Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/04/25

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Subject: [Leica] noctilux factoid of the day - computer history/nostalgia
From: douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas Sharp)
Date: Fri Apr 25 16:42:53 2008
References: <20080425020248.GB20679@panix.com> <00da01c8a694$b1727ca0$145775e0$@net> <014b01c8a699$ec68d700$6101a8c0@jimnichols> <011a01c8a6cc$a7678e20$f636aa60$@net> <p06230903c437cebf6b34@[10.1.16.146]> <20080425222248.GP28484@jbm.org>

Jeff, that brings back distant  ( and relatively recent) memories.
Sounds like some of the "state-of-the-art " stuff :-)  we used when I 
started in geophysical DP around the same time. in the early 70's

Punch cards, punch tape driven plotters and the like.
You're right about the smells and sounds too, though in our company it 
was joined by the smell of 20 different perfumes of a whole room full of 
ladies doing nothing else but translating our data into stacks of cards. 
Blue for variables, orange for dynamic corrections and processing 
parameters, magenta for static corrections and white for bug-fixes and 
special modules. All on CDC 3000 series machines when I began.
The worst thing that could happen to you was to have the rubber band 
holding the pile together snap on the way downstairs to the computer 
room - all the cards had to be in precise order when you put the pile 
back together, and a bent card was sudden death for any job.

We also used PDP 11 and VAX  11/750 machines a lot for basic processing 
and data transcription - my company (Prakla-Seismos) even tried to build 
a mobile field DP-centre around them that ran for a while with a field 
crew in Holland. But the programmers messed everything up trying to make 
a fully-fledged VAX-based processing system and the competition (PROMAX) 
got on to the market a lot quicker than we did (and made millions with it).

After the upgrade to CD 6600's and Cyber 75's , we actually began 
inputting data from workstations with monitors - an amazing step ahead 
!! But these CDC machines were soon simply not fast enough or big enough 
to handle the data volumes required for 3D seismic DP , so we went to 
running a bunch of Cray XMPs, that didn't even look like computers, but 
more like an ensemble of contemporary seating elements - but a lot 
warmer), and colossal automated cartridge silos for the data. Around the 
same time we also began to be able to do interactive processing on our 
workstations, and could display the results on screen too - wow!!

The computer room alone was on two floors with about 2000 square meters 
of DP equipment, and then 1500 square meters of data storage. too.
Today the same processing and storage capabilities would probably find 
enough room in a double garage.

The last time I used a PDP was about 8 years ago on a battered machine 
tucked away in a back room and connected to dozens of tape reel drives,  
for transcribing ancient tapes  to 3480 or 3590 cartridges and 
Exabytes.  Great machines, simple to operate, so robust and didn't even 
need any particular equipment for cooling either.

The last I heard, the company I last worked for (now 
Schlumberger/Western-Geco) is now running everything on  Linux-based red 
Hat clusters that take up no room at all.
Cheers
Douglas


Jeff Moore wrote:
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
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>
>   

Replies: Reply from kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day - computer history/nostalgia)
In reply to: Message from shino at panix.com (Rei Shinozuka) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)
Message from red735i at earthlink.net (Frank Filippone) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)
Message from jhnichols at bellsouth.net (Jim Nichols) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)
Message from red735i at earthlink.net (Frank Filippone) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)
Message from henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)
Message from jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore) ([Leica] noctilux factoid of the day)