[Leica] Some artifacts at the Computer History Museum IMG:

[lluisripollquerol at gmail.com (Lluis Ripoll)]

Very interesting Herbert! I still remember the first computer I saw early 
sixties in the Engineers School, all of us we was asking what is this and 
what do this, someone has said "I think it can do automatically Intregrals 
calculations"... what....? this is not possible...

Thanks for sharing

Cheers
Lluis 

El 21/12/2012, a las 06:55, Herbert Kanner escribi?:

> Fellow LUGers, 
> 
> I have been a volunteer at the Computer History Museum since 2003, 
> starting as a documenter of artifacts. That is, in collaboration with a 
> partner, the partner often being a paid staff member, we would enter 
> characteristics of the object in question into a horribly complex 
> database. Things such as dimensions, weight (if it was small enough to be 
> picked up), place of manufacture, etc., etc., including all numbers that 
> could be found on the object: model numbers, serial numbers, goddam 
> numbers, you name it. Then we would photograph it with a point & shoot. 
> 
> One of the tasks for which I eventually volunteered was editing those damn 
> photographs. Considering how foolproof a P$S is, I was just amazed at how 
> badly some of the volunteers would handle a camera. Many of the pix just 
> had to be thrown out.
> 
> After a couple of years of this, I thought it would be fun to become a 
> docent. At the time, all that could be seen by visitors was in one large 
> room, and the formal docent training was an hour in which they showed us 
> where all the emergency exits from the building were.
> 
> In 2012 a brand new $20 million exhibit opened ($15 having been 
> contributed by Bill Gates) and some formal docent training ensued, led by 
> a lady who had trained docents at two art museums: Getty and Cantor)
> 
> I took a few pictures yesterday of museum artifacts. Not wanting to 
> overwhelm people, I will post them two or three at a time, with a bit of 
> explanation of what they are. The light in there is really weird, being a 
> mixture of ordinary incandescent, window light, and deliberately colored 
> light. Also, some, not today's, had to be shot at ISO 2600 (flash not 
> permitted, and I've given it up anyway), so we'll see how good noise 
> reduction is.
> 
> For today: 
> 
> The Babbage Difference Engine #2. This is a working machine, and we 
> demonstrate it once each day that the Museum is open. There are two of 
> them in the world; the other is in the London Science Museum. We are the 
> only ones who still demonstrate it regularly, as a result of which it 
> requires regular maintenance with occasional major repairs. What the 
> machine does is by addition only, it evaluates seventh degree polynomials 
> to seven places of accuracy--such polynomials can be satisfactory 
> approximations to other functions such as logarithms and trig functions.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002678.jpg.html
> 
> The U.S. Constitution requires a census every ten years. That word does 
> not actually appear there; it's called "enumeration". The purpose is to 
> establish how many Representatives a state is entitled to. In the 
> Constitution a (white) person counted as one, a slave as 3/5 of a person, 
> and a red-skin didn't count at all. Now Congress in it's wisdom decided 
> that if these guys were out counting heads, they might as well ask a few 
> useful questions. The resulting data, in 1880, took seven years to 
> process. Because the population was growing, the most optimistic estimate 
> was that it would take eleven years to process the data in 1890. Herman 
> Hollerith proposed a method of dealing with the data by using punched 
> cards, which by no coincidence turned out to be the same size and shape as 
> the currency at the time. Here is the machine which read the cards. The 
> card was put on a platform and the handle depressed. Wherever there was a 
> hole, a pin would go through the hole and complete an ele
> ctric circuit. The counters that you see are like clocks, which a large 
> hand and a small one. Each clock could count up to ten thousand.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002660.jpg.html
> 
> Here is a crude device that was used to punch the cards, a pantograph.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002662.jpg.html
> 
> After Hollerith retired, some investors who had already bought a company 
> that made time clock and a calculating grocery scale bought Hollerith's 
> company. Eventually they hired as CEO a guy who had been fired by National 
> Cash Register. That guy got rid of the clocks and scales and eventually 
> renamed the company International Business Machines, later renamed IBM. 
> His name was Thomas J. Watson.
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> Herb
> 
> 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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