13 Jul
2006
13 Jul
'06
9:29 p.m.
On 7/13/2006 at 11:46 PM Patrick Finnegan wrote:
We now have a second speaker, so the event will start
at 11am with George
Goble speaking about the history of computing at Purdue's Engineering
schools, followed by Jack Rubin at 12pm. Both talks will be in Purdue's
Stewart Center, room 202, followed by exhibits opening at 1pm in room 218.
Isn't George the one who did the "how to light a barbeque really, really
fast" stunt?
Purdue is/was odd that there are two Computer disciplines--that
administered by the EE department and the one handled by the Math
department (maybe not today; I haven't kept track) The EE folks used to
give computer architecture classes to the mathematics urchins.
It was a very strange department 40 years ago--there were profs who taught
computer classes who had never been to the basement of the math building,
nor ever written a program. I remember Saul Rosen lugging one of those big
Monroe mechanical calculators to the first meeting of Numerical Methods
class Peter and Dorothy Denning taught bonehead FORTRAN back then.
Some math faculty were absolutely hostile to the computer folks--I suspect
they thought that the pure science was being polluted by a bunch of
machinery. Maybe they were right--but I'd hate to have to derive the 4
color map problem solution manually.
Cheers,
Chuck
.