2 Jan
2013
2 Jan
'13
6:25 p.m.
On Wed, 2 Jan 2013, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
involved pen plotters (black ink on white paper)
transferred to
photographic negative movie film. (White image on black).
A slightly cheaper approach (used extensively in my area of academia)
was line printer paper plots transferred to movie film (again often in
negative). Sub-character resolution was possible through choice of
characters (not dissimilar to "ASCII graphics" although I know the
movies were made using IBM and EBCDIC!)
There was talk of direct-laser-to-film but I never saw it.
I was at GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Greenbelt Maryland in 1969.
But, had almost no idea what I was doing.
("Data Technician", but spent most of my time doing FORTRAN, APL, and
manual plotting of graphs for a British physisicist stufying Van Allen
belts)
On-site contractor (KMS Technology)
Building 26, "National Space Sciences Data Center"
I remember:
LOTS of punchcards, quite a few reels of tape
some EAM/"Unit Record" machines
7094, with 360/30 doing its I/O
360-70
360-90?
360-95?
Selectric terminal (with APL typeball) connecting to somewhere in
Virginia.
026 keypunches
A "Gerber Data Digitizer" (giant etch-a-sketch) connected to one of the
026s (foor pedal punched 2 3 digit numbers)
Calcomp plotters 570? 690?
Stromberg-Carlson/Stromberg-Datagraphics? 4020? and 4060? direct to 16mm
or 35mm film printer/plotters
off-limits cubicles with 029 punches and professional keypunchers.
"Do EVERYTHING on coding sheets, and submit them to the keypunchers; if
you punch your own code, we'll start paying you keypunch wages." Since I
was being paid LESS than that, I ignored THAT threat/promise?.
"Plot E Vs L for this data printout"
"Take this deck of cards to building xx. But duplicate it on unmarked
cards first, because you don't have clearance to touch it."
"Run this data through GLSP with variables of xxx and yyy"
"Convert those 3 CABINETS of FORTRAN from Calcomp output to SC"
"Fetch this order from the cafeteria"