In our lab on the 4th Floor of Wallenberg Hall at Stanford sits a half-ton grey steel cube. A monolith.

It is a remnant of one of the biggest simulation experiments of all time - it is the "graphics card" for the computer that ran "The Battle of 73 Easting" - a recreation of an engagement in the 1991 Gulf War. The boot tape is still in the slot, but the circuits are now dead. The clock on the back reads 28,820.5 hours.

Stanford holds the archives of this vast effort of documentation and recreation.

Read here for a description of the artifact.

Read Tim Lenoir and Henry Lowood on 73Easting - [link]. Citation: "Theaters of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex," in: Collection - Laboratory - Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century, eds. Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, and Jan Lazardzig. (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005): 427- 56.

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More links

Wikipedia - The Battle of 73 Easting - [link]

Kevin Kelly - "Out of Control", Chapter 13 - "God Games" - [link]

Tim Lenoir - "All but war is simulation: the military entertainment complex" - [link]

Bruce Sterling - "War is virtual hell" - Wired 1993 - [link]

Henry Lowood - "Virtual Reality" - Encyclopedia Britannica - [link]

Stephen Biddle - "Victory misunderstood - what the Gulf War tells us about the future of conflict" - International Security 1996 - [link] and a response from Thomas A Keaney - [link]

Michael Moshell - "Virtual environments in the US Military" - [link]

Marc Prensky - "Interactive pretending: an overview of simulation" - [link]