COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 57

A BUSY WEEK
I remember one special week of travel. I spent Monday at a conference in Long Beach, California, then at midnight, with my boss, caught what was well known as the “red-eye,” a plane from Los Angeles to Boston, arriving there at breakfast time, after a night of little or no sleep. (that’s why it’s called “red-eye”).

We drove to a computer software office on the outskirts of town and spent all day Tuesday discussing some kind of mathematical system that required computers bigger than any that existed in those days, and maybe are still not available today.

They were trying to design a mathematical cube, defined as billions of points, each identified by three addresses. The idea was that an object (a missile, a ship, or an airplane) could be defined in this cube, so that if the cube was sliced in any direction, at any point, each and every wire, bolt, tube, and piece of metal would appear as if you really did in fact cut the missile, plane or ship at that exact place. Never have heard another word about this, at that time very secret idea. It was easy to keep the secret, since this is about all I understood of the idea.

At quitting time we drove back to the Boston airport, flew to New York City, then drove to a motel out on Long Island. Can’t remember the name of the company we visited, or what the meeting was about Wednesday morning, but noon found us speeding to the NYC airport to catch a plane to Washington DC. We spent the afternoon in the Rockville, Maryland office of the Rabinow Division of Control Data Corporation, discussing Optical Character Recognition equipment with Jake Rabinow, who held the early patents for that system.

That evening we rushed to the airport to catch a flight to Minneapolis. After escorting a prospect (who flew in from California for the day) to several demonstrations and discussions all day Thursday, we returned to Los Angeles that night. What fun!

JAKE RABINOW
Jake was about the most interesting, fascinating man I got acquainted with in my lifetime. Come to think of it, if I include Ronald Reagan (who I met and talked with 15 to 20 times while he was Governor, then before he became President) I guess Jake came in a close second. I was told that Jake held the most patents of any living American — including patents in foreign countries, there were several hundred. One of his inventions was patented in 40 countries, and others in 10, 15, or 20 countries.

One time he gave a technical discussion about Optical Character Recognition equipment, to one of my customer/prospects. It was an amazing meeting.

I visited his office in Rockville more than once, and a visit to his private, personal museum of devices for which he had received patents, was fascinating. I wouldn’t even try to repeat the stories he told about each and every one, but if you go to Computer Oral History Collection, Jacob Rabinow, November 23, 1970* you will find an 88 page interview that tells about the regulator used in automobile clocks, the notched disk, the fast-reverse motor, the card punch that could punch all the holes in an IBM card at one time, a card sorter with hundreds of pockets, the first letter sorter in the American Post Office, and many more.

Especially read the story about the bomb designed with a pusher propeller. With a file and a pair of pliers and a half hour's work the Navy men “corrected” the mounting ring that connected the bomb to the airplane wing. Now the bomb could be mounted with the propeller in front, because they said, “Everybody knows the propeller should be in the front end, not in the back.” And they wondered about the failed bombing runs, and the dud bombs, until Jake made a design change in the mounting ring, so if they did mount it wrong, it wouldn't explode and destroy the airplane.

GRACE MURRAY HOPPER
Since I commented above on a couple of men that I admired, I must include the name of Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, unquestionably the FIRST LADY of computing. She programmed computers starting in the 1940s, and was considered the inventor of program compilers. She became one of the first women to be elevated to the rank of Rear Admiral, and in 1986, after forty-three years of service, Grace Hopper ceremoniously retired on the deck of the USS Constitution. At eighty years, she was the oldest active duty officer at that time.

I don’t remember when I first met Grace, but she was an interesting lady that I knew over a period of maybe 10 years. One of the things I became aware of early in our friendship, was that although she would attend conventions in Las Vegas, she was very unhappy with the idea of gambling, and the shows put on in the hotels. I had no argument with her on that subject, so we always met and had lunch or dinner in a “regular” restaurant, not a show room.