3 Feb
2007
3 Feb
'07
1:15 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
There is, IIRC, a picture of a Stretch in the Time-Life book
"Mathematics". I don't have my copy close at hand, but I _think_ the
one in the photo was being used for weather modelling.
The photographer set up colored spots to highlight different portions
of the machine in different colors to match up with the descriptive
text.
I remember reading this book when I was a very small kid. The
computer pictures (and descriptions of core memory, etc.) made a very
strong impression on me. The book would have been published in the
1964-1965 timeframe (before I was born), and was therefore rather
dated when I would have read it in the early 1970s, but it was still
really neat.
I guess I can trace my fascination with old machines back to that book.
I still have that book too, Ethan. I received it as a little kid in the late
60's and share your sentiments about it.
Looking at the double-page spread of Stretch right now: the text says it
belonged to the U.S. Weather Bureau ("analyses 90,000 weather reports at
once", "addition in 1.5 millionths of a second").
There's also the photo of the front panel of the IBM 704 with a chess board
in front of it and indicated to be running a chess-playing program,
... another IBM 70?0 series machine doing moon-flight calculations,
... imposing photos of Claude Shannon (in front of what may be part of
Whirlwind) and Kurt Godel,
... John Kemeny having a discussion with some students at Dartmouth,
... etc, etc.