On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Tony Duell wrote: According to _Computer: A History of the Information Machine_ by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray (BasicBooks, ISBN: 0-465-02989-2 [hard] 0-465-02990-6 [paper]), Len Olsen is quoted as choosing the name Programmed Data Processor because nobody would believe that "in 1960 computers that could do the job could be built for less than $1 million." BTW, this book is a good read. It starts with the requisite story of Babbage and goes into the computers that sprang out of the war effort (EDVAC, EDSAC, etc) then goes into the Univac story, launches into the IBM story and carries on for several chapters, then starts winding down with the microcomputer revolution. Strangely enough they give a couple sentences of mention to HP. Some of the information that is presented in this book is suspect, and some is plain wrong. A minor annoyance to an otherwise decent tome. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!

At 22:16 2/28/98 +0000, you wrote: Reminds me of a story Willy Ley used to tell about getting around military procurement regs when he was developing antiaircraft rockets for the Wehrmacht in the thirties. They had this asinine rule that you couldn't use Army development grant money to buy office supplies, yet Ley's little boffin shop urgently needed a typewriter. Now, a couple of times before they had hit on the dodge of ordering unapproved items "as per sample" ( = "on eval") on the (correct) theory that if the green-eyeshades had never seen the sample, they'd shrug and let it through anyway. So, the description they came up with for the typewriter was "Data logging device with rotating roller and annotating capability, as per sample." Needless to say, it worked.... __________________________________________ Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org http://www.chac.org/index.html Computer History Association of California

At 08:39 PM 2/28/98 -0800, you wrote: His actual description was more like "machine for milling wooden dowels with conical point".

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, Sam Ismail wrote: True! The DOD had such a policy in the '70s. A lot of 'programmable calculators were bought in that era. - don donm(a)cts.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology. Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412 *--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--* see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Weg site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998 22:16:16 +0000 (GMT), you said: <snip> I did the same sort of thing twice, but was up front about it, and paid the price; I needed the Borland TP Database and Editor tools, so requested their 'Jumbo Toolbox' (is that correct?) which came also with their Game toolbox. Lots of explaining about how we saved money by accepting the package deal vs. separate packages. In the same request, I asked for Brief (programmers editor, excellent) by Underware, Inc. (Everyone in the approval chain called me to ask; "Are you kidding?" _______________ Barry Peterson bmpete(a)swbell.net Husband to Diane, Father to Doug, Grandfather to Zoe and Tegan.