Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!sdcrdcf!ism780c!news
From: news@ism780c.UUCP (News system)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Cray architecture
Message-ID: <9631@ism780c.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 88 02:33:03 GMT
References: <7762@alice.UUCP> <418@ole.UUCP> <3216@phri.UUCP> <1574@osiris.UUCP> <1461@ut-emx.UUCP> <1982@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Reply-To: marv@ism780.UUCP (Marvin Rubenstein)
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA
Lines: 21

In article <1982@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> kolding@ji.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Eric Koldinger) writes:
>Oh, this is too true.  There is absolutely nothing to see in the state
>of the art these days.  The newest computers are big boxes, the disk
>drives are all sealed and you can't even see the disk, and the latest
>tape drives from IBM are cartridge drives with no great big reels to watch.
>I mean seriously folks, computer rooms are getting boring.  What are people
>going to see when they see the next generation of movies with computers in
>them?

More historical trivia.  The first machine that I worked on was a DA (Bush
mechanical differential analyzer)  (circa 1950).  It was an analog machine.
The machine was powered by a motor of several horse power.  It had colored
gears and it actally rang a bell.  The machine was located at UCLA.  When
Hollywood was making the movie "When Worlds Collide" they came to the campus
to film a computer scene.  Also on campus was SWAC (south west automatic
calculator), a digital machine.  They opted to use the DA in the movie
because they said "it looks like a computer".  The SWAC had no moving parts
(except a card reader).

The DA is now at the Smithsonian, but I don't think it is on public exibit.

      Marv Rubinstein.