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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!pyrnj!mirror!xanth!kent
From: kent@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re:  first de-virginization re: computers
Message-ID: <760@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Mar-87 14:06:39 EST
Article-I.D.: xanth.760
Posted: Fri Mar 27 14:06:39 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 16:44:30 EST
References: <43116@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <499@ima.UUCP> <1197@uwmacc.UUCP> <1198@uwmacc.UUCP> <310@cg-d.UUCP> <1540@bnrmtv.UUCP>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 44
Keywords: Olivetti-Underwood Programma 101

In article <1540@bnrmtv.UUCP> perkins@bnrmtv.UUCP (Henry Perkins) writes:
>> 	Of course, we (of my generation) were exposed to our share of
>> IBM 1620's, 1130's, and 360/30-E's.  What I first learned to
>> "program", was none of there.  Prior to learning PDP-6/10 allembly
>> language at MIT, most of my programming was on an Ollivetti-Underwood
>> Programma 101.
>> 
>>       | Carl Mikkelsen           | ..!decvax!cg-d!mikkel |
>
>     Ah, yes.  Simple, straightforward instructions like "B split
>downarrow".  I remember what satisfaction it gave me to write a
>program to compute sines and cosines.  Programs could be up to
>120 steps, but anything that long used up all your registers for
>program storage.  Those were the good old days.
>-- 
>{hplabs,amdahl,3comvax}!bnrmtv!perkins        --Henry Perkins

While I got my start on the IBM 1620 in 1961, and glory in having programmed
a machine in decimal absolute machine language, I remember 13 years later
using a Wang Programmable desk calculator (paper tape, Nixie tube readout,
about 200 memory locations) to do a geodetic resection calculation (smirk;
translation: finding the location of a point on the earth's surface by
measuring angles to a surround of objects with known locations; much harder
than the corresponding geodetic intersection problem, where you stand on the
know locations).  The satisfaction I got from doing such a complex calculation 
with such simple equipment (although it carried something like 15 or 18
decimal digits) has rarely been equaled since.  Only time I ever published a
piece of software, too (NOAA had a lot of those old paperweights on survey
vessels).
--
Kent Paul Dolan, "The Contradictor", 25 years as a programmer, CS MS Student
at ODU, Norfolk, Virginia, to find out how I was supposed to be doing this
stuff all these years.  3D dynamic motion graphics a specialty.  Work wanted.

Unemployment is soooo nice though...I never have to disclaim anything!

UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...seismo!decuac!edison!xanth!kent
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    USnail:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Va 23501-1559

Copyright 1987 Kent Paul Dolan.  All Rights Reserved.  Incorporation of this
material in a collective retransmission constitutes permission from the
intermediary to all recipients to freely retransmit the entire collection.
Use on any other basis is prohibited by the author.