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Programming

Museum Restores 21 Rare Videos from Legendary 1976 Computing Conference (computerhistory.org) 58

Posted by EditorDavid from the moving-pictures dept.
At Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum, the senior curator just announced the results of a multi-year recovery and restoration process: making available 21 never-before-seen video recordings of a legendary 1976 conference: For five summer days in 1976, the first generation of computer rock stars had its own Woodstock. Coming from around the world, dozens of computing's top engineers, scientists, and software pioneers got together to reflect upon the first 25 years of their discipline in the warm, sunny (and perhaps a bit unsettling) climes of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, birthplace of the atomic bomb.
Among the speakers:

- A young Donald Knuth on the early history of programming languages

- FORTRAN designer John Backus on programming in America in the 1950s — some personal perspectives

- Harvard's Richard Milton Bloch (who worked with Grace Hopper in 1944)

- Mathematician/nuclear physicist Stanislaw M. Ulam on the interaction of mathematics and computing

- Edsger W. Dijkstra on "a programmer's early memories."


The Computer History Museum teases some highlights: Typical of computers of this generation, the 1946 ENIAC, the earliest American large-scale electronic computer, had to be left powered up 24 hours a day to keep its 18,000 vacuum tubes healthy. Turning them on and off, like a light bulb, shortened their life dramatically. ENIAC co-inventor John Mauchly discusses this serious issue....

The Los Alamos peak moment was the brilliant lecture on the British WW II Colossus computing engines by computer scientist and historian of computing Brian Randell. Colossus machines were special-purpose computers used to decipher messages of the German High Command in WW II. Based in southern England at Bletchley Park, these giant codebreaking machines regularly provided life-saving intelligence to the allies. Their existence was a closely-held secret during the war and for decades after. Randell's lecture was — excuse me — a bombshell, one which prompted an immediate re-assessment of the entire history of computing. Observes conference attendee (and inventor of ASCII) IBM's Bob Bemer, "On stage came Prof. Brian Randell, asking if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing had done during World War II? From there he went on to tell the story of Colossus — that day at Los Alamos was close to the first time the British Official Secrets Act had permitted any disclosures. I have heard the expression many times about jaws dropping, but I had really never seen it happen before."

Publishing these original primary sources for the first time is part of CHM's mission to not only preserve computing history but to make it come alive. We hope you will enjoy seeing and hearing from these early pioneers of computing.
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Museum Restores 21 Rare Videos from Legendary 1976 Computing Conference More

Museum Restores 21 Rare Videos from Legendary 1976 Computing Conference

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  • vaccum tubes (Score:3)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @08:43PM (#62612542) Journal

    I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

    • I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

      We use them for audio applications. Russia and China are the leading producers. No more Russian tubes now but hopefully our first word problem hurts Russia even more.

      • Doesn't the Netherlands produce high quality vacuum tubes?

        • There are a few boutique manufacturers.

          Elrog in Germany https://www.elrog.com/ [elrog.com]

          Western Electric in the USA https://www.westernelectric.co... [westernelectric.com]

          Be prepared to open your wallet though.

          • There are also those who make DIY tubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] and DIY tube computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] To build a computer though, I would rather use small Nuvistors, since they are much faster than big old glass tubes.
          • Both the US and the UK have made some great tubes over the years. The NOS (new old stock) is pretty much done though, and Western manufacturers are indeed boutique now.

            New Sensor is a US company that makes a lot of various popular brand tubes in Russia. Still not clear how sanctions are going to work out long term, but I won't buy anything made in Russia on principle now in any case. Not that I love buying them from China either, and their own sanction day may yet come, but for now I'm working with Ps

        • They used to but not any more as far as I can tell.

      • Every kitchen with a microwave oven, has a huge magnetron tube in daily use.

      • I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

        We use them for audio applications. Russia and China are the leading producers. No more Russian tubes now but hopefully our first word problem hurts Russia even more.

        This is correct. Especially true for electric guitar players, all major guitar amplifier brands - Fender, Marshall, Mesa, Peavey, etc. - as well as expensive boutique manufacturers still rely on vacuum tubes in their amps because of their harmonic response. It's basically either that or modelling technology (such as Axe FX), practically no guitar players use plain non-modelling transistor amps.

        That might be changing though. Russia, China and the Czech Republic used to be the major remaining guitar amp tube

    • You want tubes, we got tubes. When I was maybe 10 years old I got a tour of the SAGE (AN/FSQ-7) site at Norton AFB. It is said to have had 49000 tubes in the computer, drawing 3 MW.

    • I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

      We still use them for other uses like audio amplification, but yeah, they suck for computing.

    • Alan Turing would have been one of the speakers :-(

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

      Now we got something more reliable, like Microsoft Windows *ducking head*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I'm sure glad we don't use vacuum tubes anymore.

      What are you talking about? Vacuum tubes are everywhere.

      And even today, you probably still use one in your house - the magnetron in your microwave is a vacuum tube that accelerates electrons and wobbles them to produce microwaves.

      In fact, vacuum tubes remain still one of the easiest ways to produce high power RF, with radio stations still maintaining high powered klystron tubes to take the RF output from the exciters to amplify them to the hundreds to thousand

      • What are you talking about? Vacuum tubes are everywhere.

        I assume they were talking about them not being used as amplifiers any more. Which isn't true either of course, but they're not used as amplifiers in typical residential equipment any more.

        And even today, you probably still use one in your house - the magnetron in your microwave is a vacuum tube that accelerates electrons and wobbles them to produce microwaves.

        I had no idea how a magnetron worked so I looked it up when I read that, fascinating stuff. What else is interesting is that their successors in RADAR (klystrons and traveling-wave tubes) are also vacuum tubes.

        • The old story goes that a radar engineer working on a system noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted when the system was on, he put two and two together and the basic concept of the microwave oven was born.

      • And even today, you probably still use one in your house - the magnetron in your microwave is a vacuum tube that accelerates electrons and wobbles them to produce microwaves.

        Technically correct is the best kind of correct, but your post definitely comes across as highly autistic in its interpretation of what the OP said.

    • If you go to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park you can see an awful lot of valves in use on their Colussus rebuild.
      It is a work of art. To have built it in the way that they did and with so little information to go on.
      There are a number of videos on the machine as well as the BOMBE. The work that Tommy Flowers did in wartime is pure genius.

    • Actually, we still use lots of vacuum tubes - mostly in high power transmitters. However, tubes are not nearly as unreliable as many people seem to think. I have multiple toys here that are built from recycled vacuum tubes which are more than 50 years old.

  • breath of fresh air (Score:4, Funny)

    by Reiyuki ( 5800436 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @08:45PM (#62612544)
    Finally, a Slashdot article that actually deals with technology!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      just give it an hour or two, and there should be another . . . :)

      hawk

  • FORTRAN the first language I was taught (Score:4, Interesting)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @10:18PM (#62612608)
    in high school 1972-3 or so(not part of the curriculum 1st year teacher got fired). I went in the USAF in 1976, Flight sim tech, Mobile B52 sim in 2 rail cars, cabinets and cabinets of tubes. We had one new DC power supply with several power transistors screwed in to the main back plate.

    going to be some fun reading here.

    • It was my first professional programming experience too, though for me it was in 2002 when, fresh out of high school, I interned down in Houston in the space industry. My first two summers had me working on meteorological software written in FORTRAN that NASA used to determine whether it was safe to launch or land the shuttle.

      Fast forward a few years to 2008 or so when I was in grad school at Texas A&M and I was the teaching assistant on CPSC 203 (the intro FORTRAN programming course) the very last seme

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Luxury! When I were a lad, we couldn't afford ones, had to program only in zeros.
      You tell that to young people today ...

  • Great work (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @11:09PM (#62612648)

    A lot of these look really interesting, as cool as some of the big names talking will be to watch, I'm also looking forward to possibly some interesting bits of history from lesser known people speaking... this is fantastic work by the computer history museum and deserves a donation.

  • built the first working Turing Complete computer.

    • He didn't intend it to be Turing complete though, and it barely is in the same way SQL is Turing complete. That is, practically not.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > He didn't intend it to be Turing complete though

        He didn't intend it not to either. He wanted to automate repetitious math computations, and that resulted in loops and conditionals as a practical result.

    • I thought he got short shrift in this video. His Z3 machine was quite amazing for its time. The correct response to the questioner who asked if computers were used to implement the "final solution" should have been "Yes, IBM supplied card machines." (using a broad definition of computer.)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        It's a pisser there were political trolls in the audience. He should have just said, "I never worked on such a project myself. As far as other systems, I'm not an expert on that topic."

  • " sunny (and perhaps a bit unsettling) climes "

    The green sunsets due to the pollution were legendary.

  • What happened in software that allowed you to retire doing it vs. being forced out at 40? Can't help but notice all of the OGs earned their right to stand at that lectern.

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