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Oct. 21St Martin Gardner insight, and understanding of Forester’s patent from MIT for hard questions that matter.” $13 million Oct. 21st Gardner was also noted for his debunking of pseudoscience, his skill at magic tricks (MAGIC IBM 1620 Martin Gardner magazine named him as one of Born: Oct. 21, 1914; the “100 Most Influential Oct. 21, 1959 Magicians of the Twentieth Tulsa, Oklahoma IBM announced the IBM 1620, a Century”), producing annotated Died: May 22, 2010 small, inexpensive, versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice transistorized scientific Gardner was renowned for his books [Dec 10], and his love of computer that could perform writings on recreational "The Wizard of Oz" [July 30]. around 100,000 calculations a mathematics, principally “Gathering 4 Gardner” is an minute. The speed was achieved through his “Mathematical educational foundation devoted by performing most of the Games” columns which to preserving his legacy. arithmetic via table lookups appeared for twenty-five years stored in core memory [previous in Scientific American [Aug 28]. entry] rather then through logic The column began with an circuitry. The machine’s excellent piece on hexaflexagons Wang’s Core codename was CADET, which in the Dec. 1956 issue. Over the supposedly stood for “Can’t Add, years, Gardner also introduced Memory Doesn’t Even Try”, referring to numerous computing topics to a Oct. 21, 1949 this use of tables. wider audience, including John An unforeseen side effect of this Conway’s [Dec 26] Game of Life An Wang [Feb 7] filed a patent approach was that some hackers (in the Oct. 1970 issue), fractals called “Pulse transfer controlling later discovered a way to extend [Nov 20] and the Koch curve devices" which was eventually the 1620’s instruction set by (Dec. 1976), public-key awarded as US 2708722 on May storing different numbers in the cryptography ([Aug 00] 1977), 17, 1955. It described a tables. and Douglas Hofstadter’s [Feb mechanism for using the 15] quintessential AI text, magnetic field of ferrite cores to Although the 1620 proved to be “Gödel, Escher, Bach” (July control the switching of current very popular (almost 2,000 were 1979). in other parts of the system. In sold), Edsger Dijkstra [May 11] addition, a write-after-read cycle wrote a devastating review ensured that the stored data in (document no. EWD37) in Jan. the cores wasn’t lost in the 1963 pointing out several flaws process. Wang also published his in its design. Production of the results in a 1950 article machine was not-so promptly coauthored with Way-Dong discontinued on Nov. 19, 1970. Woo, another Shanghai native who worked at Harvard. It's successor was the IBM 1130 [Feb 11]. Core memory went on to become the predominant form of random-access memory for the next twenty years. until the Sinking of the Eilat mid 1970's. Oct. 21, 1967 Several other researchers in the late 1940's had suggested the The INS Eilat (originally called idea of using magnetic cores in the HMS Zealous) was the first this way, and Jay Forrester ship sunk by a “smart” weapon. Martin Gardner. Photo by received the principal patent, It was on routine patrol off the Konrad Jacobs, Erlangen. CC BY- even though he filed it on [May Sinai coast when two Egyptian SA 2.0 de. 11] 1951, after Wang. In April Komar class missile boats 2011, Forrester recalled, “the opened fire, and three P-15 Virtually all the columns have Wang use of cores did not have Termit radar-based homing been collected in book form any influence on my missiles hit the vessel, causing (which you should buy), and no development of random-access catastrophic damage. lesser a luminary than Donald memory. The Wang memory The P-15’s guidance system Knuth [Jan 10] has called them was expensive and complicated, contained both radio-wave "canonical". Noam Chomsky as I recall.” transmitters and receivers and [Dec 7] also wrote, “Martin an inertial navigation system, Gardner’s contribution to Wang sold his patent to IBM for allowing the missile to home-in contemporary intellectual $500,000 on March 4, 1956, and autonomously. culture is unique-in its range, its used the funds to build up Wang Labs. IBM also bought Jay 1 This incident sparked a global subpoena, not a warrant arms race between anti-ship Breaking the Code approved by a judge, to get at a missiles and defenses against person’s e-mails or other them. Premieres electronic messages, as long as they were more than six months The Eilat was bought by the Oct. 21, 1986 old. Civil liberties advocates Israeli navy in 1955, and had The play, "Breaking the Code," argued that the law’s language featured in the movie “Exodus” by Hugh Whitemore gave the FBI too much power. (1959) starring Paul Newman. thematically linked Alan Turing’s [June 23] cryptographic Although the emphasis of the act activities with his was on e-mails, it soon grew to Viatron System 21 homosexuality. Sir Derek Jacobi include the BBS community, and played the part of Turing, and today’s social media. Oct. 21, 1968 the role had actually been written with him in mind. Viatron Computer Systems was founded in 1967 by ex-engineers OS/2 2.0 from Mitre Corporation [July 21], led by Edward M. Bennett Announced and Joseph Spiegel. Oct. 21, 1991 On this day, the company OS/2 2.0, the successor to OS/2 announced its System 21 [Dec 4], had a new 32-bit API, an terminal, consisting of either a object-oriented user interface 2101 or 2111 microprocessor, a called the Workplace Shell 9-inch CRT display formatted to (WPS), and an impressively produce four lines of 20 large selection of games. characters in color, a keyboard, and two cartridge tape drives. Early in 1991, Steve Ballmer An optional attachment allowed [March 24] had said he would users to connect the terminal to eat a floppy disk if IBM shipped a TV. The intention was to lease it before that fall's COMDEX. the system to customers at a Fortunately perhaps, IBM very cheap starting price of $40 missed that deadline, but only per month. Derek Jacobi (2013). Photo by just: they released a limited Kontrola. CC BY-SA 3.0. edition, OS/2 2.0 LA, in Other options included an November. The full OS shipped optical character recognition Following an eight-month run at in April 1992, a few weeks after device, a “communications the Theatre Royal, Haymarket in the debut of Windows 3.1 [April adapter,” and an ingenious London’s West End, the play ran 6]. “printing robot” which on Broadway from Nov. 15, interacted with a standard IBM 1987, to April 10, 1988. It was The minimum hardware Selectric typewriter [July 31]. also adapted into a 1996 TV film requirement displayed on the directed by Herbert Wise. box (and a heavy box it was too, The system specifications were holding 21 disks), was 4 MB of amazingly advanced for 1968, The play was based on the RAM, but users soon discovered and caused a lot of excitement; biography, “Alan Turing: the that the useable minimum was one nickname for the device was Enigma," by Andrew Hodges, nearer 8 MB. the “Everything” box. which had been critically IBM promoted OS/2 2.0 as “a Viatron was predicted to be the acclaimed when it was published in 1983, with Donald better DOS than DOS and a Xerox or IBM for the next better Windows than Windows”. decade, but the company was Michie [Nov 11] calling it “marvelous and faithful”. The This meant that it could easily unable to build the planned run Windows applications, but 5,000-6,000 systems per month book was also later the source for the (somewhat less faithful) the effect was that many to stay within their cost developers decided to write projections, and never achieved 2014 film "The Imitation Game" [Nov 28]. programs only for Windows, profitability. Bennet and Spiegel foregoing OS/2. were fired in 1970, and the company declared bankruptcy in The OS'es development had 1971. ECPA begun after IBM and Microsoft signed a “Joint Development Oct. 21, 1986 Agreement” in Aug. 1985, but the collaboration had begun to The Electronic Communications unravel by 1990. The two Privacy Act (ECPA) was signed companies parted ways in June by Ronald Reagan. It meant that 1992, and OS/2 became IBM's investigators only needed a exclusive property. 2 OS/2 3.0 (aka Warp) was violence”, and Brazil banned it announced on [Oct 11] 1994. The Gang of Four outright. Despite this notoriety Oct. 21, 1994 (or because of it), the game was a huge success. The use of design patterns in "Grand Theft Auto III" (2001) The PowerBook computer science shot up after was the first 3D version, and the book “Design Patterns: Oct. 21, 1991 became a landmark game for the Elements of Reusable Object- PlayStation 2 [March 2]. "Grand At the COMDEX expo [Dec 3] in Oriented Software” was Theft Auto: San Andreas" is Las Vegas, Apple introduced its published on this day by the remembered for its “Hot Coffee” first PowerBook notebooks: the “Gang of Four” (“GoF”): Erich mini game [June 9]. 100, 140, and 170, which had Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph been designed and Johnson, and John Vlissides. It The 1977 comedy movie, “Grand manufactured by Sony in describes 23 software design Theft Auto”, was directed by collaboration with the Apple patterns, and includes examples and starred Ron Howard. It was Industrial Design Group. written in C++ and Smalltalk. produced by Roger Corman who later settled a lawsuit brought They were the first laptop to The book began as a Birds of a by Rockstar.
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