[Leica] Back ar work

[Herbert Kanner]

Thanks, Douglas.


Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org

Question Authority and the authorities will question you.

> On Jun 26, 2016, at 3:52 PM, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
> Interesting piece of history, Herb. I'm glad to hear you're up and about and presumably red shirted again like the guys in the image. Keep healthy!!
> 
> Douglas
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org>
> To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
> Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2016 11:45 PM
> Subject: [Leica] Back ar work
> 
> 
>> My mail program went nuts last week. Twice I sent a rather long piece of mail describing the circumstances around a Gallery picture and each time the mail went into a black hole and the text had to be composed again. This time I'm being smarter and writing and saving it first in a word processor.
>> 
>> OK. Don't remember what I last posted re health, but I was in the hospital for over a week with congestive heart failure. Made a rapid recovery as soon as I got home, and after a couple of weeks, returned to volunteer week at the Computer History Museum.
>> 
>> As a consequence of the loss of the Babbage Difference Engine, I rejoined the group that gives twice monthly demonstrations of a working PDP1 computer (vintage 1960), the first “mini-computer”, in fact, the manufacturer (Digital Equipment Corporation) coined the term.
>> 
>> The PDP1 is about the size of three household refrigerators. It's turned on at the throw of one switch. It sold for $120,000. In the year it came out, the manufacturer donated one to MIT. One professor permitted  “hackers” access to it from midnight to morning. This was before  “hackers” became a pejorative term. One of those hackers was Peter Samson, who figured out how to make the machine play four-part music, and our demo inclueds the opening of a Bach fugue. The other, Steve Russell, largely wrote the code for the world's first video game, Space War, which later became an arcade game.
>> 
>> When I arrived at the Museum a week ago Saturday, I found the PDP1 team in the cafeteria area enjoing a post-lunch bull session. I just had to take a picture. We were all wearing our uniform red shirts. Note the guy on the right; that's Steve Russell.
>> 
>> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1000005_001.jpg.html <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1000005_001.jpg.html>
>> 
>> Please look “large”.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Herbert Kanner
>> kanner at acm.org
>> 
>> Question Authority and the authorities will question you.
>> 
>> 
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> 
> 
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