Reproducing old machines with newer technology (Re: PDP-12 at the RICM)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 07/16/2015 01:12 AM, Dave G4UGM wrote:

> Apparently the School of Medicine, Manchester University, England
> were given a 7090 which they later connected to a PDP-8. A bit of
> googling turned this up :-
>
> http://www.ukuug.org/newsletter/linux-newsletter/linux@uk12/dclark.shtml

Nice article.  Many folks fail to appreciate the link between medicine 
and the history of computing.  In particular, my first encounter with 
database technology came from a study of MEDLARS, the system still in 
existence today at the NIH.  What I found particularly fascinating was 
the ability to automatically organize text documents and then subject 
them to English-language querying and getting results.  (All done on 
tape, naturally)

I'm reminded of this when I look over at my bookshelf and see Gerry 
Salton's magnum opus "Automatic Information Organization and Retrieval" 
sitting on a shelf. MEDLARS figures prominently in this book.  Back 
then, it was pretty hot stuff.

Of course, now we have Google...

--Chuck