16 Dec
1998
16 Dec
'98
4:26 p.m.
Sam Ismail wrote:
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, James Willing wrote:
As much as I love old computers, I'd rather see that hangar restored
for its original purpose. I fell in love with airships _long_ before
I had the least interest in computers, my childhood home was under
the flight path between the Goodyear hangar in Inglewood and the Rose
Bowl in Pasadena -- to hell with staying indoors and watching that
silly parade on TV. In fact, I took my first programming course to
learn to work out engineering questions on the rigid airship designs
that I'm still playing with, it was pure coincidence that it was a
prerequisite or concurrent requirement for the calculus sequence I
also started that quarter (I was a mathematics major, after all).
Back in the late 70s when I was commuting along 101 between Los Altos
and Santa Clara it depressed me to see a building large enough to
have its own weather do nothing more than hold a handful of Navy P-3s
littering the floor. Unfortunately, it couldn't be used for the ones
I design anyway, as mine are lens-shaped rather than the traditional
cigar. But there are plenty of people playing with the old styles.
By the way, this is not totally off-topic -- I still have some of the
programs I used to let my TRS-80 chew on for days at a time working
out structural optimizations. And even some I used for renderings on
the Color Computer and the Tandy 2000. Once a couple of patents have
either succeded or failed, I'll make them available (shouldn't be
more than a couple of years now).
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram@cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Marvin wrote:
NASA sold (permanently loaned?) several acres of land in Mountain View to
The Computer Museum History Center, so they will be gearing up to finally
build a permanent museum that will open sometime in the middle of the next
decade. It should be a pretty awesome facility once its all complete. As I told Sam, we sure are a generous group! I
saw the collection at Moffet
Field and in all seriousness, it sure was impressive. I heard somewhere
that permanent facilities have been established. Do you know if this is
true, and if so, when it will open to the public? That collection is a
*must see* for anyone interested in the history of computing!
Well... as I recall being stated during the VCF II tour (thanks again
Sam!), they were working the final details with NASA for the large
dirigible hanger near their temporary facillity.