- each program step had the address of the following step in it, and you would try to locate them around the drum so to minimize latency

Sounds like the RPC-4000 in the famous "Story of Mel:" http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3636134

A paper covering the earlier period is A History of Computing Research at Bell Laboratories (1937-1975): http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr/99.pdf

relevant article : http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/opinion/sunday/innovation-...