[Leica] noctilux factoid of the day

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2008-04-25-14:24:01 Henning Wulff:
> In the early and mid sixties when I was studying physics in 
> University we used a lot of the mechanical calculators (essentially 
> sequential adding machines which produced the functions of 
> multiplication and division). If you needed more accuracy than 3 
> digits you used those, or log tables, which got you a couple more 
> digits.

The first programmable device I encountered in the flesh (although I
didn't get the chance to learn to program it) was a Wang programmable
calculator -- it consisted of a desk unit with a keyboard and Nixie tube
display (I still have an odd fondness for Nixie tubes) connected to a
suitcase-like "brain" via an umbilical.  It was (if memory serves)
programmed via a single punch card which wasn't run through a reader,
but rather clamped in place.  This would've been about...  jeez, 1972 or
so?

The first computer I actually programmed was a DEC PDP-11/40, with 28K
of real core memory, into whose august presence I was allowed in 1975.
I soon caught the bug, and with the help of parental connections
wheedled my way into some guest access to the big under-the-parking-lot
Princeton University computer center.  I l'arned myself PL/I with the
help of a book and repeated card decks through the big IBM 360/91 there
(reputed to be faster than the newfangled 370s of the day because the
latter were microcoded).  That leads to another thing I really became
fond of: the scent of a room full of busy 029 keypunches.  To my
fifteen-year-old brain, that perfume of oil and metal and chad-dust,
overlaid with a subtle note of line-printer ink, was the smell of
computing, of technology, of the future.  Never mind that the
minicomputer I'd encountered, and indeed even the HP-65 calculators
which were already appearing, were arguably more the future of computing
than a mainframe; there was something about the majesty of a big
computing center, with its air conditioning and raised floors and glass
windows and army of acolytes, which was infinitely more impressive.

 -Jeff M