PC of the future (as predicted in 1954)

Ganssle group ^ | 12-07-04 | Ganssle

[R. Scott]

In the ‘50’s few could imagine that the great advances would come in computers and communication. In 1954 we had a party line with half a dozen people on it – two of them older spinster ladies who lived next door to each other but used the telephone to gossip and swap recipes. Making a call out of the county was a big deal, and making a cross country or international call required a reservation. All the recent improvements were in transportation. I was promised that I could retire to a community on the Moon or Mars. I doubt anyone even dreamed that I could carry a telephone smaller than a pack of cigarettes that could connect me almost instantly with any telephone in the world. I doubt anyone predicted that I could type a letter, click “send” and have it arrive nearly instantly anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
I remember back in 1970, while working in an office a salesman came in trying to sell a wondrous calculator. It was battery powered. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. It was no bigger than a copy of War and Peace. The one I used plugged into the wall, was the size of a small doghouse and made a terrible racket when calculating. Sometimes just for fun – and to make people think I was busy working – I would enter 999,999 divided by 5, just to have it jump around and make a racket. A few years later we had calculators built into our digital watches.

[Enterprise]

Good observation. It would be like showing a 54 Ford with an 8-track.

[Redleg Duke]

This a hoax picture, debunked last week on this forum. It is a doctored picture of a submarine control station mock-up from the 50's at a trade show.

[Doohickey]

They're forward and astern throttles.

[Route101]

Thats a 55 Dodge........

[Bandaneira]

The Micro Dooverwhacky Thingamijigg Protoype No. AX-1256 made by the ACME Corporation pictured on the left hand side of the console gives it all away. I am techno wizz- kid from way back...Now, why isn't my Canon S200SPx printer working and what has happened to the toaster since I connected it to the DVD player for extra oomph ?

[Constantine XIII]

LOL, how cool is FR that we have multiple nuclear submarine pilots? :D

[walford]

"We used them to.Thats a LA36 DECwriter II Terminal.Terminals for state of the art PDP1178's."

I thought it looked familiar. We were running an Intergraph CAD system in 1979 that had a DEC PDP1170 as the CPU [which we called Myrtle]. It had a total of 512K of memory.

There were 8 stations running directly off the mainframe -- there weren't any processors in the original versions. So if 2 or three operators tried to refresh their storage tube displays [there were no raster screens yet], the entire system would lock-up. Re-booting took about 20min.

Thus we were told to holler, "I'm gonna do an update" before refreshing the screen.

[maestro]

It's another 'RAND' Wheel......that's what the 'wheels' are all about!

:-)

[Wiz]

Whoever assembled this model of PC as in the photo must go back to college and study about human interface once more. Why would the monitor be hanged on the wall on the right hand while the keyboard is in front? After hours of operation, you are going to have aches in your neck. Where is the punch card storage? The bulk of paper in front?

[Gorzaloon]

As an example of almost-forgotten progress, we found a dusty old Seagate ST-225 hard drive in the back of an old cabinet. The geeks had a joking session..."Where is the wooden pulley on the side? You know- Where it was connected by a flapping leather belt to the overhead shaft that the steam angine used to run???"

[RinaseaofDs]

I used to drive icebreakers for a living. RAND built the control system for Lockheed when they built the two Polar Class breakers for the CG in the 1970's.

This looks like 'aft steering' or some other secondary steering console for a ship.

[elli1]

The wheel is a pressure valve for your disk drive. Without it, all the bits would fly off the platters!!!

Cool. So when I gets my wheel, a bunch of guages will come in the package, too. I sure hope Dell offers console color options...I'm thinking teal & brushed nickel...

[Colosis]

I remember meeting a guy called John Mockley (I think) when I was a kid in the early eighties. He was a married to a first cousin of my mum and he visited our home in Ireland while on some lecture tour. The computer he developed in the 50s was called ENIAC. I remember him showing me pictures of the computer, not so unlike the pic above! Amazing that there are some real submarine pilots who recognize the picture.

[DaveTesla]

We also ran NCR Century 100's. Set the boot address on a
string of hexadecimal rotary switches on the console.
Actually had 20M hard drives. Each one was as big as a
washing machine.
The disk packs looked like 8 layer cakes under big covered
cake dishes.
We would load them in the top of the drive and unlock
and remove the covers and pray the heads didn't crash
when they spun up.

[RadioAstronomer]

i really like the wheel though

This has been circulating at work. LOL! We figure the wheel was added to allow a person to "steer" through the world wide web. :-)

[Route101]

Kinda looks like the I.B.M. 360 I ran back at JPL.....

[RadioAstronomer]

My very first command to a spacecraft on orbit was with an Hp 2114 (16k of real core memory) computer using an ASR-35 Teletype machine as a console. We had to use a prepunched paper tape to boot load the computer prior to use. :-)

[DaveTesla]

Ferrite cores?

[R. Scott]

It would seem like that to anyone under 30.