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Thread: stainless steel rat: Hi-Lo vs Zen

  1. #53
    stainless steel rat
    Guest

    stainless steel rat: Re: Your history is a bit off

    > Then I apologize for misquoting history. The
    > first computer I started using was a
    > Commodore 64, so I had to rely on the
    > testimony of others (middle school computer
    > history textbooks and such). I remember my
    > father pushing us to learn computer in the
    > early 80's and his remorse for not having a
    > computer department (as mentioned, the
    > closest was EE) in the 60's when he was
    > going through grad school..

    You are off by several generations. You missed the relay-based computers (eniac, where the term "bug" originated by commander Grace Hopper when she found a moth in the contacts of a relay preventing it from closing and causing the thing to produce an error). You missed the early transistor based machines. IBM 1620 comes to mind. You missed the early integrated circuit machines (LSI/VLSI as it was called back then) such as the IBM /360. You are jumping in later into the "microcomputer revolution". Which starts in the late 70's with machines like "the altair 8800" among others, followed by the Commodore, the TRS-80, and eventually when the 8086 came along the beginning of the "personal computer revolution."

    The first academic paper on computer chess was published in 1949, to put some time-context on what went on in academic circles. Computer science as a discipline is not nearly that old, you are correct that early on it was math and EE departments that worked with computers. But by the 1960's there were a number of schools offering CS. By the early 70's there were more schools offering some sort of computer science/data processing/computer engineering degrees than there were ones that didn't.

    If you will go to your local large university library, and look up any of the "computer chess" books by david levy or monty newborn, you will find references to my participating in annually organized computer chess events back then. And you might note that the "affiliation" section always includes "faculty, USM, etc..."

    If you pick up most any book on computer chess, you will find references to my program and my name in multiple places. I had no reason to make up anything, much less make up things about my academic background. All it takes is the tiniest bit of research. Any good university library will have some computer chess (or even AI books), many of which reference my chess program due to its success in the 70's to the 80's when computer chess was at its zenith in terms of public interest. Then we could have avoided this particular bit of nonsensical back and forth easily, don't you think?

    BTW I haven't seen any credentials mentioned for you. I could be cynical and say "hmm, must not be anything important in your background." Or I could say "hmm, private person, doesn't want to reveal details." But to suggest that revealed details are false goes way over the edge, when you didn't do any research whatsoever and every part of your post was inaccurate...

    If you had textbooks suggesting that the computer field sprang out of the 80's, the books were bad, to be kind. By 1980 we already had most of the current tools available. C, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, ADA, PASCAL, SNOBOL, RPG, you name it. As far as your father not having access to a CS program, that's only because he was at the wrong place. In the 60's computer science programs were scarce. But not unavailable. I looked and found one. There were several others by that time.

    Just my $.02...

  2. #54
    Norm Wattenberger
    Guest

    Norm Wattenberger: Computers were common in the 60s

    In fact, in Philadelphia where I lived at the time, IBM, Burroughs and Monroe all had showrooms in the city. I had hands-on experience on at least three dozen by 1970. Hundreds of universities had them. Eight Australian Universities alone had computers in 1962, 43 years ago. U of P where I worked got its first general purpose computer, a Univac I, in 1951 - 54 years ago. U of Penn, Penn State, Univ of CA, Western Reserve Univ, Univ of Illinois, MIT and Univ of Wisconsin all built their own in the 50s.

  3. #55
    Parker
    Guest

    Parker: Drifting hopelessly off-topic . . .

    > In fact, in Philadelphia where I lived at
    > the time, IBM, Burroughs and Monroe all had
    > showrooms in the city. I had hands-on
    > experience on at least three dozen by 1970.
    > Hundreds of universities had them. Eight
    > Australian Universities alone had computers
    > in 1962, 43 years ago. U of P where I worked
    > got its first general purpose computer, a
    > Univac I, in 1951 - 54 years ago. U of Penn,
    > Penn State, Univ of CA, Western Reserve
    > Univ, Univ of Illinois, MIT and Univ of
    > Wisconsin all built their own in the 50s.

    The problem (if there is one) is that most people think of a "computer" as that thing sitting on their desk. As you point out, computers have been around at least since the 50's. Playing Blackjack as a Business, with it's simulations run by Julian Braun on an IBM mainframe, was first published in 1969. (Look! Blackjack content!)

    However, the average individual with no connections to a major university likely had no direct contact with these behemoths. For most people, the "computer age" began with the rise of the personal computer.

    While dedicated hobbyists had been assembling crude kits since the mid-60's, these didn't really start to become popular until the introduction of the Altair 8800 (1974). The Commodore Vic 20 (1981) was the first PC to sell 1 million units, as well as the first to sell for under $300.

    This was followed by the Commodore 64 in 1982, which, complete with a cassette tape storage device and a whopping 64K of RAM, was my first computer.

  4. #56
    suicyco maniac
    Guest

    suicyco maniac: Drifting hopelessly off the side of my monitor *NM*


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