Jan. 27Th SSEC Seeber and Hamilton Had Tried to Persuade Howard Aiken Jan
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some aspects of the SSEC's operation still used plugboards. Jan. 27th SSEC Seeber and Hamilton had tried to persuade Howard Aiken Jan. 27 (24 ??), 1948 [March 8] to make the Harvard William K. English Mark II a stored program IBM’s Selective Sequence machine. Aiken wasn’t Born: Jan. 27, 1929; Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was interested, but Thomas Watson Lexington, Kentucky built at its Endicott facility in Sr. [Feb 17] was persuaded with Died: July 26, 2020 1946-47 under the direction of regards the SSEC, especially Wallace Eckert [June 19], Robert English and Douglas Engelbart since he was still upset over his (Rex) Seeber, Frank E. Hamilton, [Jan 30] share credit for creating altercation with Aiken during and other Watson Scientific the first computer mouse [Nov the dedication of the Harvard Computing Lab [Feb 6] staff. 14]. English built the initial Mark I. prototype in 1964 based on It contained 21,400 relays, The SSEC occupied three sides of Engelbart’s notes, and was its 12,500 vacuum tubes, and could a large room on the ground floor first user. performed 14-by-14 decimal of IBM’s headquarters at 590 multiplication in one-fiftieth of a English was Engelbart’s chief Madison Avenue in NYC, where second, and division in one- hardware architect. He led the it was visible to people walking thirtieth of a second, making it 1965 NASA project to find the by on the street. Herbert Grosch around 250 times faster than the best way to select a point on a [Sept 13] estimated its Harvard Mark I [Aug 7]. display; perhaps not dimensions to be 60 + 40 + 80 unsurprisingly, the mouse feet, the length of about half a was deemed the winner. football field. Other competitors included Watson Sr. liked the display the joystick and light pen. space except for three large English was a prime mover columns in the center of the at Engelbart’s “The Mother room which he wanted of All Demos” event on [Dec removed. Unfortunately, they 9] 1968. He figured out how supported the rest of the to connect the terminal in building, so had to stay. the San Francisco Civic Instead, most photos of the Auditorium to the host SSEC, including those in the computer back at SRI, 30 brochure handed out at the miles distant, and how to dedication, were retouched to reliably transmit audio and remove the offending video between the two columns. places. The IBM SSEC (with columns). The SSEC was dedicated on this English moved to Xerox PARC Frank da Cruz. (c) columbia.edu day, and remained in service for [July 1] in 1971, where he four years. During that time, it managed the Office Systems produced the moon-position The SSEC's nickname was Research Group. He developed tables later used for plotting the "Poppa" because of the noise one of the first trackball mice, course of the 1969 Apollo generated by its relays when it replacing the standard wheel mission [July 20] . One of its was running. mechanism. However, the first visitors during 1949 was a trackball device was probably One mightily contentious aspect young John Backus [Dec 3]. the Telefunken Rollkugel [Oct 2]. of the SSEC's design is whether The SSEC had a significant it should be classed as a Another change to Engelbart’s impact on the popular view of programmable calculator or as computers. For example, it was mouse design inspired by the first stored-program the subject of a cartoon by English was the number of computer. Most historians Charles Addams published on buttons. The Xerox Alto’s [March assign the latter title to the 1] mouse had three buttons, as the cover of The New Yorker Manchester Baby [June 21], but in Engelbart’s original, but magazine on Feb. 11, 1961: a Seeber had designed the SSEC to testing showed that users found kindly SSEC prints a Valentine’s treat instructions as data, so them confusing. As a result, the Day card for its elderly female they could be modified and Star [April 27], the first machine operator. stored under program control. that Xerox brought to market, Indeed, IBM filed a patent based The SSEC was decommissioned had just two buttons on its on the SSEC on Jan. 19, 1949, in 1953, and the space taken mouse. Microsoft followed suit which was later upheld as over by the new IBM 701 [May 2], but Apple opted for a evidence supporting the Defense Calculator [April 7], the single button, first on the Lisa machine's stored program company’s first electronic [Jan 19] and then the Mac [Jan ability. On the negative side, computer (despite the name). 24]. 1 in 1996, but found later use as a requirement to retain a copy of haunted house during several the message for seven years. Halloweens. Cult of the Dead Cow e-Day Jan. 27, 1997 Jon Blake Cusack Jan. 27 (every year) In June 1984, three BBS 2.0 e-Day has nothing to do with administrators – “Grandmaster Born: Jan. 27, 2004; eCommerce, but instead Ratte” (aka "Swamp Rat"), Holland, Michigan celebrates Euler’s number, e Franken Gibe, and "Sid Vicious" (2.718281828 approximately). (not Simon John Ritchie, who Jon Blake Cusack decided that However, today is e-Day only for was dead by then) – founded the the practice of adding “Junior” or people in countries following the hacker group, “Cult of the Dead “II” after a boy’s name was too day/month calendar format. In Cow” (cDc). The meeting was old-timey, so named his new son the US, e-Day would be Feb. 7, held at the Farm Pac slaughter Jon Blake Cusack 2.0 which was especially house in Lubbock, Texas. They Cusack got the idea from the appropriate in 2018 when the began publishing the “Cult of the movie, “The Legend of 1900” date was 2/7/18, its first four Dead Cow”, quite possibly the (1998), in which an abandoned digits. The Europeans' turn will first underground eZine. baby is given the name 1900 to come in 2082, when they'll The cDc website went online on celebrate the year of its birth. surpass the US with five digits. this day, and now includes an After little 2.0 was born, Cusack archive of the eZine, the "Cow sent a celebratory e-mail to Feed" blog, downloads, and family and friends, including the merchandise. comment, "there’s a lot of new cDc is credited with coining the features from Version 1.0 with terms “hacktivism” and “31337” additional features from Jamie (an alternative spelling of [his wife]”. “Eleet” or “Elite), and writing the Back Orifice remote administration tool (often shortened to BO); the name is a Western Union pun on Microsoft’s BackOffice Server. BO lets a hacker take Ends Telegrams control of a MS Windows Jan. 27, 2006 Leonhard Euler. Portrait by machine from a remote location. Jakob Emanuel Handmann cDc also claimed responsibility After 145 years of gallant (1753), Kunstmuseum, Basel. for the nefarious "Good Times" service, dating from 1851 when virus [Nov 15]. it was the Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company, The first large-scale cDc member Jesse Dryden (aka Western Union stopped sending computation of e was made by "Drunkfux") started HoHoCon in telegrams today. George Reitwiesner in 1949 at Dec. 1990, which is often said to the behest of John von Neumann be the first modern hacker By the time of the US Civil War, [Dec 28]. Reitwiesner used the conference, in that both it was running a coast-to-coast ENIAC [Feb 15] to compute the journalists and law enforcement network. During the 1920's, it value to about 2,500 decimal officers are welcome. delivered more than 200 million places, using its factorial series: telegrams every year. However, In Dec. 1993, cDc was named the first telegram service, ∑ “Sassiest Underground between Washington and Computer Group” by Sassy Baltimore, was set up by Samuel magazine, a now-defunct teen Morse on [May 24] 1844. In 1952, F. Gruenberger magazine, aimed at female fans extended the computation to of alternative and indie rock Although Western Union’s 3,000 places on an IBM 602A music. service is gone, there are still a [June 00]. few companies in the business. On Sept. 4, 2007, cDc International Telegram (aka In 1978, Steve Wozniak [Aug 11] Communications published “The iTelegram) inherited Western calculated e to 116,000 places Book of Cao: Enlightenment Union’s telex and cablegram on an Apple II [June 5], and Through a Poke in the Eye”, network, and still manages to wrote an engaging article about describing the group’s spiritual deliver 20 million telegrams his 6502 code in the June 1981 beliefs. It is 168 pages in length. every year. One reason for the issue of BYTE magazine. telegram's continued, tenacious The Farm Pac slaughterhouse, One popular approach employs existence is the legal where it all began, burnt down the Spigot algorithm, which 2 requires only fixed-precision what happened and will take operations. A.H.J. Sale wrote steps to rectify the error.” about it in the Aug. 1968 issue of This recalls a similar problem The Computer Journal, complete Facebook had earlier in January with an exciting ALGOL 60 when a user in Brighton posted algorithm [Jan 11]. a photo of a bus, which had the Donald Knuth [Jan 10] utilizes e "Devil's Dyke" destination as the version numbers of his displayed on its front. The METAFONT software. Successive person reported, “I got 48 hours versions approach e: 2, 2.7, 2.71, in Facebook jail for posting a 2.718, and so on.