🚀 go-pugleaf

We were told in my undergraduate architecture class that some CDC system that
came in several models contained, for the 'slower' models, a 'decelerator'
board to slow them down.  It might have been the 6600; I can't remember for sure.


Also, there was an episode of some TV show ("The Greatest American Hero" ?) where
someone looks up information about someone--including a photographic-quality
mug shot--on a TRS-80 Model III (a machine with a monochrome screen with something
like 128x48 resolution, unless one upgraded something like CGA, but still monochrome).

In, I think, "Whiz Kids," an IBM-3270 -type terminal is used to trigger a building's
sprinkler / fire-alarm system.

And in this B&W science-fiction movie ("When Worlds Collide" ?), a 'differential
analyzer' is used to perform some giant calculation.  The machine was a huge
mechanical calculator, something like Babbage's analytical engine.

I saw "Angry Red Planet" as a child and thought it was really scary.  Of course,
I didn't notice the Burroughs 203...

Dan Ross		dr...@cs.wisc.edu    ..!uwvax!cs.wisc.edu!dross

>And in this B&W science-fiction movie ("When Worlds Collide" ?), a 'differential
>analyzer' is used to perform some giant calculation.  The machine was a huge
>mechanical calculator, something like Babbage's analytical engine.


As I noted here a while ago, "When Worlds Collide" had a "Bush [Busch?]
Differential Anaylzer", which was an actual analog computer done by
Vannevar Bush [double sp?].  I believe MIT had one, as well an Army
lab that used it for ballistics stuff.  Notice how many of these early
machines (like ENIAC) were used for ballistics?

As I understand it, the Analytical Engine would have been a digital, not
analog, machine.

On the show Lou Grant a recurring sub plot had to do with the newspaper
writers trying to get used to using word processing on terminals instead
of typewriters.  I guess the producers didn't want to spend too much money
on the terminals used on the set because they used old ADDS terminals
(model 29?) of the kind I had to put up with at work.  Of course these
terminals only supported UPPER CASE letters, so I'm not sure how useful
they would be to a newspaper writer (except perhaps those writing for
USA Today).

In article <131...@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> acm@sun.UUCP (Andrew MacRae) writes:
>On the show Lou Grant a recurring sub plot had to do with the newspaper
>writers trying to get used to using word processing on terminals instead
>of typewriters.  I guess the producers didn't want to spend too much money
>on the terminals used on the set because they used old ADDS terminals
>(model 29?) of the kind I had to put up with at work.  Of course these

They were Consul 980's.  I believe that there were some models in the
Consul series that supported lower case, but hey, who cares.  It's
just a prop, right?  In fact, it's probably one of the better props,
since it has (had?  naa, there must be one still around) a bright
orange (cherry) keyboard, and a black character on white screen
background.  Pretty, on TV.

Incidentally, the Consul series was all TTL, and supported several
baud rates including 'A' and 'B'.  If you didn't like the choices, you
could tune your own, with a frequency counter and a screwdriver.
			-edg

-- 
Ed Greenberg			+1 415-694-2952 (day)
uunet!apple!netcom!edg		e...@cso.3mail.3com.com
76703,1070 on CompuServe

In article <50...@convex.convex.com>, da...@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
> As I noted here a while ago, "When Worlds Collide" had a "Bush [Busch?]
> Differential Anaylzer", which was an actual analog computer done by
> Vannevar Bush [double sp?].  I believe MIT had one, as well an Army
> lab that used it for ballistics stuff.  Notice how many of these early
> machines (like ENIAC) were used for ballistics?

The Army lab in question was the same for both machines, Aberdeen
Proving Ground Ballistic Research Labs.  You can see a picture of
BRL's Differential Analyzer in Burk's From ENIAC to the Stored-Program
Computer in [pp 322] Metropolis, Howlett, and Rotta's A History of Computing in
the Twentieth Century (Academic Press, 1980).  In the same volume is Eckert's
article The Eniac which on page 530 relates:

    In January 1944, we were very well aware that the ENIAC had some good
    generality and tht it had some poor generality.  It tooks hours to set
    the original unmodified version but it was better than the Bush 
    Differential Analyzer that usually took days to set up with screwdrivers
    and lead hammers and so on.  MIT was concerned about this, and so built a
    Bush-type analyzer at MIT, which was interconnected with relays and servos
    rather than shafts and could be set up rather quickly.  It could at
    that time be set up morre quickly than our ENIAC as originally
    used or our old-style Bush-type analyzer.

Svoboda's Computing Mechanisms and Linkages, which was originally part of
the Radiation Laboratory Series published by McGraw-Hill in 1948 but
later released in paperback form and generally available in libraries,
is a goldmine of technigues for putting together mechanical analyzers
(Svoboda also has an interesting article in the A History of ... book
referred to above).

Of course, once you got a working computer, you ran it for all it was
worth.  Indeed, as late as October 1954, we find in the ONR Digital
Computer Newsletter supplemment to the Journal of the Association
for Computing Machinery, we find Aberdeen Proving Ground reporting 
productivity statistics on their three high-speed computers: ORDVAC,
EDVAC, and ENIAC.  If it hadn't burned down the next year, who knows
how long the ENIAC would have kept grinding out ballistics
calculations (with occasional forays into decimal expansions of pi
and other problems).

--- BOB (web...@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)

In article <6475@netcom.UUCP> edg@netcom.UUCP (Edward Greenberg) writes:
>They were Consul 980's.  I believe that there were some models in the
>Consul series that supported lower case, but hey, who cares.  It's
>just a prop, right?  In fact, it's probably one of the better props,
>since it has (had?  naa, there must be one still around) a bright
>orange (cherry) keyboard, and a black character on white screen
>background.  Pretty, on TV.

I have inherited (don't ask how) a flock of Consul 980's several
years ago. I've been trying to get rid of them ever since. They
do support upper and lower case, but the former owner of them has
them "hardwired" to the upper case mode. You can get lower case
by pressing the shift key. Unfortunately, this gives you
puctuation when you want numbers. the keyboard, however, is a
bland grey and white.

-- 
       Dan Flak - McCaw Cellular Communications Inc., 201 Elliot Ave W.,
    Suite 105, Seattle, Wa 98119, 206-286-4355, (usenet: thebes!mcgp1!flak)

In article <50...@convex.convex.com>, da...@convex.com (Anthony A. Datri) writes:

>....  Notice how many of these early
>machines (like ENIAC) were used for ballistics?
You speak for your own country... If one ignores the Analytical Engine (which
never worked, but was intended for calculating navigational tables), and the
code breaking machines built during WW II, the early machines in the UK were
built for a physics research lab (Ace), and two Universities - Edsac
(Cambridge) and the Manchester Mk.1.

>As I understand it, the Analytical Engine would have been a digital, not
>analog, machine.
Correct...though I certainly wouldn't recognise it as a stable mate of
the machines we have round here...!

Robin Fairbairns, Laser-Scan (despite what it says in the header)