NOVEMBER 2000 CORE 1.4 A PUBLICATION OF THE COMPUTER MUSEUM HISTORY CENTER WWW.COMPUTERHISTORY.ORG PAGE 1 November 2000 THE NEXT LEVEL COA publication ofRE The Computer Museum1.4 History Center IN THIS MISSION ISSUE TO PRESERVE AND PRESENT FOR POSTERITY THE ARTIFACTS AND STORIES OF THE INFORMATION AGE VISION INSIDE FRONT COVER TO EXPLORE THE COMPUTING REVOLUTION AND ITS THE NEXT LEVEL IMPACT ON THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE John C Toole 2 I am pleased to report that we have commercial firms and museums. Julie is more networking and software artifacts THE RADIATION PRINTER reached a new level of professional an executive assistant, so you’ll be out for you very soon. Our collection George Michael EXECUTIVE STAFF organization at the Museum. We now seeing her in many roles, including continues to grow—see page 17 for need your help to “blast through” the working projects at many functions. examples. I’ve received many positive 7 John C Toole GENE AMDAHL: COMPUTER PIONEER next plateau on our way to our compliments about our recent lectures EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO 2 Alexis Daniels permanent home. After you see what we Our volunteers have been and hope to see you at our future ones. Karen Mathews are accomplishing, please help us extraordinary—on volunteer days, on We are also getting our message out in EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT Eleanor Weber Dickman 10 exceed our expectations in our annual regular days, and for major events. Our exciting and creative ways such as VICE PRESIDENT OF DEVELOPMENT FROM THE COLLECTION: ROBOTS financial campaign, which is the “volunteer steering committee” has hosting executive receptions (for & PUBLIC RELATIONS Chris Garcia lifeblood needed to bring lectures, begun to organize, brainstorm, and example, the TTI Vanguard group in 12 preservation activities, detailed improve communications. They are September), doing interviews, and BOARD OF TRUSTEES FOCUS ON PEOPLE: planning, and energy to everyone surveying other museum volunteer accommodating film crews. 7 LEN SHUSTEK & DONNA DUBINSKY engaged in our mission. programs, planting the seeds for our Leonard J Shustek, Chairman Dave House Eleanor Dickman VENCRAFT, LLC own docent program, and developing I also want to emphasize how important Christine Hughes David L Anderson It’s also the right time to invite signage for our Visible Storage Exhibit and helpful NASA has been to us. Plans HIGHWAY 1 14 SENDMAIL everyone to help expand our Museum Area. for the NASA Research Park at Moffett Steve Kirsch REPORT ON MUSEUM ACTIVITIES C Gordon Bell PROPEL SOFTWARE CORPORATION Karen Mathews community, which is so important for Field, the site of our future building, are MICROSOFT CORPORATION John Mashey our long-term growth. But please don’t Innovation – We’re starting to discuss moving ahead rapidly. We are attending Peggy Burke SILICON GRAPHICS 1185 DESIGN 16 forget to ENJOY our evolving Museum and collect a large number of ideas monthly partner meetings among all Ike R Nassi OUR SUPPORTER NETWORK Andrea Cunningham CISCO SYSTEMS 10 RECENT DONATIONS TO THE COLLECTION culture—you made it all happen, so I about our future building as well as our participating organizations, and CITIGATE CUNNINGHAM hope you are taking advantage of our web presence—including creative ways developing a cooperative view of our Suhas Patil Donna Dubinsky TUFAN lectures, events, and Fellows Awards… to exhibit our collection. You are going future home. You will be seeing a great HANDSPRING 17 Bernard L Peuto UPCOMING EVENTS just as you might enjoy fine wine with to be hearing lots more on this in the deal of publicity as we move through the Samuel Fuller CONCORD CONSULTING ANALOG DEVICES STAFF LISTING AND CONTACT INFORMATION friends. next six months and we welcome your Environmental Impact Statement John William Poduska Sr Eric Hahn thoughts. submissions. As you can see, the ADVANCED VISUAL SYSTEMS INVENTURES GROUP ON THE BACK COVER F Grant Saviers As many of you know, I’ve personally dream you have begun to dream with us Gardner C Hendrie MYSTERY ITEMS FROM THE COLLECTION PRIVATE INVESTOR 12 immersed myself in our people and Communities – We have spent many is on the way to becoming a reality! SIGMA PARTNERS John Shoch events, concluding (again) that we have productive hours with different groups— Peter Hirshberg ALLOY VENTURES the most amazing group of gathering feedback and ideas, and I hope you can feel the positive Charles H (Chuck) House Pierluigi Zappacosta INTEL CONVERGED DIGITAL PERSONA supporters— from the best dreamers to planning collaborations. For instance, movement. Yet, we are also limited in COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, the best “doers” I have ever seen. If we we presented at the Vintage Computer resources by what we can do, and I DIALOGIC DIVISION share the excitement and turn it into Festival; spent quality time at the want to begin a new phase of growth action, we cannot fail! Charles Babbage Institute’s conference next year. So please help us in every on “Unbundling History: the Emergence way possible in our annual campaign— 14 The past quarter has been extremely of the Software Product;” and met with not just in dollars donated but also in active. Remember those priorities I several CEO’s, curators, professors, the number of people we are able to established in the June issue of CORE? and executive directors of places such reach. Both metrics are very important Let’s see what’s been happening—you as the Oakland Museum of California, as we build an institution that you’ll be Copyright © 2000, The Computer Museum History Center. All rights reserved. The Museum is an independent 501 (c) (3) organization, can read more details in other Heinz Nixdorf Museum, and the proud of over the next 3, 5, 10, 25, and TID# 77-0507525. PO Box 367, Moffett Field, CA 94035. articles—but here are some snippets University of Sussex, to name just 50 years. and highlights: a few. The Computer Museum History Center Thanks again for all your help. We’ve Building T12-A Moffett Field, CA 94035 People – Please welcome Kirsten Operations – I hope you have seen got an exciting year ahead! +1 650 604 2579 Tashev and Julie Stein as new many of the new items in our Visible +1 650 604 2594 (fax) employees. Kirsten is our new building Storage Exhibit Area, and you will see WWW.COMPUTERHISTORY.ORG and exhibits project manager. She even more changes in the future. In comes to us with a solid background in addition to the new sample display of both areas, and has worked for both our robotics collection, we hope to put JOHN C TOOLE Cover: The Minsky Tentacle Arm. In 1968, Marvin Minsky developed EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO the Tentacle Arm which moved like an octopus. It had twelve joints designed to reach around obstacles. A PDP-6 computer controlled the arm, powered by hydraulic fluids. Mounted on a wall, it could lift the weight of a person. See story on robots in the Museum’s collection, page 10. PAGE 2 The paper required for the Radiation printer was a sandwich of a PAGE 3 black conductive layer coated with a white top layer. The overall appearance was bluish-gray. Printing was accomplished by an electric arc burning a hole in the white coating to reveal the black layer underneath. Too bad we can’t produce the odor here! THE RADIATION PRINTER GEORGE MICHAEL There are very few computer users who high. A few intense users lost some of The SC5000s were modified so that designed to produce many copies of the printer existed, everyone felt confident still can recall the frustration of having their hearing from standing in front of they printed at an impressive rate of same page. For LLNL applications on that a printer could be scaled up from a to wait for a printout. For instance, this printer, anxiously trying to read about one page per second. This computers, the problem is to produce mailing label size to a larger page around 1953-1954, at the Lawrence their output as it was being printed. In required expanding the fusing oven and just one copy for each of thousands of format, and it seemed it could be made Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), addition to being very noisy, impact adding a Rube Goldberg device to z-fold output files. The electrographic to go quite fast and it promised to be the first printers used in conjunction printers were not sufficiently reliable, so the printed output. Quite often, the technique, which is both fast and clean, economical. We solicited bids for a high- with the UNIVAC I—our first computer— we sought other solutions. paper would catch fire as it moved uses light to carry information to an speed printer, and what became known were nothing more than typewriters with through the fusing oven. The printer electrically charged material where a as the Radiation Printer was chosen. print rates of perhaps 6 characters per THE GIRL WITH A CURL kept running, but now acted more like toner is used to make the image visible. second (cps). Since the typical output We tried a marriage of cathode ray an automatic stoking device, feeding The image is then transferred to paper Some salesman got the Radiation from a design calculation involved tubes and xerography: the SC5000 built fresh paper into the fire! The SC5000 where it is fixed by chemistry or heat. Printer to brag about itself. Here are between 50,000-100,000 characters, by Stromberg Carlson in 1959. This was very much like the angelic little girl Xerography is a good example of this quotes from the literature (I have printing would take an inordinately long device formed characters by projecting with a curl right in the middle of her technology.