Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!vrdxhq!daitc!daitc.daitc.mil
From: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: What is a mainframe?
Keywords: supermini mini mainframe
Message-ID: <536@daitc.daitc.mil>
Date: 9 Jun 89 07:52:34 GMT
References: <512@prles2.UUCP>
Sender: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil
Reply-To: jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger)
Organization: DTIC Special Projects Office (DTIC-SPO), Alexandria VA
Lines: 40
In-reply-to: winter@doomb.prl.philips.nl (Pieter Winter)

From Juergen Winkelplatz, Kunstwissenshaftliche Geschichte (History of
Technology), translated by Francine Przwroclaw, excerpted in Computer
Lib/Dream Machines, Ted Nelson, Tempus Books, 1987, page 91 of the
Computer Lib part:

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Four Ages of Mainframes
=======================

THE CLASSICAL MAINFRAME: THE 7094.  Classic means stark, simple, clean,
and what the People Yearn For Abstractly.

THE BAROQUE MAINFRAME: (PDP-6 and -10 family, IBM 360 and 370 and so
on).  In the baroque era, the classic structures become embellished and
adorned.  While the original ideas are remembered and still
recognizable, the embellishments shift and enhance their apparent
qualities.

THE ROMANTIC MAINFRAME: VAX.  What is the Romantic?  It is the system
of ideas that reorients and redirects.  While the old, which
previously seemed eternal, is remembered, it now seems superfluous,
superseded, in the onrush of up-gathering newness.

THE MODERN MAINFRAME: RISC.  Comes at last then the Modern.  At this
culture-time becomes apparent a system of shapes amongst the old more
stark, more rarefied and more intrinsic than previously suspected
could have been.  Out from the confusion of the more recent eras,
reaching beyond the classic to a primeval hypothesized simplicity,
they arrive, newness condensing oldness into a boldly reduced
Reformation.
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I trust this answers today's question, "what's a mainframe, Dad?"  It
used to be what the People Yearn For Abstractly, now it's a system of
shapes more intrinsic than previously suspected could have been.
Hmmm.  May have lost something in translation.  Well, you get the
idea.

-- Jon
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