🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 23 Apr 2013, Derek Simmons wrote:

> This isn't the first time I?ve posted this inquiry but it has been about 
> four years since the last time I did.
>
> I?m looking for anybody with firsthand experience or knowledge of 
> somebody having built or bought the plans for Edmund Berkeley?s Simon. 
> I?ve watched eBay and searched websites but I haven?t come across 
> anybody other than the author that built or tried to build one.
>
> Edmund Berkeley?s Simon is credited as being the first home computer. 
> But I am wondering if anybody ever built one. It appeared in a series of 
> articles in Radio Electronics and an article in Scientific American. 
> With minor differences in color printing, the computer pictured on the 
> magazines covers is the same one. If you read the articles in Radio 
> Electronics Berkeley presents types of logic circuits that could be 
> constructed using relays for computer but he doesn?t actually describe 
> how to assemble a complete computer.
>
You don't give a date for the articles.  There were various articles about 
building that sort of computer in the hobby magazines, I have no idea how 
they compared to the one you're interested in.  I can remember one in 
Electronics Illustrated in the early sixties that used telephone dials.

It was a niche market, like any construction project a lot of people would 
read it, relatively few would build it, and fewer would built it as 
described.


> Most of the parts he used were and are still widely available. In his 
> design it mostly used toggle switches, lights, diodes and relays. The 
> two parts that might be difficult to come by were the paper tape reader 
> and the mechanical or state switch. The mechanical state switch could be 
> found in a mechanical pinball machine. But the paper tape reader, how 
> popular were those in 1950s? And, how easy was it for a home hobbyist to 
> come by one?
>
But in the fifties, surplus Teletype machines were available, though often 
on condition that you showed a ham license or that you were blind (two 
areas that used tty machines, and the proof ensured the machines weren't 
going back into commercial service).  Tape machines would have been 
available at the time.  Certianly in the sixties one could even see both 
sold as surplus in the back of ham magazines.

If it was just a reader (and not a punch), maybe people were expected to 
create their own.  IN the seventies, when home computers took off, there 
wsa a paper tape reader (given the notion that paper tape might be useful 
for distribution, but for local saves you'd use cassette tape), you could 
buy at least one optoelectronic tape reader, that had sensors and some 
schmitt triggers, and a guide for the tape, and you were expected to 
manually pull the tape through the reader.  SOmething like that was 
possible in the fifties, though maybe required more ingenuity.  But, if 
you were the kind who wanted a computer, you likely were not the type 
who'd be following instructions exactly.  If nothing else, following parts 
lists blindly could run up the price, if you knew enough to make 
substitutes, you could save money.  A good hobbyist would look at an 
article, immedately think about how they could change it to work with what 
they had, etc.


> At Brent Hilbert?s website: >
> http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/index.html
>
> He?s come to some of the same conclusions that I have about the articles 
> being incomplete and has filled in the gaps.
>
> Its been written that the author sold schematics through the back pages 
> of magazines. One of the theories I?ve come to is that maybe the 
> articles were intentionally incomplete but enough to get someone started 
> to lure them in to get them to buy the schematics later. At the 
> Blinkenlights website (http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml) they claim 
> that over 400 copies of the plans were sold. So, I?m also wondering if 
> anyone ever bought a set of schematics? Or still has a set?
>
Actually, most of the magazines weren't willing to dedicate endless pages 
to a large project.  So most of the projects were small.  As things 
improved, it was not uncommon to leave out things like circuit board 
layout, if you really wanted to build the project and use a circuit board, 
you'd mail away to the magazine or author to get the layout.

In the seventies when a lot of Big Projects hit the magazines, it was 
pretty common for the articles to be incomplete.  There just wans't space. 
So you'd have to write away for the full schematic, or actually pay for a 
full instruciton booklet.  Note also, this period also was when plenty of 
kits were described in the magazines, the full schematic published but you 
coudl get the complete parts kit from the author or some company that 
specialized in that sort of thing, and not have to fuss with getting 
parts.  So often people did buy the kits.  SOmetimes a company created a 
kit, and the article was more like an ad for the kit.

Note when the ALtair 8800 was on the cover of Popular Electronics, the 
schematic wsa not there.  YOu had to mail away for it, I think needing 
only a large SASE, but then of course you could buy the kit.  THe Mark 8 
in Radio Electronics a few months earlier, was the same thing.

The worst articles were the ones that didn't give much detail, so you lost 
content in the magazine.  Eventually it got really bad, as microprocessors 
took over, you often couldn't build the thing without the source code, and 
once the source code wasn't in the magazine, the magazine became useless 
by itself.

An articel that was incomplete but provided ideas were always great.  A 
long forgotten step in small computers was when Jim Huffman had an article 
in "73" in November 1972 about building your own computer.  It wasn't a 
construciton article, but an "idea" article, mapping out the sorts of 
things needed.  It didn't deal with mircoprocessors, a tad too early, but 
it was on the level of how people were building computers at home (a very 
relative few, there was the Amateur Computer Society, I think started by 
Sol Libes, that was around from the sixties, building their own or 
resurrecting some commercial computer).  THat sort of article at least got 
people interested in having their own computer, even if they didn't build 
one, or maybe got them interested enough to find some way of building a 
computer, either a modification of what was published or some other plans, 
or just jump in.  IT wsa a very small circle of poeple who actually had 
some sort of computer up until 1974 or so and they were more likely 
vanguard than followers.

    Michael


> So, anybody ever seen an actual Simon?

On 4/23/13 10:22 AM, Derek Simmons wrote:
> This isn't the first time I’ve posted this inquiry but it has been about four years since the last time I did.
>
> I’m looking for anybody with firsthand experience or knowledge of somebody having built or bought the plans for Edmund Berkeley’s Simon. I’ve watched eBay and searched websites but I haven’t come across anybody other than the author that built or tried to build one.
>

October 1950 issue of Radio-Electronics

http://www.vintagecomputer.net/images/simon.jpg
http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/B1514.01


http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/

Al Kossow wrote:

> On 4/23/13 10:22 AM, Derek Simmons wrote:
> > This isn't the first time I�ve posted this inquiry but it has been about four years since the last time I did.
> >
> > I�m looking for anybody with firsthand experience or knowledge of somebody having built

> > or bought the plans for Edmund Berkeley�s Simon. I�ve watched eBay and searched websites

> > but I haven�t come across anybody other than the author that built or tried to build one.

> >
>
> October 1950 issue of Radio-Electronics
>
> http://www.vintagecomputer.net/images/simon.jpg
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/B1514.01
>
> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/

The picture credit was Gift of Gwen and C. Gordon Bell

Gordon Bell probably has a lot more information, because he
was interested in old computers and he once was a major part
of the Boston Computer museum.

Last I heard he was working on special projects at Microsoft.
He should be reachable on the net

Walter..

After some poking around today I found a copy of the plans for Simon at:

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000473670

On Tue, 23 Apr 2013, Al Kossow wrote:

> On 4/23/13 10:22 AM, Derek Simmons wrote:
>> This isn't the first time I?ve posted this inquiry but it has been about 
>> four years since the last time I did.
>> 
>> I?m looking for anybody with firsthand experience or knowledge of somebody 
>> having built or bought the plans for Edmund Berkeley?s Simon. I?ve watched 
>> eBay and searched websites but I haven?t come across anybody other than the 
>> author that built or tried to build one.
>> 
>
> October 1950 issue of Radio-Electronics
>
That may be significant.  At that stage, hobby electronics had sort of 
disappeared (there was a big surge when radio came along, then a lot of 
those magazines died or morphed into industry publications).  I don't know 
where Radio Electronics was at that point, but there was a long period 
when it was a repair magazine, or at least partially a repair magazine, I 
don't know when that started.  Even in the seventies when classic projects 
like the Mark-8 and the TV Typewriter appeared, there'd be a column for 
the professional service man, and various articles related to that sort of 
job.  If in 1950 it was covering electronic repair, the hobbyists might 
have been relatively few.

FOr that matter, it wasn't until 1955 when Popular Electronics arrived 
that hobby electronics really seemed to take off, helped with SPutnik a 
few  years later.  Electronics Illustrated started up about 1960 and osme 
of the odd magazines returned (or became) magazines for the electronic 
hobbyist, a really prime time, lots of magazines, lots of projects.

So maybe in 1950, apart from other factors, there'd have been a limited 
number of people who saw the article and from those had to be the ones who 
might have built one.

A magazine has a short life, once it's off the newsstand it's much harder 
to get.  So by the time the people who wanted to build computers heard 
about it, the magazine might not have been available new, making it that 
much harder to find.

It's not like that Hayden book about building a computer that someone 
posted about a few years back here, a book easily sits in libraries and 
doesn't immediately go out of print.  So it leaves time for someone to 
find it, and anyone looking up computers at the library that carried the 
book would find it, without having to know that such thing existed in the 
first place.

    Michael


> http://www.vintagecomputer.net/images/simon.jpg
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/B1514.01
>
>
> http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/
>
>

I realize this query was posted a few years ago, but for anyone still interested, a couple of things:
--Berkeley advertised in the back of many magazines regularly. You can find him, for example, in the pages of Galaxy SF magazine.
--If you want more info on Simon's popularity and are not just looking for a kit, you might check the Computer History Museum in Ca.-the website is searchable and here you will find a guide to the papers of Edmund Berkeley: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/?s=edmund+berkeley%2C+simon+computer+kit - 
--to find out how popular/sales, etc., you might look at sales records; you can also look for correspondence between Berkeley Enterprises and the various tech magazines of the period.


On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 1:22:16 PM UTC-4, Derek Simmons wrote:
> This isn't the first time I’ve posted this inquiry but it has been about four years since the last time I did.
> 
> I’m looking for anybody with firsthand experience or knowledge of somebody having built or bought the plans for Edmund Berkeley’s Simon. I’ve watched eBay and searched websites but I haven’t come across anybody other than the author that built or tried to build one.
> 
> Edmund Berkeley’s Simon is credited as being the first home computer. But I am wondering if anybody ever built one. It appeared in a series of articles in Radio Electronics and an article in Scientific American. With minor differences in color printing, the computer pictured on the magazines covers is the same one. If you read the articles in Radio Electronics Berkeley presents types of logic circuits that could be constructed using relays for computer but he doesn’t actually describe how to assemble a complete computer. 
> 
> Most of the parts he used were and are still widely available. In his design it mostly used toggle switches, lights, diodes and relays. The two parts that might be difficult to come by were the paper tape reader and the mechanical or state switch. The mechanical state switch could be found in a mechanical pinball machine. But the paper tape reader, how popular were those in 1950s? And, how easy was it for a home hobbyist to come by one?
> 
> At Brent Hilbert’s website:
> 
> http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/simon/index.html
> 
> He’s come to some of the same conclusions that I have about the articles being incomplete and has filled in the gaps.
> 
> Its been written that the author sold schematics through the back pages of magazines. One of the theories I’ve come to is that maybe the articles were intentionally incomplete but enough to get someone started to lure them in to get them to buy the schematics later. At the Blinkenlights website (http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml) they claim that over 400 copies of the plans were sold. So, I’m also wondering if anyone ever bought a set of schematics? Or still has a set?
> 
> So, anybody ever seen an actual Simon?

I've been scouring the internet and finally found a digital set of Simon plans!
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000473670

dimesand...@gmail.com writes:

> I've been scouring the internet and finally found a digital set of Simon plans!
> https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000473670

Don't do things like this to me...  I don't have time for more
projects...