COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 13

RAND CORP., SANTA MONICA, CA
When we moved to Los Angeles in 1955, I got an excellent job at the RAND Corporation, in the IBM Department. While there, I was able to work on a wide variety of interesting projects. One day, soon after I arrived, my boss asked me about doing the odds and ends kinds of jobs, a lot of one-time, often times odd jobs. It turns out a couple of people had quit RAND, because they didn’t like the variety of jobs assigned to them, and the man who was responsible for those jobs right then, was complaining.

I couldn’t have been happier. I was a “Generalist” not a “Specialist,” and I always liked to do a little of this and a little of that. I said that if I did a job twice, I wanted it to be because I did it wrong the first time, not just because it was Tuesday again. Obviously that attitude didn’t work well while doing something like payroll, week after week.

Most people I worked with at RAND (outside the IBM Department) had at least one college degree, and some had multiple Ph.D.s. I was told that with my lack of education (two years of high school plus a GED), there wasn’t much chance of me getting anywhere at RAND.

It always struck me as funny that although I could do the job as needed, and was identified as Dr. Humberd on my airplane tickets and hotel reservations (they didn’t want to admit there was an uneducated “black sheep” in the flock), I “could get nowhere” at RAND. For example, I taught several “Introduction to Computer” classes, and the first formal class I taught at RAND included people with 17 Ph.D.s. As I remember there were only about 15 people in the room, but 17 Ph.D.s.

Come to think of it, I don’t remember any one else in the IBM Department who traveled as I did. Among several trips, I remember spending two or three weekends in Washington DC, spending the week between at a Radar Station in one of the Carolinas. We usually stayed at a hotel on Dupont Circle (Dupont Plaza Hotel, maybe), and since our daily expense money was about $12 per day — including hotel and meals — it was necessary for two people to share a room.

I seem to remember at least two other trips to Washington DC for something, and I spent two or three weeks at MIT on a project associated with their hand-built computer, the Whirlwind. More on that later.

Trivia: If I remember right, the city of Washington was divided into taxi zones, with a pre determined fare between the various zones. The problem for me was that the Capitol building was on the side of one zone, and Dupont Circle was on the far side of another, the maximum distance one could travel and still be in adjacent zones. Taxi drivers did not like that trip, and more than once I was refused a ride. One time a policeman heard the driver refuse, so the policeman made the taxi driver take me. Well, just a block or so from the Capitol the driver stopped, then told me he was out of gas and could not take to to my destination. Haven't been in DC for many years, so don't know if that is still the way it is done in that city.