Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/07/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:52 AM 7/17/96 -0700, Roger L. Beamon wrote: >Gees, Marc, where did you find snippiness? At any rate, here's what >Rogliatti says in "Leica The First 70 Years". Pg. 158 "At Leitz the first >computers were installed as early as 1951". I seriously doubt that those >earliest computers were aiding in lens design much, if any. They probably >were used in book keeping, inventory control etc. This surmise, on my part, >is bolstered by Rogliatti's comment on page 162. "This period from the >mid-fifties was also the beginning of the rapid advances in Leitz lens >design, which have continued ever since, brought about by new optical >glasses from their glass research laboratory and the application of >computers". This time frame seems far more likely. I doubt very much that computers were used for book keeping and inventory control in the 50's. Back then, a computer requires a team of engineers/scientists to operate. It would be much easier to use pens and papers for book keeping. With memory elements costing a few dollars a byte, it was simply too expensive to waste it for that purpose. The human-machine interface of that era was very crude by today's standard. Even as late as mid 70's when I started using computers, we still used punched cards and paper based ribbon tapes extensively to communicate with computers. We had mice too, but they cause circuit problems when they hid inside the computer.;-) Actually, the earlier computers almost used exclusively for scientific computations and cryptology. ------------------------------------ Gang Huang Advanced Communications Technologies Bell Laboratories 200 Laurel Ave. 3B-216 Middletown, NJ 07748 U.S.A. (908) 957-3524 gang@mtdcr.mt.lucent.com ------------------------------------