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Memorial Tributes Volume 22 (2019) / Chapter Skim
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JAY W. FORRESTER
Pages 113-120

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From page 114...
... Growing up on a remote ranch offered many opportunities to get his hands dirty finding practical solutions to important problems, such as building a wind-powered generator to provide the first electricity at the ranch. Offered a scholarship to an agricultural college, he decided that the life bucolic was not for him and instead enrolled at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1939.
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From page 115...
... These visits convinced Jay that ASCA would be based on digital computation, a bold decision given that digital computers at the time were far too slow and unreliable to meet the requirements of ASCA. Jay led the development of the Whirlwind computer, for years the only machine fast enough and reliable enough for real-time tasks such as simulation of complex dynamical systems like aircraft or numeric control of machine tools.
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From page 116...
... Built to defend North America from Soviet bomber attack, SAGE consisted of a network of digital computers and long-distance communication systems that sent target-tracking information from radar stations to computers. The computers in each center processed the data and computed flight plan vectors for interceptor aircraft and missiles.
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From page 117...
... Toward the end of the decade the work increasingly turned to public policy issues and the more general term "system dynamics" replaced "industrial dynamics." In his 1969 book Urban Dynamics (MIT Press) , Jay developed a novel model of the processes underlying the development, stagnation, decline, and recovery of cities.
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From page 118...
... In the meantime, long delays in the response of the economy and technology to resource depletion and environmental degradation could lead human activity to overshoot the planet's "carrying capacity." As he put it, Attacking symptoms rather than underlying causes will be futile…. Growing population and industrialization will over whelm the short-term efforts if we do not restrain these forces that are exceeding the carrying capacity of the Earth.1 A stark warning, yet Jay's simulations also showed how innovation, demographic changes, and policies voluntarily limiting the growth of material production could, together, build a healthy, sustainable society.
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From page 119...
... From the Sandhills of Nebraska to the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory, from the Lexington to the creation of the computer age, from Industrial Dynamics to World Dynamics, from corporate boardrooms to elementary school classrooms, Jay Forrester lived his entire life on the frontier.
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Key Terms

  • digital computation
  • core memory
  • digital simulation
  • industrial dynamics
  • urban dynamics

  • world dynamics
  • digital computers
  • magnetic core
  • supply chain
  • remote ranch

  • machine tools
  • industry standard
  • numeric control
  • dynamics explained
  • inventors hall

  • control theory
  • demographic changes
  • soviet bomber
  • agricultural college
  • airplane stability

  • experience managing
  • environmental degradation
  • sage provided
  • originally envisioned
  • student kenneth

  • sloan school
  • sage centers
  • jay led
  • ranch near
  • born july


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