Two years later I could have gotten a wristwatch calculator at the swap meet for five bucks.
Posted on 12/26/2011 5:30:15 AM PST by Daffynition
DANBURY, Conn. – For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.
They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized "cleanroom" where the equipment was stored.
They spoke in code.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Whats her name Carly Fiorina destroyed HP.
They used to lead the world in scientific measurement.
Now its Agilent, and some of its good and some of it sucks.
We are now in a new world of development, using Software defined defined instruments. Matlab and Labview.
We are now in a new world of development, using Software defined instruments. Matlab and Labview.
Two years later I could have gotten a wristwatch calculator at the swap meet for five bucks.
... rows & rows of women operating this marvel of efficiency, with both hands. Now, dem wuz da good ole days!
Ooops, make that comptometer.
They still make thingsin CT still, but the liberals and unions are making it hard. Royal and Underwood used to make typewriters in Hartford, Columbia bicycles were made in Hartford, there a few auto companies (Charter Oak, Locomobile, Pope Hartford) in CT and guns.
My dad was a computer engineerand Ihave a picture of him next to a 50's computer, my dad said today's watches are more powerful than that computer.
A room full of computers, as they were called back then.
Not the machines, the people.
It'd be great to see that photo.
I first got my mitz on a computer (an IBM 1620) briefly at my college in early 1963. It took about another decade for me to get fully immersed in computer software and eventually architecture.
I have an HP35s, which is pretty good, except for the PITA entry of digits A-F in hex mode.
The eyes in the sky never blink.
I was at San Vito Air Station too, 62-63. It was the 6917th RGM (USAFSS) then. We had the locals convinced that the FLR-9 was used to refuel submarines.
When I worked FDC for 105 and 155 gun lines in the Marines in the early ‘80s, I was the guy who handled the horizontal chart and my buddy Ron was the “computer”. He was fast with the books. It wasn’t long after that time that the Marines went to a Texas Instruments calculator with a special template the fit over the top.
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Thanks Daffynition for the topic, thanks humblegunner for the link over in the other topic, and thanks Captain Beyond for pinging me to the other topic: The approach was not novel -- a similar, much smaller program was run during the Eisenhower administration, one can see one of the "cans" at the Air & Space museum. But 60 miles of film times 19 satellites, that's a lot of info. Bravo to our cold warriors! |
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I had an SR10 in ‘73 but we also had to have the slide rule for some old school profs.
That model (STW-10) came out in 1949. The Apartment is from 1960.
During the Manhattan Project there was a unit that did calculations, managed by Richard Feynman. I have read that they used Friden calculators.
In B-school, 20 years ago, the HP-12c equivalent that was suggested, if RPN wasn’t your forte, was the Sharp EL-733
We talking about this at lunch; a friend who in charge of all the IT for Bloomberg was commenting on how technology has advanced so quickly ...can you imagine scooping-up film that has parachuted into the pacific Ocean? compared to now and what we can do from our smart phone?
My God! can you imagine all of the whirring and clicking!
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