MS#71. Experimental Mechanics: the First Forty Years, 1992 In: Mechanics Day, William F. Shadwick, Perinkulam Sambamurthy Krishnaprasad, Tudor Stefan Ratiu, eds., American Mathematical Society, Providence RI, 1996, pp. 1-3. Written: June 12, 1992 Subjects: Classical mechanics, computational math Abstract. Since the first work of Fermi, Pasta, and Ulam in 1952, computation has played a small but stimulating role in the explosive development of conservative mechanics. Here is a brief survey of the highlights of the early experimental work in Hamiltonian mechanics, done by the pioneers of computational mathematics on digital computers. [PDF] 360 KB, 3 pages Last revised by Ralph Abraham