[Leica] Some artifacts at the Computer History Museum IMG:

[photo at frozenlight.eu (Nathan Wajsman)]

Fascinating! I had a sadistic computer science teacher in my first semester 
of university, in 1980, who made us punch cards because he wanted us 
experience how things were done when he was young...fortunately, I never had 
the experience of dropping the stack on the floor.

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/


YNWA




On Dec 21, 2012, at 6:55 AM, Herbert Kanner wrote:

> Fellow LUGers, 
> 
> I have been a volunteer at the Computer History Museum since 2003, 
> starting as a documenter of artifacts. That is, in collaboration with a 
> partner, the partner often being a paid staff member, we would enter 
> characteristics of the object in question into a horribly complex 
> database. Things such as dimensions, weight (if it was small enough to be 
> picked up), place of manufacture, etc., etc., including all numbers that 
> could be found on the object: model numbers, serial numbers, goddam 
> numbers, you name it. Then we would photograph it with a point & shoot. 
> 
> One of the tasks for which I eventually volunteered was editing those damn 
> photographs. Considering how foolproof a P$S is, I was just amazed at how 
> badly some of the volunteers would handle a camera. Many of the pix just 
> had to be thrown out.
> 
> After a couple of years of this, I thought it would be fun to become a 
> docent. At the time, all that could be seen by visitors was in one large 
> room, and the formal docent training was an hour in which they showed us 
> where all the emergency exits from the building were.
> 
> In 2012 a brand new $20 million exhibit opened ($15 having been 
> contributed by Bill Gates) and some formal docent training ensued, led by 
> a lady who had trained docents at two art museums: Getty and Cantor)
> 
> I took a few pictures yesterday of museum artifacts. Not wanting to 
> overwhelm people, I will post them two or three at a time, with a bit of 
> explanation of what they are. The light in there is really weird, being a 
> mixture of ordinary incandescent, window light, and deliberately colored 
> light. Also, some, not today's, had to be shot at ISO 2600 (flash not 
> permitted, and I've given it up anyway), so we'll see how good noise 
> reduction is.
> 
> For today: 
> 
> The Babbage Difference Engine #2. This is a working machine, and we 
> demonstrate it once each day that the Museum is open. There are two of 
> them in the world; the other is in the London Science Museum. We are the 
> only ones who still demonstrate it regularly, as a result of which it 
> requires regular maintenance with occasional major repairs. What the 
> machine does is by addition only, it evaluates seventh degree polynomials 
> to seven places of accuracy--such polynomials can be satisfactory 
> approximations to other functions such as logarithms and trig functions.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002678.jpg.html
> 
> The U.S. Constitution requires a census every ten years. That word does 
> not actually appear there; it's called "enumeration". The purpose is to 
> establish how many Representatives a state is entitled to. In the 
> Constitution a (white) person counted as one, a slave as 3/5 of a person, 
> and a red-skin didn't count at all. Now Congress in it's wisdom decided 
> that if these guys were out counting heads, they might as well ask a few 
> useful questions. The resulting data, in 1880, took seven years to 
> process. Because the population was growing, the most optimistic estimate 
> was that it would take eleven years to process the data in 1890. Herman 
> Hollerith proposed a method of dealing with the data by using punched 
> cards, which by no coincidence turned out to be the same size and shape as 
> the currency at the time. Here is the machine which read the cards. The 
> card was put on a platform and the handle depressed. Wherever there was a 
> hole, a pin would go through the hole and complete an ele
> ctric circuit. The counters that you see are like clocks, which a large 
> hand and a small one. Each clock could count up to ten thousand.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002660.jpg.html
> 
> Here is a crude device that was used to punch the cards, a pantograph.
> 
> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/herbk1/L1002662.jpg.html
> 
> After Hollerith retired, some investors who had already bought a company 
> that made time clock and a calculating grocery scale bought Hollerith's 
> company. Eventually they hired as CEO a guy who had been fired by National 
> Cash Register. That guy got rid of the clocks and scales and eventually 
> renamed the company International Business Machines, later renamed IBM. 
> His name was Thomas J. Watson.
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> Herb
> 
> 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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