Forrester was born in Anselmo, Nebraska. He received his degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska and later moved to Massachusetts to work on government-related research projects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). One of the projects he worked on was the development of a naval flight simulator for training and testing new aircraft. In 1944, convinced that a digital computer would be of greater benefit than a flight simulator, Forrester decided to expand the scope of the naval assignment to create WHIRLWIND, a general-purpose digital computer. Appointed by the United States Navy as manager of WHIRLWIND, Forrester headed the project for almost twelve years. While working on WHIRLWIND, Forrester had to overcome shortcomings in the memory storage system, which was slow, expensive and unreliable. WHIRLWIND required great speed and reliability to process air-defense information and transmit weapons instructions. Forrester realized that the available memory systems...