On 10/29/2012 10:34 PM, jim s wrote:
From the Computerworld Sharktank
Flashback to the mid-1960s, when the Control Data 6600 computer was
the fastest thing going, according to this IT pilot fish who remembers
it well.
"It was about 1 megaFLOPS," says fish. "The operator console, manned
24/7 of course, had two large, circular CRT screens, side-by-side,
that almost always displayed operator messages scrolling up the
screens. As long as those messages were scrolling, the operator seldom
had to pay attention to them.
"But the CRTs were actually vector displays, capable of more, under
program control.
"It's 2 o'clock in the morning. Halloween. Suddenly, the two screens
go blank. Then two closed eyes appear. Slowly open. Eyeballs look
slowly to the left, then slowly to the right -- then slowly stare
straight ahead. Then eyelids slowly close, the two displays blank, and
go back to scrolling plain text.
"Of course, nobody is going to believe the operator..."