Computer History Museum... you mean Sean's house? Andy (as he flees the Wrath of Sean!)
On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 11:28 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Computer History Museum sounds like an interesting place to go to. I do not > know what my plans are for vacation. However, California is a very nice > place to go to for vacation. > > Kevin Eldridge > > Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T > > -----Original Message----- > From: "Jason Orendorff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:49:25 > To: <[email protected]> > Subject: [nlug] Re: You just have to love math... > > > > On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Jack Coats <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It paged off of tape. > > This is the funniest thing I've read all week. Talk about thrashing. > > > You should have seen it run a big balanced sort using the > > tape rives! > > Those algorithms live on in Knuth. He claims they're still relevant, > something about memory access locality. I suspect that's pretty much > nonsense, but they're fun to think about. > > I went to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA last month. > They have a room full of old machines, everything from a slice of the > ENIAC to a Speak & Spell. In between, nostalgia city. Also got to > see some insane old devices for primary storage (what we use RAM for > today). Like Williams tubes. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube > > The best was a long tube full of mercury. Data was stored in the > tube, in the form of, wait for it... sound waves. You put your data > in this end, and some time later it'll come out the other end. If > you're not ready for it when it gets there, we'll just send it through > again. Utterly absurd. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory > > But the coolest thing there, and the reason you should absolutely go > if you get the chance, was the Babbage Difference Engine. Built from > Charles Babbage's original plans with only trivial modifications, and > machined out of brass and soft steel to the tolerances achievable in > his day, it was the only thing there that actually ran. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine > http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/ > > The engine belongs to a former Microsoft CTO and is only on display > until May 2009. > > -j > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
