I could be doing crafts, code reviews, or chores...so I'm starting a new book instead.

Okay, I love that abbreviations are at the beginning of the book.

Hours later, I finally get back to this book.

Remember women have been in computing since the beginning.

I wish the ladies were named.

Also I demand more programming hats!

Okay I read chapter 1 and I'm laughing at the line, "that god damn old plant full of sparrows that crap on everything." On page 43.

I also am mad at all the dudes that took credit for women's work during the war. Soldering, assembling, programming, doing everything.

Don't mind me raging over things that happened over 75 years ago.

I will say the author so far is pretty decent. Mentions photos where women were historically cropped out and names women in said photos when possible.

Anywho, tomorrow I'll read more.

Are you all ready for chapter 2?!?

It is titled "St. Paul Start-up".

And yes, I know I will be angry at dead people again.

Cognac: Cogitating Numerical Adder and Computer

Okay so based on this chapter, mercury delay tubes SUCKED and couldn't be moved.

Trolley wheel machinists and 3M spray coatings made magnetic drum memory possible.

All hail machinists!

Take that Silicon Valley, you migrated here to Minnesota for computing!

Also it is the ERA 1103 not Univac 1103!

The end of this chapter is basically here are the chemistry professors who used the University's Univac Scientific to win Nobel prizes and reinvent chemical engineering.

Chemists turning into developers has been happening since the 1950s!

I'm going to keep rolling.

Chapter 3, Corporate Computing.

To sum up last chapter, ERA is bought by Remington Rand which is bought by Sperry and thus everyone is now Univac.

Okay, let's continue.

Douglas MacArthur was Chairman of the board at Remington Rand?!?!

And now Zebulon Pike is being mentioned?

Ugh, that dude SUCKED.

And now I scream at 1951 International Association of Machinists contract that created a second grade of electrical assembler at a lower rate of pay...for women.

34 men and 101 women worked in the assembly shops.

Heck, they had six women and nine men as drafters.

Of course Cray designed a computer with a dipstick for the Navy.

The Navy didn't like the dipstick. Well no one really did, hence it was redesigned.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! One's complement notation mixed in with straight binary??!?

Why would you do that Hazeltine display consoles?

And now I'm reading about the FAA purchasing Univac 8300s in 1997 because air traffic control is hard.

Great now I want to jump over to IEEE paper on purple plague from 1964.

Huh, so Univac with its stringent testing of components and hounding vendors about failure rates actually caused clean rooms.

Also they (Univac engineers) pointed out the chemical reaction that happened with gold wires bonded to aluminum contacts in silicon-based transistors.

And that is it for tonight.

I still might bug my husband to get me that IEEE paper on purple plague....

Nooo! My husband doesn't have an IEEE membership anymore. I guess I'll have to try my friendly librarians tomorrow to see if I can get a copy.

Alright, I have a pop, some snacks, and the book.

Time for chapter 4: Innovation machine

We are going to learn about Control Data!

1957 three computer companies were founded:
Digital Equipment Corporation aka DEC
Integrated Electronics Corporation aka Intel

And

Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation

A bunch of nerds angry at their management make their own company! With supercomputers! And math puns!

The CDC 1604 is their address (501) added to Univac 1103.

They didn't have any product, plant, machines, customers, or money but they sold stock.

"Look, we don't have any jobs anyway, why don't we build a computer?"

And thus Little Character was born.

Back when little computers were large cabinets.

You thought cloud computing was new.

In 1960, Control Data opened a data center in Minneapolis and sold compute time.

Cybernet?

And now I wonder just how old the term cyber is...

Cybernet was created in 1968... So...

And yes my mind is in the gutter with this pondering.

OMG! Seymour Cray acknowledges the important of glue work!

There is a multi-line quote where Cray praises the work of Les Davis, "He made things happen not only through his own work but through the works of others."

RISC:

Reduced instruction set computing

Or

Really Invented by Seymour Cray

Okay so there is this section called "In the Community" and it starts with a quick review of the 1967 race riots in Newark, Detroit, and north Minneapolis.

And Bill Norris gets it, he says they have "corporate social responsibility" and builds a plant Northside.

"It is my deep conviction that the poverty and riot situation has gotten so bas that it is by all odds the No. 1 problem for Control Data. We are in the fortunate position of having a little bit of a jump on the situation, but Control Data has to do much, much more."

Hell, tech companies are still hemming and hawing over Black Lives Matter and Control Data was saying it in 1968!

This shit is not new!

Alright onto chapter 5!

First computer

This chapter is about patent law, yay?

Honeywell, thermostats and bombs

See the over two decade long Honeywell Project for more on that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_Project

I have too dirty of a mind to be reading about "Liberator" computer systems.

But thankfully this chapter is about Honeywell v. Sperry Rand.

What is a computer?

First a history of early radiator companies and their founders, including Albert Butz.

Butz with his Butz and Mendenhall Hand Grenade Fire Extinguisher Company, because glass globes of carbon tetrachloride on strings are exactly what you want as a fire extinguisher.

Butz sold his "damper flapper" to William R. Sweatt

And I am just giggling at names.

Aha!

The early thermostats were essentially digital switches that sent binary on or off commands.

This is the 1920s and 1930s.

So Honeywell made variable-feedback sensors, tried to get them into planes for temperature control but guess what? They worked great for stabilizing cameras.

So radiator company slowly turned into bomb-sight computers and autopilots....

"Our Liberator will turn your present programs into fast-moving new programs."

Ad copy has always been weird.

Huh, I have never heard of the word hurly-burly before.

"Honeywell entered the hurly-burly minicomputer market in 1966."

The Honeywell 316, not just a kitchen computer.

EDINET

Just have teletype terminal, acoustic coupler, phone lines and pay a monthly $1000 for unlimited access.

Or be like Mankato State and share your account with your nearest 25 neighbors and split the cost.

Because we have always shared accounts with unlimited access....

Seems to be the first lesson in Honeywell v. Sperry Rand is file for patents in a timely fashion.

Not say a year after you publicly debut it.

The second lesson is to have a million little interlocking patents and not one giant fragile behemoth.

Remember what the radio patent wars taught us, "1,001 little patents and inventions".

Long story short, lots of exhibits, lots of depositions, and a long trial later.

ENIAC patent is thrown out because of a visit to Iowa and the existence of ABC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_computer

And then the rest of the chapter is about how weird the protests at Honeywell were.

Everyone agreed to rules beforehand.

Honeywell executives offered to protect protesters from employees.

The police chief's wife was part of them.

That is it for tonight!