April 22Nd on This Day, Aiken Outlined His While Pnueli Was Studying Ideas to Monroe's Chief Engineer, Mathematics at the Israel George C
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Controlled Calculator) [April software behave as their 17]. designers intended. April 22nd On this day, Aiken outlined his While Pnueli was studying ideas to Monroe's chief engineer, mathematics at the Israel George C. Chase, who was Institute of Technology in the Wilhelm Schickard enthusiastic about the project. early 1960’s, he was introduced Born: April 22, 1592; Unfortunately, that didn't extend to the WEIZAC [Feb 21], the first to the Monroe management, and computer in Israel. According to Herrenberg, Germany after some months of haggling, his family, “that’s where his love Died: Oct. 24, 1635 they turned Aiken down, affair with computers started.” Schickard’s mechanical probably due to the projected calculator predated the release cost. of Blaise Pascal’s [June 19] However, Chase suggested that better known device by some IBM at the Fair Aiken contact Theodore Brown twenty years. He called it the at Harvard, a close associate of April 22, 1964 “arithmeticum organum” IBM's Thomas J. Watson [Feb (“arithmetical instrument”), but The 1964/1965 New York’s 17]. Brown sent Aiken to IBM’s later renamed it the Rechenuhr World’s Fair ran for two six- senior engineer James W. Bryce (calculating clock). month seasons, April 22 – [Sept 5], who approved the October 18, 1964, and April 21 – On Sept. 20, 1623, Schickard project. October 17, 1965. wrote to his friend (and Aiken would later describe astronomer) Johannes Kepler: “I IBM's 54,000-square-foot Chase as “a very, very, scholarly have constructed a machine pavilion included the popular gentleman.” which, immediately and “People Wall”, a 500-seat automatically, calculates with In the late 1950’s and 1960’s, grandstand, which was lifted by given numbers, which adds, Monroe made the cleverly- hydraulic jacks into an subtracts, multiplies and divides. named Monrobot series of ellipsoidal theater space You will cry out with joy when computers. The Monrobot III designed by Eero Saarinen (who you see how it carries forward made its public debut in 1952 was also responsible for IBM's tens and hundreds, or deducts during NBC’s TV broadcast Yorktown Heights lab [Feb 6]). A them in subtractions…” He went about the national election film by Charles and Ray Eames on to suggest how it would help results [Nov 4]. [Feb 17], entitled “Think”, was Kepler in his laborious task of shown across nine screens, calculating astronomical tables. describing computer logic with the help of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, the only built Amir Pnueli examples were destroyed in a (pronounced p’new-EL-ee) fire in 1624, with only a rudimentary sketch remaining, Born: April 22, 1941; so there’s some doubt over Nahalal, Israel whether the Rechenuhr worked. Died: Nov. 2, 2009 The sketch became the basis for a postage stamp issued by West Pnueli worked on temporal logic Germany in 1973. and model checking, particularly applied to the fairness properties of concurrent systems. His fruitful research Aiken Talks to collaboration with Zohar Manna at Stanford produced many Monroe papers and books on those The People Wall (1964). (c) April 22, 1937 topics. The Eames Office LLC. His work in this area began in Next: [Jan 17] the mid 1970s, when he applied This wasn’t the Eames’ first film the “tense logic” ideas of the The Monroe Calculating Machine for IBM; for the 1958 Brussels philosopher Arthur Prior to Company, founded by Jay World’s Fair they produced a ten computer system properties Randolph Monroe in 1912, minute cartoon called “The whose truthfulness change over became the world’s largest Information Machine” about time; the result was the manufacturer of calculators in how the computer helped to landmark 1977 paper, “The the 1930’s. As a result, it was spur on human development. natural that Howard Aiken Temporal Logic of Programs.” The NYC pavilion also housed a [March 8] first approach Monroe This article triggered a shift in copy of the company's when looking for financial and the modeling of the dynamic celebrated “Mathematica: A engineering support to build the behavior, especially in the area World of Numbers… and ASCC (Automatic Sequence of verifying that hardware and Beyond” exhibition from 1961 1 (also by the Eames'), alongside potential dates (colored blue for predicted that “with perhaps demonstrations of IBM products female users, pink for the men). one million sets in use, such as the newly released IBM Picturephone service may be a Selectric typewriter [July 31] billion dollar business by 1980”. and an IBM 1460 [Oct 5]. Picturephone Call AT&T switched to commercial One demo had a visitor write Picturephone services in down a date of their choice on a April 22, 1964 Pittsburgh and Chicago on July 1, card (so long as it was after Sept. 1970, which focused on The first transcontinental 18, 1851), The card was read attracting large business Picturephone call was made with handwriting recognition, customers who would be less between the Bell System exhibit and a list of important events reluctant to pay $160 per month at the World’s Fair in NYC [two that occurred on that day for equipment and services. entries back] and Disneyland in printed. For many visitors, this Disappointingly, the number of California. was their first hands-on sets in Pittsburgh peaked at 32 interaction with a computer. The Picturephone was a in 1972. telephone handset with a small This was far from the first built-in monitor which allowed attempt at video telephony by users to see each other (as a AT&T, which dates back to Computer Dating rather fuzzy video image) while [April 7] 1927. they talked. April 22, 1964 In the Parker Pen Pavilion at New York’s World’s Fair TerraVision [previous entry], visitors could fill out a questionnaire, feed it April 22, 1994 into a machine, and shortly The SRI report, “TerraVision: A afterwards receive a card with Terrain Visualization System,” the name and address of a written by Yvan G. Leclerc and potential pen pal Stephen Q. Lau Jr. described the This attraction inspired Lewis first system to provide a Altfest, a 25-year old accountant, networked representation of the and Robert Ross, an IBM Earth based on satellite images programmer, to develop a [Feb 22], aerial pictures, and similar system aimed at dating. altitude and architectural data. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, a AT&T Picturephone Mod II. TerraVision could also display group of Harvard students had Courtesy of Richard Diehl and historical images, which let a already written such a program, LabguysWorld.com. CC BY 3.0. user navigate a scene not only called “Operation Match,” and spatially but based on time. Altfest and Ross used it as the A set of eight Picturephone By a singular coincidence, basis for their “Project TACT” booths were set up at the Fair so Michael Jones (later the CTO of ("Technical Automated that attendees could make calls Google Earth [June 11]) and Compatibility Testing"), NYC’s but, due to the paucity of Brian McClendon (later of first computer-based dating Picturephones around the Google Maps [Feb 8]) were service. Within a year over 5,000 country, this usually meant a employees of Silicon Graphics people had signed up. person conversing with (SGI) at the time, and it was SGI someone in an adjacent booth. For a fee of $5, a person filled that supplied the Onyx out a 100-question multiple- AT&T obviously realized this workstations used to develop choice survey, which was fed was a problem, so opened a and run TerraVision. into an IBM 1401 [Oct 5] for series of Picturephone parlors in Twenty years later, the German analysis. The questions covered NYC, Chicago, and Washington in design firm ART+COM, which a wide range of topics: men June 1964. But a three-minute owned the patent at the core of were asked to rank drawings of call was far from cheap, costing the method for rendering women’s hair styles, while between $16 and $27, and only geographical objects in women were questioned on how 71 calls were made in the first TerraVision, decided that this they’d prefer to find their ideal six months. was no mere coincidence. In man: chopping wood, painting a canvas, or working a drill. Bell Labs persevered, and 2014, the filed a lawsuit against Google, seeking more than $100 (Unfortunately, there wasn’t a released an improved million for infringements choice along the lines of “writing Picturephone, the MOD II with a larger 5.25 x 5 inch screen that committed by Google Earth. a sort routine on a PDP-6”.) could display a 250-line black The lawsuit was eventually After the program had finished and white picture, at 30 frames thrown out since the patent's evaluating the data, it produced per second. In its 1969 Annual priority date was in Dec. 1995, five cards with the names of Report, AT&T confidently well after TerraVision had 2 become "public" knowledge. First Maker Faire April 22 - 23, 2006 Make: magazine, a quarterly publication devoted to DIY projects and culture, held its first Maker Faire at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. It featured over 100 exhibits, spread across six pavilions. In 2019 (i.e. before Covid 19), nearly 300 Maker Faires were run in over 40 countries, with nearly 2 million attendees. The two flagship events are the annual Bay Area Maker Faire and the World Maker Faire in NYC. Make: was first published in 2005 and has been widely credited with jumpstarting the Maker Movement. Naurally, the magazine has been called the “bible” for makers. Religious fervor seems to have momentarily lapsed in June 2019 when Make:’s parent company, Maker Media, shuttered the magazine due to a lack of financial resources.