[Leica] noctilux factoid of the day - computer history/nostalgia

[kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney)]

Well, the old stuff had some uses.  Look at Edward Lorenz and the Lorenz
attracters resulting from rounding off six-digit early computer output,
while trying to make weather models.  Or Benford's law from just noting that
somehow the first pages of log tables were more used than the others.....

Ken
(Who bought the first IBM PC hard drive shipped into our town --- 10
megabytes, in a separate matching case with a separate power supply, for
$2,500 then-dollars.  If that doesn't qualify for more recent old-fart
status, I don't know what does.)  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+kcarney1=cox.net@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-
> bounces+kcarney1=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Douglas Sharp
> Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 6:42 PM
> To: Leica Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Leica] noctilux factoid of the day - computer
> history/nostalgia
> 
> 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> 
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