Volunteer Information Exchange Sharing what we know with those we know Volume 1 Number 14 September 4, 2011
Contribute To The VIE Questions These questions need your answers The 55 th anniversary of RAMAC, the first ever hard drive, is coming up Sept. 4, 13, Q: The Hollerith sorter has 26 slots. 24 of those are or 14, depending on your definition of under control of the tabulator. Two have manual announcement. So we'll feature that handles, and are not controlled by the tabulator. Tim game changing device in this issue. Robinson asks, “Does anyone know what those two manually operated slots are for?” Do you have a favorite artifact, one that you know a great deal about? One that Q: I know that when Xerox PARC gave extensive you know a great story about? demos of the Alto computer, windows user interface, etc. to Xerox executives in Rochester, NY, the execs Help us ensure that all those stories are were not impressed, but (some of) their wives were. passed along. Contribute to the VIE. My question is: I heard that one of those wives later Jim Strickland [email protected] started a high tech company. Who, what company, was it successful, and did they use anything from PARC? Kim Harris This question was anwered by Al Kossow What if error messages were Q: A visitor told me that the speech given by the giant written in Haiku style? head in the Macintosh 1984 superbowl commercial was actually excerpted from a speech given by an IBM The Web site you seek executive. Who was the executive, what was the topic, Cannot be located but any other details? Kim Harris Countless more exist A: Al Kossow, CHM staff, directs us to a web site with comments by Steve Hayden, an Chaos reigns within. advertishing executive who was intimately Reflect, repent, and reboot. involved with the commercial. The following is Order shall return. from that site: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising- branding/1984-good-it-gets-125608 . First snow, then silence. In the original board, there was no voiceover. The thousand dollar screen dies But, Richard O'Neill, the agency’s executive so beautifully. producer, called me from London where they were casting and asked if I could bang out something for Big Brother to say for casting CONTENTS purposes. I had lunch that day with my VIE 1 brother, David, who is an international lawyer Open Questions 1 and Sinophile. We kicked around phrases from Mussolini to Mao, and by the time I got Question – Macintosh Big 1 back to work, Big Brother’s speech just wrote Brother commercial itself. Ridley liked it so much that it wound HP 9100 A - First PC? 2 up in the finished spot. It did hold everything together. Happy Birthday RAMAC 2 Note that the director of the commercial was RAMAC Storage Efficiency 5 Ridley Scott who went on to direct “Thelma and Coming Events 5 Louise,” “Gladiator” and many more movies and television series and was knighted in 2003.
Page 1 The HP 9100A - First PC? It is interesting that HP announced a new PC (the HP Compaq 8200 Elite All in One Business Desktop) just days after announcing that it will quit the PC business. But their exit is perhaps even more ironic considering that back in 1968 they released the HP 9100A, the first mass market PC ever. Ads for HP’s 9100A, aimed at scientists and engineers in 1968, called it by different names: an electronic genie, a computing marvel and yes, a personal computer. The 9100A used mathematical notation rather than software code. It fit on a desk, and almost anyone could use it. It was a fairly capable general programming machine, but to reach a broader market, HP renamed it. “If we had called it a computer,” Bill Hewlett said, “it would have been rejected by our customers’ computer gurus because it didn’t look like an IBM. We, therefore, decided to call it a calculator and all such nonsense disappeared.” But it was powerful, capable of handling logarithmic and trigonometric functions with relative ease, probably one of the reasons why it cost $4,900. And it weighed a sizable 40 pounds. It didn't have an alphanumeric keyboard. It was kind of a glorified adding machine. The 9100A was a product of a time when HP was a leading innovator. The company was barely 30 years old that year, and it would follow up their newborn PC with other firsts in personal computing. They didn't define the PC age in a way that IBM did with the 5150, but they coined the term. That's something.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY RAMAC! • Sept. 14 IBM Press Release states that the 650 RAMAC was announced in 1956 in multiple steps: RAMAC was announced. • Sept. 4 IBM internally announced both the IBM The announcements followed the June 1956 RAMAC 650 and IBM 305 RAMAC, both of which shipment of the first (of 14) RAMAC prototypes to included the IBM 350 disk array. Zellerbach Paper Company, San Francisco, which we would now call beta test but that term was not in • Sept. 13 – New York Times article carried a public announcement of the RAMAC 305 system use in 1956. that included the RAMAC disk drive. This brings to mind a Continued on next page
Page 2 recent remark from IBM CEO, Sam Palmisamo, engineer found that filtering the paint through a silk “IBM products aren't launched, they escape.” stocking and by filling a tray of paper cups with just the right amount of paint, the coating thickness Following are a number of comments about RAMAC would be the same from disk to disk. This system development excerpted from a 1989 speech by Rey was used for many years. It was later incorporated Johnson, manager of the IBM San Jose laboratory into the equipment that automated the process. and of the development team. • Another group of engineers was assigned to • This is the product that spawned the magnetic develop a small thin head for the record and disk storage industry – an industry that has since readback functions. About the only magnetic come to generate an annual revenue of 23 billion transducers in use in 1953 were those used with dollars. I think it fair to say that the RAMAC 350 magnetic drum and magnetic tape equipment. has carved a place in history for itself. Both of these had entirely different space and • The IBM Research and Engineering Laboratory positioning constraints than we had. opened its doors at 99 Notre Dame, a few blocks Early in the development of the read/write head from here [in San Jose], on February 1, 1952. • we decided to protect the head against wear by • We explored magnetic drums, magnetic tape using air pressure with nozzles in the face of the loops, magnetic plates, magnetic tape strip bins, flat head. The airflow spaced the head a uniform and even magnetic wires and rods. distance from the sometimes wobbly disks. Air • Rotating magnetic disks came out on top in our pressure was also used to force the head toward analysis, chiefly because of its rotational dynamics, the disk after it reached its destination. the potential of multiple accesses and the efficient • Stored bit density at the center tracks was made surface to size ratio. the same as the state of the art density in magnetic • [A] fortuitous event was the receipt of a request drums, 100 bits to the inch and 20 tracks to the to bid from the US Air Force Supply Depot in Ohio. inch. This was better than a 4,000% improvement They wanted instant access to each of their over punched cards in information density and the 50,000 item inventory records. We were data was alterable and erasable. simultaneously studying file applications in • In our first file model two foot diameter oxide wholesale grocery and wholesale paper supply coated disks were mounted on a horizontal shaft at companies in the bay area. We pooled these ½ inch intervals. Fifty one disks gave 100 inside insights and information and prepared a set of surfaces. Two opposite facing heads were specifications for a general purpose random mounted on one access arm.. The access arm access memory. These specifications recorded in was moved so as to place the heads on any of the February 1953, in his notebook by Art Critchlow, 100 tracks on each of the 100 disk surfaces at a turned out to be almost identical to the RAMAC speed that would match an accounting machine 350 disk file specifications announced two years cycle, which was less than one second. We had later. anticipated that there would be a need for as many • We tested the dynamics of rotating disks by as twelve access stations on each file. A provision mounting 120 aluminum disks two feet in diameter that proved to be excessive. The maximum travel on a shaft with about ¼ inch spacers and rotating between addresses was one twentieth of an inch. this array at 3600 rpm. One test run of this model • Two access drive systems were designed and allayed out fears about problems of excessive wind modeled, one mechanical and one electronic servo vibration, power requirements and even excessive system. We finally chose an electronic servo disk wobble. system for the first file model. • However, one problem that turned out to be quite • On February 10, 1954, this first sentence was fed difficult was coating the disks with iron oxide paint into and read back from the disk file – “This has to a uniform thickness and smooth finish. The been a day of solid achievement.” oxide paint we were using was essentially the On October 8, 1954, Mr. Wesley [a long range same as was used to paint the Golden Gate • planner from the Marketing division] sent a Bridge. One of the engineers suggested pouring memorandum, which he called a “pontifical the paint near the center of a rotating disk and announcement,” to his allowing centrifugal force to spread a smooth boss. In part it started, Continued on next page uniform coat over the disk surface. Another
Page 3 “we must immediately attack accounting problems areal density 28 tracks and 100 bits. And I can under the philosophy of handling each business remember very gifted people saying that 10,000 transaction as it occurs, rather than using batching was the upper limit. And then dumb guys who didn't techniques.” Wesley’s memo was widely circulated know that that was the upper limit came up with among IBM management and, needless to say, in ideas that would take us farther. One of my very our laboratory. best friends was criticized in IBM because he told • Lou Stevens and his engineers at 99 Notre Dame The San Francisco Chronicle that one day we successfully demonstrated and operated the Model would be at a billion bits per square inch. And key II file on January 16, 1955. people said that we would never be able to reach that. They said: "Don't tell people that because • Early in 1955, a corporate decision was made to we're reaching the physical limits of this build 14 RAMAC 350 machines for internal use and technology." But every time we hit the physical field testing. limits, we'd raise them another inch. Even since I • T.J. Watson Jr., President of IBM, announced the left in 1998, they've taken the bar much higher. RAMAC on September 4, 1956. He said in part, When I was there, a real big drive on 3.5 inch “This is the greatest product day in IBM’s history technology was 10 megabytes, now it's 250. and I believe in the office equipment industry.” The following remarks are excerpted from Van Upon issuing of US Patent 3,503,060 in 1970, which Gardner's essay on RAMAC at Lockheed. was substantially identical to a 1964 patent, 3,134,097, William Goddard and J. Lynott received a • When IBM announced the 305 RAMAC System, $100,000 IBM outstanding invention award and were Lockeed ordered one to keep up with where each later inducted into the Inventors hall of Fame. Lou part was in the plant. Some of the 705 CEs Stevens was inducted later. [Customer Engineers on IBM's large business computer] were trained on the 305 to install and o o o maintain it. It was installed in a small room next to One of the original team at IBM for commercialization the EAM room with a window that opened into a of the RAMAC was Bill Donnelly. The following corridor. remarks are from his interview with storage journalist • One day when I was in the RAMAC room working and commentator Mark Ferelli (who passed away in on one of the Transceivers [IBM keypunch that sent October of 2010). or received data by telephone line] a woman came • [In development] it was called the random access to the window and wanted to see Mr. Ramac. She machine, RAMAC. And then the spin masters got said her boss told her to go ask Ramac where a hold of it and changed it to the Random Access certain part number was. She was so used to the Method of Accounting Control, and that became the old expediter system she thought RAMAC was a acronym for RAMAC. man. • The first one we shipped [after the prototypes] • Another day I had finished working on a was to United Airlines in Denver. And it was the first Transceiver and was watching Leon Chambers time you could walk into a terminal in Chicago and work on the B1 typewriter on the 305. I was bent immediately get an answer to whether you could over looking in the end of the typewriter when the get a particular seat or not. So we built 1,600 diagnostic program did a Tab command and none RAMACs, which were 5MB apiece. of the tab stops had been set. The carriage took off • Today, if you took a dot at the end of a sentence, and the knob on the right end hit me square you could store as much information as we had on between my eyes. It stunned me so I lost my the RAMAC which is fifty 24 inch disks. We started balance and fell backwards against the wall. I had at 24 inch diameter disks and the last disk that I just been KO'd by Mr. Ramac. worked on that had anything to do with IBM was 24mm. That's about the size of a nickel. In that one nickel, on one disk, was 200 times the same Factoid: Early in its development, it was not capacity as the RAMAC. And on the RAMAC we clear that RAMAC's design was really doable. recorded on both sides. On the 24mm, we only One engineer advised Johnson that he was recorded on one side. So the change has been just backing a mechanical folly. enormous. Within the lab, the popular name for the disk • We started out at 2,000 bits per square inch in array was “the baloney slicer.”
Page 4 RAMAC Storage Efficiency • At 3 1/4” high (card height) x 7 3/8” wide x JIM S TRICKLAND (approx) 15” (long) x 31 boxes = 6.5 cu feet At our recent docent training session, I was talking (approximately 11,150 cu. in.) with Steve Russell about RAMAC. Steve said • The 350 disk unit was/is: 2 foot diameter disks something like, “But regarding storage space, (call it 2 x 2 ) x (approx) 2 feet high = approx 8 cu RAMAC took more storage space than IBM cards”. feet. Remembering Rey Johnson's comment about The preceding has lots of approximation and it volumetric efficiency of RAMAC at 4,000 times as leaves out the packaging of the disk drive in efficient as cards, I disagreed. RAMAC itself, but also leaves out shelving and But later, I did the math: carts etc.. That is, one can't store cards without • 2,000 IBM cards per box, therefore 160,000 shelves and store rooms, but one can't read characters per box. RAMAC disks without lots of associated hardware. • RAMAC = 5,000,000 characters Clearly, at its inception, RAMAC was not an improvement in storage space over the ubiquitous Therefore 5,000,000 / 160,000 = 31; RAMAC • IBM card. stored the equivalent of 31boxes of IBM cards. But that didn't last long!
During a recent password audit at a Silicon Valley company, it was found that a blonde was using the following password: "MickeyMinniePlutoHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento" When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to have at least eight characters and include at least one capital.
Coming Events Date Day Time Event 6:00 PM Reception Sept. 21 Wed. 7:00 PM Program: Venture Capital in the Valley: Past, Present & Future 6:00 PM Reception Worm: The First Digital World War. Author Mark Bowden and Oct. 25 Tues. 7:00 PM Microsoft's T.J. Campana in Conversation with John Markoff of The New York Times The Challenge and Promise of Artificial Intelligence, a Bay Area Nov. 5 Sat. 02:00 PM Science Festival Wonder Dialog 6:00 PM Member Reception 7:00 PM The Technology of Animation DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Nov. 8 Tues. Katzenberg and Ed Leonard will kick off this series, in a conversation moderated by HP’s Phil McKinney.
Please contribute to the Computer History Museum Volunteer Information Exchange. Share your stories, your interesting facts (and factoids) and your knowledge. Send them to Jim Strickland ([email protected])
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