Forgot your password?
Cyhist Apr 13 1997 A
Document Actions
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 11:23:39 EDT
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Alex McKenzie <mckenzie@BBN.COM>
Subject: 1620 & 1401
X-To: cyhist@SJUVM.stjohns.edu
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
I'm thrilled with the desription of a still-working 1620 from David Wise. The 1620 was the first computer I programmed; I was a sophomore or junior at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ) when the school got its first computer - a 1620 - and I became an enthusiast almost immediately. Although most users were doing engineering problems in FORTRAN, there was an assember (possibly named SPS ?) in which I wrote a symbolic differentiation program. It was pretty primitive (I think it was limited to polynomials and simple trigonometrics), but this was about 1960 and I was quite pleased with my efforts.
A few years later (1964) I was at Honeywell working on FORTRAN compilers for the Honeywell 200 series. Although I never used an IBM 1401 or 1410, the Honeywell 200 was a 1401 knock-off which was quite a lot faster than the original due to the advances in technology. The idea was that a 1401 shop could upgrade to an H200 and run their programs unchanged. Unfortunately, the Honeywell engineers couldn't resist improving the operation of the machine a bit, so many 1401 programs wouldn't run after all! Anyhow, the H200 had both a "word mark" and an "item mark" bit associated with each 6-bit data character. A "record" was delimited by both the "word" and "item" marks on. Because of the "engineering improvements" which made the H200 different from the 1401 I can't swear that the field delimiters in the 1401 worked exactly the same, but I'm sure that the concepts came from the 1401.
Cheers,
Alex McKenzie
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: Alex McKenzie <mckenzie@BBN.COM>
Subject: 1620 & 1401
X-To: cyhist@SJUVM.stjohns.edu
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
I'm thrilled with the desription of a still-working 1620 from David Wise. The 1620 was the first computer I programmed; I was a sophomore or junior at Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, NJ) when the school got its first computer - a 1620 - and I became an enthusiast almost immediately. Although most users were doing engineering problems in FORTRAN, there was an assember (possibly named SPS ?) in which I wrote a symbolic differentiation program. It was pretty primitive (I think it was limited to polynomials and simple trigonometrics), but this was about 1960 and I was quite pleased with my efforts.
A few years later (1964) I was at Honeywell working on FORTRAN compilers for the Honeywell 200 series. Although I never used an IBM 1401 or 1410, the Honeywell 200 was a 1401 knock-off which was quite a lot faster than the original due to the advances in technology. The idea was that a 1401 shop could upgrade to an H200 and run their programs unchanged. Unfortunately, the Honeywell engineers couldn't resist improving the operation of the machine a bit, so many 1401 programs wouldn't run after all! Anyhow, the H200 had both a "word mark" and an "item mark" bit associated with each 6-bit data character. A "record" was delimited by both the "word" and "item" marks on. Because of the "engineering improvements" which made the H200 different from the 1401 I can't swear that the field delimiters in the 1401 worked exactly the same, but I'm sure that the concepts came from the 1401.
Cheers,
Alex McKenzie
______________________________________________________________________
