Wow, 1959 I was 6 years old and just entering elementary school! Roger
-----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Barry Merrill Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC IBM 610, paper tape input, Selectric output. In September, 1959, I was a sophomore at Notre Dame, taking EE 101, the basic Electrical Engineering Circuits course with class three days a week, and an associated Laboratory on Tuesdays. The first week's Lab project had us measuring voltages and currents with many very old and some new meters, each with a different ohms-per-volt characteristic, comparing their accuracy, and we learned how to prepare a formal report of an experiment. The second week's lab experiment was to calculate the value of the Determinant of a four-by-four matrix, primarily to show us the difference between engineering and math. The corresponding math class we were all taking would have the professor show us by Cramer's Rule how to calculate the value of a linear system by dividing the determinant of matrix A by the determinant of B to get the blackboard answer X = [A] / [B] = 7 but this second week's lab project was to demonstrate that the actual work of an engineer would be to calculate each of those determinants, which involved a great deal of arithmetic and was not quite as simple as the Math Prof's immediate answer. As the EE Lab Professor (name now forgotten, but rather aged as I recall) finished the instructions for that lab project, he said "I have been instructed to read this note to all EE students", and picking up a one-page, dittoed notice, he continued "The IBM Corporation has donated a Model 610 digg-it-tal, er, digital, computer, located in room 240, and students can sign up for blocks of time to use it." Slamming the sheet of paper face down, he then said "those digital things will never amount to anything, but next year, as Juniors, you will be able to go across the hall to room 241 and use the Bendix G15 Analog Computer - that's how we Electrical Engineer's solve real problems!" So I decided to investigate this IBM Digital Computer, and went to room 240, which was on the left at the end of the hall that opened to the very large lab with scores of motors and motor-generator that had its large doors open to the warm September afternoon. I looked thru the small window in the door and saw a 3 foot high, 5 foot wide gray machine to the left of a table with a Selectric typewriter, and saw someone who I assumed to be a junior/senior, leaning over the typewriter. I opened the door to enter. As the door unhinged, so did the student, shouting "Shut that G.D. door!" as he strode across the room to the door, flailing his arms. As he stepped out into the hall screaming "Didn't you read the damn sign?" he then saw that his hand-written sign to "Get The Operators Permission Before Entering" had fallen, face down on the floor. Calming, he informed me that you must get the operator's attention, because the computer room was air conditioned for the vacuum tubes and he needed to put the machine in "QUIESCE/STOP" mode (which took 5-10 seconds), as only then was it safe shuffle in, slowly, so as to not bring in warm air. The vacuum tubes were so temperature sensitive, that air currents would cause computation to fail, requiring a program restart. He pointed me to the IBM manuals on the table beside the Selectric, and I began to read, at page one. Several hours later, I had learned how to punch the paper tape input (like the paper tape used in Radioteletype at my ham radio station), and could print the tape on the Selectric, and had used the IBM example to add 2 + 2 and print 4, and I decided I would program the calculation of the determinant on this new toy. I spent several hours each day, with no one else entering the computer room, and by Saturday afternoon, I had punched my program, had printed it, and was now ready to actually run my first computer program. As I watched the nearly 30 feet of paper tape whir thru the reader on the 610, its panel of nixie tubes flickered with the address numbers. I recall crossing my arms and thinking "Wow, it is 1959, I am a sophomore at Notre Dame, and I am running a real program on a digital computer". The paper tape came to its end, the printer came alive, and I received my first computer output; four characters were printed, and the Selectric shut down: WOW! Of course, I didn't have the slightest idea of what was wrong, or how to debug, so I remained in the computer room until after midnight Saturday, then were back at 7am on Sunday, and finally, that senior, (who, I'm very sorry to say, never gave his name, and I never saw him again) happened by, and he examined the problem with me. He discovered that I had kind of completely missed the difference between "program" and "data", and that the first punch in the tape was a control character that put the 610 in a scan mode to read the tape until another control character was found, and that in the fifth from end position it found a control character that changed the mode from "scan" to "print" the characters on the tape, interpreting them as machine instructions, and what had been printed out were the last four computer instructions in my program: W=Carriage Return, O=Line Feed, W= Carriage Return, !=Print Accumulator! (I had found the IBM recommendation to use two carriage returns to ensure that the very slow print head on the Selectric was all the way back to the left margin before printing a result!). Fortunately, by late on Monday, I had actually figured out how to run the program, and successfully computed the value of the 4x4 determinant, and on Tuesday (I think Sept 29, 1959) I submitted the very first EE laboratory report at Notre Dame that used a digital computer. While the report was accepted, (and correct), I saw nothing by chagrin in that professor's face, and as I was never encouraged by him or anyone else on the faculty, that was also my last use of a computer while at Notre Dame. Barry Merrill Herbert W. "Barry" Merrill, PhD President-Programmer MXG Software Merrill Consultants 10717 Cromwell Drive Dallas, TX 75229 [email protected] http://www.mxg.com - FAQ has Most Answers [email protected] - invoices/PO/Payment [email protected] - technical tel: 214 351 1966 - expect slow reply, use email fax: 214 350 3694 - prefer email, still works -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 7:59 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC In <[email protected]>, on 04/09/2014 at 05:07 PM, Ed Finnell <[email protected]> said: >Fortran II on SS80 Rara avis! I started on the IBM 650, which was much more common. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html> We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. 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