Tracy, It is fun to try to dredge up old memories - but I have found that they are often not accurate, so I say that up front ... sometimes names refuse to materialize as well, but come around later.
I moved with IBM from Endicott NY to Boulder in 1965 when the manufacturing plant was being built there. My first office in Boulder was in a retail store front in the Arapahoe Village shopping center that IBM had rented as temporary office space. I also commuted to work with a tape engineering group that was located in south Denver near Centennial (Arapahoe County) airport. The plant was finished and I took a leave for about 2 years to work on a PhD (downgraded to an MS) in Physics then returned to my same job in test technology in 1968. Shortly after that, I "discovered" APL and became an avid fan. I taught some IBM internal education courses in physics and APL and I am still in touch with a few of the people who began using APL as a result of those classes. But some of the names that I thought might have an answer to your question concerning the Boulder school installation of APL are eluding me today... I may think of them later, but unfortunately they aren't people that I've kept contact with. It may also be true that you are right and the connection was outside of the IBM community. On the other hand, I would guess that someone who worked with APL at IBM did have a hand in making it available at the school. OTOH, when I look into MUSIC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSIC/SP ) which seems to be a special OS from McGill University, it is hard to say what the heritage of the APL running on it was. Having APL may have been encouraged by staff or parents who had access to it at IBM, but may have been completely independent of that... The Vector article has Bob Shively's name wrong - it shouldn't have a "c" in it. In Vector's defense, I think that article was transcribed by one of their editors from the audio of a eulogy to Ken which was part of a celebration of Ken's life held at the Computer History Museum. Anyone interested can find the talks at - http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1099685637 That link and many other memories of Ken, mostly thanks to efforts by Roger Hui, can be found at - http://keiapl.org In 1971, I moved to Philadelphia to join the Scientific Center APL group and started losing contact with happenings in Boulder. Then, in 1974, the Philadelphia Scientific Center was closed and most of the group moved to Palo Alto California and worked for the System Development Division Software Center. A couple of years after that SDD software development moved to the Bailey Avenue software campus. At that point I continued to live in Palo Alto but rejoined Ken, Adin Falkoff, and Dick Lathwell who had stayed in Philadelphia and then transferred back to the Yorktown Heights Research Center where APL was first developed in 1966. In late 1977 I left IBM and joined I.P. Sharp Associates (continuing to live in Palo Alto until 1993 when I moved to Aptos on Monterey bay). Even after all this rambling (and waiting two days), I'm still not remembering the name of the person that I thought might provide clues to answer your question. A couple of other people in the same circle of activities were Dick Leavitt and Phil Smith. I have no idea where they are or how they might be contacted. But if anyone reading this does know of them or other people from Boulder in that era, I would love to make contact. - joey PS - Curiosity, the book from the IBM library, what is the title/author?? Further curiosity - I originally sent the above Feb 10 21:44:58 (California time), but today I noticed it never came back to my mail, and doesn't appear in the "Chat Digest" ... Apologies in advance for anyone receiving this multiple times. At 2:30 PM -0500 11/02/08, Tracy Harms wrote: >Hi, Joey. > >I'm posting this question in public because what I'm asking about may be of >somewhat wider interest. > >I read about your essay in Vector entitled "What's Wrong with my >Programming?" ( http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v223/jkt223.htm ) In >describing your first encounter with APL you mentioned being at IBM's >Boulder, Colorado site. > >I moved to Boulder in 1972, and encountered APL about 1974. The Boulder >Valley School District had an IBM\370 145 under the MUSIC operating system. >In addition to using it for the internal needs of the District, they made >the machine available to students. Some 300-baud modems and one carefully >guarded APL Selectric typeball allowed a few of us at Boulder High School to >explore the startling world of APL. That exposure gave me the combination of >confidence and curiosity that came into play when, decades later, I chose to >learn J. > >My question, here, is this: Do you know anything about the history of that >particular machine or the people who helped make sure it was available to >students? I suspect there's no clear connection to you or anybody you knew >at that IBM location, but the computing world was even smaller then than it >is now, so I thought I'd ask. > > >Tracy Harms > >P.S. One of the APL books from the IBM library you mentioned ended up in my >own collection. I don't recall how I came upon it, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
