Whirlwind: Difference between revisions

|image = Whirlwind.png

|hname = Winifred Forrester

|apfaction = Formerly of the MIT-tan quasi-faction; [[Deceased OS-tans]]

|lineage= MIT, founder

|rival= US Navy, Air Force

Whirlwind-tan is depicted as a wiry woman in her mid 30s, above average height, with pale skin, long black hair, and blue eyes. She wears rectangular glasses, decorates her hair with ribbons, and wears colorful dresses and lab coats.<ref>[https://www.deviantart.com/cptlfrghtr/art/Picnic-Pt-3-144175246 Picnic Pt. 3]</ref> Black and white checkerboard prints are a recurrent pattern in her attire, as are vacuum tube based jewelry.

She was born with a faulty heart which was later replaced, <ref>Referencing Whirlwind's early, failing CRT-based memory system, later replaced with magnetic core memory.</ref> and wears leg braces, though they don't slow her down. <ref>[https://www.deviantart.com/cptlfrghtr/art/Picnic-Pt-3-144175246 Picnic Pt. 3]</ref>

Later in life, worsening health and experimental surgeries caused her physical condition to deteriorate. She lost an eye and spent much of her time heavily bandaged. <ref>[https://www.deviantart.com/cptlfrghtr/art/Dirty-Water-Pt-3-151306781 Dirty Water Pt. 3]</ref>

Whirlwind-tan is intelligent, amicable, and likes to keep herself busy. Despite numerous setbacks, and being in pain for much of her early life,<ref>StewartSage, personal communication</ref> she has a relentlessly optimistic personality, and conducts herself with a degree of propriety that comes off as a bit old-fashioned. Despite everything she's done, she doesn't feel especially accomplished. <ref>StewartSage, personal communication, April 2026</ref>

Whirlwind-tan has three children: eldest daughter [[SAGE|SAGE-tan]], middle child [[PDP-1|PDP-1-tan]], and [[CTSS|CTSS-tan]], whom she adopted.  

She has a modified clone, [[Memory Test Computer|Memory Test Computer-tan]], who acted as her personal companion and support. MTC eventually donated her heart to Whirlwind.<ref>Bella's OS-tan art thread [https://www.ostan-collections.net/forum/index.php/topic,466.msg177442.html#msg177442]</ref>

She's befriended a wide range of computers both at her institution and elsewhere. She's especially close with [[Harvard Mark I|Harvard Mark I-tan]], Harvard Mark IV-tan, and [[GENIAC|GENIAC-chan]], whom she looked after when SAGE departed.

Whirlwind-tan was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, sometime in the mid-1940s; she fully matured by the early 50s. It is known that the was a US Navy WAVES reservist, but few other aspects of her early life have been documented.

A series of experimental operations were performed in an attempt to improved her lifespan, speed and powers, but they were untimely unsuccessful, costing her numerous body parts as well as general mental and physical stability. Especially problematic were the coma-like states she fell in and out of for the next fourteen years.  

Despite the dire consequences to her health, there were several beneficial effects. Foremost among these, the creation of her second and third children, [[TX-0]] and [[PDP-1]]-tan, whose births would have never been possible without the knowledge gained during Whirlwind's experimental surgeries. In many ways, her two children filled the nest left empty by SAGE's departure, and became a comfort and companion to the ailing Whirlwind.  

CTSS-tan was born in 1961, but the details of her creation and relationship with Whirlwind-tan are yet-unknown. It has been suggested that CTSS-tan may be an adopted child, rather than a blood-descendant.  

Unusually for the era, Whirlwind-tan's relationship with her daughters was not only close but mutually-affectionate despite intervening factors - distance, in the case of SAGE-tan, and worsening health with TX-0, PDP-1 and CTSS.

Whirlwind-tan's health became steadily worse with advancing age, and by the 1970s she was in a comatose state more often than not. In 1973, she passed away, shortly after SAGE's final visit with her. Her slow decline and lingering death is suspected to have contributed to SAGE's eventual psychological instability.

Through the birth of TX-0 and PDP-1-tan, Whirlwind-tan inspired the creation of an entirely new type of computer: the smaller, nimbler, more efficient minicomputer-tans, whose ranks would swell throughout the next few decades to the point of becoming the dominant computer class. In this way, all computer-tans of the 1960s and 70s can be said to owe their existence to Whirlwind.

It has been theorized that the DEC-tans would revere Whirlwind-tan, since she is their earliest conceptual-ancestor and the mother of their founder.