Re: OT - Way OT - Ken Break out your card deck

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:12:54 GMT, Ed Maier
<evmaierwouldyoutakethisouttoreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>SPAMNOTalan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> Key, you gonna love this....
>> 
>> http://www.pdpplanet.com/Content/Docs/Press/PDP-SeattlePI_1-10-06.pdf
>> 
>> 
>> Now I've got to dig in my desk drawer and get out the spelling
>> program I wrote for the MINC and PDP-8 boxes.
>> 
>> Alan D.
>
>Golly. I cut my teeth on a PDP-8e years ago. DEC octal code,
>bunch of blinking lights, 8 channel fan fold paper tape
>reader, ASR-33 teletype with a tape punch, octal switch
>registers, load address 7756,... doesn't seem that long ago,
>but it was at least thirty years. Ours had a whopping 4K of
>memory (on a board larger than a desktop MB). The early memory
>on these things was magnetic; tiny ferrite doughnuts with
>two wires passing at 90º through their centers making a 2D
>matrix. The whole thing was about the size of a refrigerator
>and was hooked up to a Bendix coordinate measuring machine.
>We could measure a 16 hole pattern for accuracy in about five
>minutes; a job that used to take all morning on open setup.
>We were in tall cotton. I spent the next thirty-plus years
>programming all the next generation CMMs. It was fun.
>
>Ed Maier

	The "it was fun" was what put this back in perspective for me,
Ed.  When we forget how thrilled we were to be working with this
marvel of modern technology, and we focus only on the here and now, or
worse, judge those days by these, then we have demonstrated the purest
definition of "Presentism."  We are viewing history out of Context.
	Those were marvelous computers.
	I have a lot of images of antique aircraft and people look at
them and say, "My heavens, can you imagine going up in one of those
death traps?"
	Yeah, I can.  But I imagine it from their perspective.
	"Fellows! The new one is here!  It has wrap-around wicker
seats!  No more sliding to and fro, and the guns shoot right through
the prop...without hitting the blades!  And they finally put the
petrol *** against a cabine so the leaks don't hit us in the face.
	"And best of all...get this!...there is a cowling around the
rotary that makes the plane faster but also  catch all the castor oil
and makes it run out the bottom of the plane.  No more oily
windscreens, goggles, and quick trips to the loo when we land."
	They were thrilled to get in that newest creation of modern
aviation technology.
	They were the PDP-8s back then.
	Context...it is always about Context.  <g>

	Ken

http://www.photos.windmillpro.com/
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