COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 54

ROTATE A CUBE
I can’t imagine/remember why, but I visited the Digital Equipment Corp. plant in Mass. somewhere, and watched a demonstration of their first computer, called the PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor), and this may have been serial number “0.”

The PDP-1 was connected to a video monitor, and they had written a program that was able to actually draw 12 lines needed to create a picture of a cube, and have it rotate right before your very eyes! Wonder of all wonders, it was able to blank out the lines of the cube that were “hidden” from view, as it rotated.

ACOUSTIC COUPLER DEMONSTRATION
In the early 1960s in a laboratory near the Los Angeles airport, Control Data Corp. had developed a communication device, housed in a box a couple of feet square. You could put a telephone handset in the box, and a computer terminal could communicate with a computer, at the other end of the telephone line. It was still a laboratory model, but I insisted it was needed for an on-site demonstration.

A telephone was installed in a conference room at their facility, but since the telephone wire was so short, we had to sit this box on a chair right next the wall. This was before it was possible to dial a long distance number directly, so we had to have the operator assist in connecting to the number we needed. We told the telephone operators that we were expecting a bunch of noises and sounds, but no voice, so please, please, don’t try to listen, and don’t disconnect until we told them to. At other times and places, while I was trying to demonstrate other types of computer equipment, the telephone operators would sometimes check the phone line and think there was a problem of some kind, and disconnect the noisy line. The “noise” made when the operator tried to listen, would send “bits’ to the computer, and of course confuse the whole project.

We were able to connect to a computer in Minneapolis, and were conducting what I was assured was the first-ever real-life demonstration in a customer’s facility, of an “Acoustic Coupler” that connected what I remember as the 6060 Remote Calculator, to a computer thousands of miles away.

However, someone walking down the hall outside the conference room bumped the wall, and that jiggled the telephone — the telephone bell jingled, lights flashed, an unknown signal was sent to the computer in Minneapolis, it could not understand the signal, so went off the air, and of course our demonstration was over for that day. In spite of the problem, everyone was very impressed.