The TX-2 computer

Resource Page on Early HCI Research by the Lincoln Lab TX-2 Group

One of the most influential groups in shaping interactive computing as we know it was based at MIT's Lincoln Lab between about 1953 and 1969. The focal point of the group was the TX-2 computer (and its predecessor, the TX-0), designed by Wesley Clark.

Comments: Love the monitor! More on: The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer and Sketchpad (Sketchpad ran on the Lincoln TX-2 (1958) computer at MIT)

From "female German cartoon character, named Lilli, who used sex to get what she wanted" to Barbie

50-year-old Barbie, based on 'gag toy for men'

Excerpt:

The now-legendary doll was conceived by Ruth Handler, a daughter of Polish immigrants, said Gerber, author of the newly published "Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her." She and her husband, Elliott, owned Mattel until a scandal involving accusations of cooked books drove them out in 1975, Gerber said.

Handler, who died in 2002, used to watch her own daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls. Then, on a trip to Europe, Barbara became fascinated with a buxom doll that Gerber said was based on a female German cartoon character, named Lilli, who used sex to get what she wanted.

"My guess is she didn't know what it was when she bought it," because at that point, four years after the Lilli doll's release, it had landed in European toy stores, the author explained.Handler took the doll back to the states and insisted Mattel designers get to work.

"Who would have thought," Gerber said. Barbie was thought up by a woman and modeled on a cartoon character "who was essentially a prostitute."

Comment: Completely not surprised. Sadly some like the woman below see Barbie as the representation of womanhood:

Cindy Jackson, a 53-year-old woman inspired by Barbie to do much more than collect dolls and splurge on matching outfits.

Over the course of more than two decades, Jackson has gone under the knife for 13 full-scale operations, including multiple procedures each time, and hundreds of less intrusive cosmetic tune-ups in order to achieve the "all-American beauty" look she said Barbie represents.

More on Barbie's measurements:

Ruth Handler, Whose Barbie Gave Dolls Curves, Dies at 85

... Barbie's figure created unrealistic expectations for young girls that could lead to low self-esteem. People often joked that Barbie's measurements were not humanly possible. But in fact it was determined that if the 11 1/2-inch doll were 5-foot-6, her measurements would be 39-21-33. One academic expert calculated that a woman's chances of having Barbie's figure were less than 1 in 100,000.

IBM System 32

Comment: Speaking of old computers, the IBM System 32 was one that I sold back in a 1975 time frame. The computer looked like a large office desk with a very small 6 line by 40 character display. The machine had a built-in printer that directly faced the operator when seated. It had 16 kB or 32 kB of memory, a single hard drive that was available in 5 MB, 9 MB, or 13 MB sizes, and an eight-inch floppy drive. As I recollect these sold for about $ 45,000.

More information below:

IBM Archives: BM System/32

Corestore Collection - IBM System/32 5320

These were designed for basic accounting software: We called it "BICARSA" (BIlling, Inventory Control, Accounts Receivable, and Sales Analysis)

My first computer sale was to replace and IBM 1130 with an IBM System 3.

Below is a pic of the console of the IBM 1130

Mac retrospective

Jan. 1984: How critics reviewed the Mac

Excerpt:

Byte, Gregg Williams, February 1984

The Macintosh brings us one step closer to the ideal of computer as appliance.

Creative Computing, John Anderson, July 1984

In its current form, the Macintosh is the distilled embodiment of a promise: the software can be intuitively easy to use, while remaining just as powerful as anything else around. It is now time to lay out the “bads”:

• The Macintosh does not have enough RAM.
• Single microfloppy is slow and inadequate.
• There are no internal expansion slots or external expansion buses.
• MacWrite has some severe limitations.
• The system is monochrome only.
• MS-DOS compatibility is ruled out.
• The Macintosh will not multitask.
• You can’t use a Mac away from a desk.
• MacPaint has an easel size limitation.
• Forget about external video.
• Macintosh software development is an involved process.

Bill Gates

Anybody who could write a good application on a 128K Mac deserves a medal.

Comment: With the Mac came the innovation of the mouse! Video: That 1984 Super Bowl commercial with the “Big Brother” theme. I think I've only seen this once before! Very cool. My Brother (Roger) had a Mac. Not much power by today's standards but back then I had a TRS-80 (that was even less!)

To skewer Bill Gates, "Anybody who could write a good operating system that runs in less than 512 MB deserves a medal" (Err Linux ... )

More on the 1984 themed commercial here!

How wage and price controls fostered health insurance

Why Tie Health Insurance to a Job? One thing we can all agree on is that portable coverage is more secure.

Excerpt:

Employers didn't start offering health benefits roughly 60 years ago because they were experts in medical decisions. It was a way of circumventing the World War II wage and price controls. Barred from offering higher salaries to attract workers, employers offered health insurance instead. Aided by an IRS ruling that said workers who received health benefits did not have to pay income taxes on them, and by the fact that employers could write off the cost of the health benefits as a business related expense, this accidental arrangement became the primary way most Americans access health care.

The system worked at first, but a lot has changed in 60 years. Back then, the average soldier returning from World War II took a job with a local company where he would work for decades until he got a gold watch at a big retirement party. Today, lifetime employment is dead. By 42, the average American will change jobs 11 times.

Sixty years ago, most American companies competed only against neighboring companies for lucrative contracts. Today, most businesses are up against foreign companies that don't foot the bill for their employees' health-care costs.

Comment: Interesting about how health care benefits were a way to circumvent wage and price controls. Can any of my readers verify that this is fact?

Child of "Migrant Mother" speaks

Girl from iconic Great Depression photo: 'We were ashamed'

Excerpt:

The photograph became an icon of the Great Depression: a migrant mother with her children burying their faces in her shoulder. Katherine McIntosh was 4 years old when the photo was snapped. She said it brought shame -- and determination -- to her family.

"I wanted to make sure I never lived like that again," says McIntosh, who turns 77 on Saturday. "We all worked hard and we all had good jobs and we all stayed with it. When we got a home, we stayed with it."

McIntosh is the girl to the left of her mother when you look at the photograph. The picture is best known as "Migrant Mother," a black-and-white photo taken in February or March 1936 by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson, then 32, and her children.

Lange was traveling through Nipomo, California, taking photographs of migrant farm workers for the Resettlement Administration. At the time, Thompson had seven children who worked with her in the fields.

Comment: View CNN article (Link) for picture of Katherine McIntosh, now 77 - then 4, holding famous photo. Wiki article on Florence Owens Thompson. The Library of Congress entitles the Migrant Mother image, Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. Six other fascinating Dorthy Lange photos of the "Migrant Mother" are available here

Westwood Baptist Church

Comment:

I found this on Google mapping - Street view today. This is the church where I was baptized back in 1971.

I attended Sunday School in the white educational wing. I entered and exited through those steps on the front of the church. The Pastor used to stand in the foyer (just beyond the front door) and greet me after ever service. It was then known as Westwood Baptist Church. Now it is known as Central Church of Christ. I would love to know the history of what happened to Westwood Baptist Church.

The "Candy Bomber" (60 years later)

'CANDY BOMBER' WON BERLINERS' HEARTS

Excerpt:

there were still hard feelings from the war between American occupation forces and the German people.

"Germany was a conquered nation, and they still had the wounds of war pretty deep in them, and of course our guys had the same feelings about them," Halvorsen said.

All of that changed with the airlift and a brainstorm Halvorsen had one day to drop candy in tiny parachutes to German children watching the planes land at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport.

"That's the smartest decision I made in my life," he said, "and it had a lifelong impact."

Hundreds of letters of gratitude came pouring in from Berliners, both young and old. One little girl insisted on giving Halvorsen her only surviving possession, a well-worn teddy bear.

"'I want you to have it to keep you and the other fliers safe on your trips to Berlin,'" she told him. "I tried to refuse it, but her mother said words to the effect that I must accept it."

Halvorsen still has the teddy bear.

The "Candy Bomber" captured the hearts of the Berliners, and the airlift saved them from the Soviets.

Resources:

Berlin Blockade

Colonel Gail Halvorsen

The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour

LEO pioneer dies

David Caminer, a Pioneer in Computers, Dies at 92

Excerpts:

Lyons was the first company in the world to computerize its commercial operations, partly because it had so many of them: it had more than 200 teahouses in London and its suburbs, with each Lyons Corner House daily generating thousands of paper receipts and needing scores of fresh baked items.

In addition to running the tea shops, Lyons catered large events like tennis at Wimbledon and garden parties at Windsor Castle; it also operated hotels, laundries, and ice cream, candy and meat pie companies. And, of course, tea plantations.

As a result, the company required exceptionally efficient office support. So it was only natural it would look at the “electronic brains” that scientists in the United States were developing for scientific and military purposes as a way to streamline its own empire. Mr. Caminer’s role was finding ways to retain traditional clerical rigor while speeding up the company’s logistics and finances many times over.

The result was LEO, its name derived from Lyons Electronic Office. The Economist magazine called it “the first dedicated business machine to operate on the ‘stored program principle,’ meaning that it could be quickly reconfigured to perform different tasks by loading a new program.”

“LEO’s early success owed less to its hardware than to its highly innovative systems-oriented approach to programming, devised and led by David Caminer,” Computer Weekly said last year.

LEO performed its first calculation on Nov. 17, 1951, running a program to evaluate costs, prices and margins of that week’s baked output. At that moment, Lyons was years ahead of I.B.M. and the other computer giants that eventually overtook it.


...
Mr. Caminer has been called the first corporate electronic systems analyst, a designation with which Mr. Ceruzzi agreed.

The finished LEO, which had less than 100,000th the power of a current PC, could calculate an employee’s pay in 1.5 seconds, a job that took an experienced clerk eight minutes. Its success led Lyons to set up a computer subsidiary that later developed two more generations of LEO, the last with transistors, rather than the noisy vacuum tubes used in the first two models.

LEOs were sold to the Ford Motor Company, tobacco companies, a steel maker, South Africa, Australia, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, among other buyers. When the British government chose the last LEO to handle its telephone billing system, Tony Benn, postmaster general, praised Lyons for “standing up to and beating on its own merits” the competition from overseas.



Wikipedia: The British LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I)

Excerpt:

J. Lyons and Co., one of the UK's leading catering and food manufacturing companies in the first half of the 20th century, sent two of its senior managers to the USA in 1947 to look at new business methods developed during the Second World War. During their visit they came across digital computers then used exclusively for engineering and mathematical computations. They saw the potential of computers to help solve the problem of administering a major business enterprise. They also learned that Cambridge University, back in the UK, was actually building such a machine, the pioneering EDSAC computer.

On their return to company headquarters in London they made a recommendation to the Lyons' Board that Lyons should acquire or build a computer to meet their business needs. This was accepted, and it was agreed that Cambridge University should receive some financial support if the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory gave some help to the Lyons' initiative.

Cambridge provided training and support for the Lyons' engineers. By 1949 they had the basics of a computer specifically designed for business data processing running and on 17 November 1951 rolled out the first commercial business application. The computer was called the LEO—Lyons Electronic Office.


LEO Computers Society


Comment: I know quite a bit about computing history, but today was my introduction to LEO!

From Gatling to the AK-47

Point and Shoot

Excerpts:

Sgt. Mikhail Kalashnikov ... in 1947 built an automatic rifle with just eight moving parts, so stoutly put together that it proved almost impervious to dirt, sand and mud. This was the AK-47, which Michael Hodges celebrates in words as lyrical as Ms. Keller's: "Sublime," he gushes of its design, remarking on "the curve of the magazine, the parallel lines of the barrel and the gas tube."

...
the AK-47 eventually showed itself to be ideal for peasant armies, rebel guerrillas, child soldiers and drug lords. There are millions of Kalashnikov's automatic rifles in combat around the world. So iconic is the gun that it appears on the flag of Mozambique, crossed with a hoe as one of the essential implements of national liberation. For all we read of weapons of mass destruction, the homely AK-47 – costing as little as $100 from a Bulgarian factory – is the true WMD. It has killed far more human beings than all the nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons ever employed.

But it is not true, as Mr. Hodges would have us believe, that the AK-47 is the nemesis of American warfighters in Iraq. Most casualties there are inflicted by roadside bombs. "Small arms fire" now ranks third as a slayer of our soldiers and Marines, behind such mundane traumas as traffic accidents.


Comments: I have a close relative (unnamed here as it is not prudent to publically state who has a gun!) who has a beautifully restored M-1 Garand.

More on the:

1. AK-47
   
2. M1 Garand
   
3. M16
   
4. Gatling gun
   

The driving force for weapons technology has been to quickly end war or prevent war. The author of the linked article cites this:

Gatling's patent was filed during the U.S. Civil War. With the naiveté of inventors everywhere, he urged the gun's adoption by the Union army on the grounds that it would not only crush the rebellion but "save lives, wounds and sickness, by lessening the number [of soldiers] subjected to the perils of war."

Who said?

I've been thinking about this quote - I'm sure you've heard it multiple times:

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it"

I Googled this quote and found these links:

Barleby.com

"Studying history is necessary to avoid repeating past mistakes. This saying comes from the writings of George Santayana, a Spanish-born American author of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."


Barleby.com

QUOTATION: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
ATTRIBUTION: George Santayana (1863–1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Life of Reason, “Reason in Common Sense,” ch. 12 (1905-6).

William L. Shirer made these words the epigraph for his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)

Jaywalker.ca

A quick search on the Internet repeatedly bumps into the famous George Santayana quote “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Yet the ‘net contradictorily informs us that he actually said “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. Not to miss any angle, the Misinformation Superhighway quotes poor, tired, old George as having said “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Of course, cypherspace has a few other versions of this quote that offer condemnation instead of doom, such as “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” and “those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it”. Finally, for the historically unaware, the digital world serves up “those who are ignorant of history are condemned to repeat it”.

Wiki: George Santayana

A lifelong Spanish citizen, Santayana was raised and educated in the United States, wrote in English and is generally considered an American man of letters, although, of his nearly 89 years, he spent only 39 in the U.S. He is perhaps best known as an aphorist, and for the oft-misquoted remark, "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," from Reason in Common Sense, the first volume of his The Life of Reason.

More Santayana quotes

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

“Love makes us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.”

“Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better.”

100 years of oil

100 years ago today, Middle East oil discovered

Wiki: William Knox D'Arcy

BP: First oil


Comment: It's hard to imagine life without oil!

The "way back" computer

Charles Babbage’s Proto-Brain Comes to America

Excerpt:

The Science Museum in London has built two replicas of Charles Babbage’s original design for the Difference Engine No. 2. Originally planned between 1847 and 1849, the five-ton, 8,000- part system for calculating polynomials was finally completed in 2002 by a team of engineers who took 17 years to complete the entire project. Difference Engine No. 2 includes a remarkable printing component that almost certainly would have been the world’s first automated typesetter, had Babbage completed his original design during his lifetime.

The all-mechanical Difference Engine adds with numbers that are 31 digits long and it can calculate polynomials up to the seventh order. However, it is the printer that appears to be even more strikingly modern. It will produce an ink printout, but also has the capability of producing a mold for a printing plate. It automatically typesets results in columns as well as employing two separate font sizes.

Comment: Be sure to view the video in the NYTime article. Also consider these helpful links: Charles Babbage and Difference engine

Flood victim?

Baby mammoth reveals ancient secrets

Excerpt:

"Her internal organs were well preserved — the heart was seen distinctly with all its ventricles and atria, as well as the liver and its veins," Tikhonov told Reuters.

"This is the best preserved specimen not only of the mammoth but of any prehistoric animal."

The mammoth species has been extinct since the Ice Age. Tests on Lyuba showed she was fed on milk and was three to four months old when she died 37,000 years ago in what is now the Yamalo-Nenetsk region in Russia's Arctic.

Scientists were excited by the find because, although her shaggy coat was gone, her skin was intact, protecting her internal organs from contamination by modern-day microbes.

Tikhonov said the computer tomography, which provided a sharp three-dimensional image of Lyuba's insides, revealed no injuries or fractures.

The scans showed her airways and digestive system were clogged with what scientists believe was silt, leading them to conclude that she must have drowned.



Comment: By flood victim, I mean "THE FLOOD"

The rise of modern convervatism

Goldwater, the John Birch Society and Me

Excerpt:

... it seemed inconceivable that an antiestablishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal--the GOP's nominating Goldwater for president--was the John Birch Society.

The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a "dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy," and that the government of the United States was "under operational control of the Communist party." It was, he said in the summer of 1961, "50-70 percent" Communist-controlled.


Comment: First they had to slay the dragon of the lunatic fringe (The John Birch Society).

Springfield IL trip

Tomorrow Kathee and I will be leaving at 6:30 a.m. to drive to Springfield, IL. Our express purpose is to visit the Lincoln Presidential library & museum. We've been to Springfield before (a previous "week of Lincoln" trip where we read about 5 books about Lincoln plus visited Lincoln locations in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois). We will be staying at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel

The house that spite built

A Tiny, Beloved Home That Was Built for Spite

Excerpt:

Structurally, it’s more of an enclosed alley than a house — the brick walls of older houses on either side form the painted brick walls in the living room. It’s called the Spite House by some because John Hollensbury, the owner of one of the adjacent houses, built it in 1830 to keep horse-drawn wagons and loiterers out of his alley. Indeed, the brick walls of the living room have gouges from wagon-wheel hubs.

Comment: Image from Alexandria Daily Photo. More Narrow Thinking

And then there's the Skinny house in Boston!

First computer "bug"

The Wonderful World of Early Computing

Excerpt:

On September 9, 1945, U.S. Navy officer Grace Hopper found the first computer "bug": a moth stuck between the relays on the Harvard Mark II (successor to the Mark I [picture in article]) She noted it on her log as the "first actual case of bug being found." Though the term "bug" had meant a computer error beforehand, it became a popular term after this incident.

Hopper went on to create the first compiler for a computer programming language (the A-0 System for the UNIVAC in 1952) and worked on the development of COBOL, one of the earliest high-level programming languages that allowed programmers to use words instead of machine codes. To acknowledge her contributions, the U.S. Navy named a ship after her (it’s a guided missile destroyer, by the way).

Even if you’ve never heard of Grace Hopper before reading this article, chances are you’ve heard one of her famous quotes: "It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."


Comment: Of her famous quote: "It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission", this is my credo to accomplish things at work! (I'm good at apologizing!)

Before your "Fridge" had an ice-maker

Friday, Jan. 24, 1890: Cedar Lake ice harvest

Comment: For pics of ice harvesting in Plymouth MN, check out www.plymouth-mn.com. Select "History" ... "ice harvesting". What killed this industry: the Refrigerator

Ketcham's famous 'quote'

Ketcham didn’t say it

Famous 'quote':

Your Heavenly Father is too good to be unkind and too wise to make mistakes

Summary:

Robert Ketcham didn’t really say it. Well, okay, he said it, but he wasn’t the first.

Not only was Ketcham known for frequently saying, “Your Heavenly Father is too good to be unkind and too wise to make mistakes,” but also the quote was reproduced by the thousands and could frequently be found framed in the foyer of our Regular Baptist churches. Recently a reader asked whatever happened to those placards, which were dropped from our catalog a while back. So I devoted a couple of lunch hours to tracking down a bit more of the story.

...


Comment: He said it, but not the first! Still a great quote!