[Shop-talk] Computer stuff

[rwil at sbcglobal.net]

My first computer at Douglas Aircraft was an IBM 704.  At JPL it was a
709 and then a 7094 (transistorized).  We wrote in machine language
and Fortran and punched cards with each instruction line.   32K of
memory and tape drives.  Our link to Goldstone was via 5-hole Teletype
paper tape, fed into a reader at JPL.  Amazing what you can do with a
little computing power.  We needed 16-digit precision and I wonder
what is used now to get that precision and possibly more.  JPL had one
"Square Root Friden" calculator that we could use to verify the
programming.

A year later in grad school I was back to a 1620 like MJB.

-Roland

On Wed, 01 Jan 2014 16:11:54 -0700, MJB wrote:

>I started doing my high school homework on an IBM 1620.  And after a
>quarter of a
>century as a sys admin at the U of U, and about that long with Team.Net,
>I've seen a
>lot of changes.
>
>I keep thinking I should spend a day or so digging out ALL the computer
>stuff I have
>stashed away in various places around the house, put it all in one big
>pile and post
>a few pictures.  RealSoonNow.