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The Mothers of the Mother of All Demos
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe Edvac paper is notable for the ways in which their debugging process is almost, but not quite, modern. Another early gui-driven networked computer system was Sage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environm... https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/sage/ https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/sage/
- lawlessone 6y agoHow was that camera feed done? analogue? cannot have been digital
- thdrdt 6y agoThe article is a little unclear about this. The Telstar satellites made it possible for IBM to send digital data but it would also stream analog video. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar
- schmudde 6y agoCertainly analog. The collaborative video/audio features would not have been practical in 1968. But all of the interactive computing concepts were indeed happening in real time.
- AlbertoGP 6y agoThere were no satellites involved, and yes it was purely analogue. They did build most of the equipment themselves, the hardware to connect the computers to the video equipment. But let Douglas Engelbart explain it by himself: "we leased two microwave lines, up from our laboratory at SRI, up in Menlo Park, so it’s roughly 30 miles, and it took two dish antennas on the roof there, four of them on a truck up on SkyLine, and two on the roof of the conference center”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG3PWet8fDk&t=19m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG3PWet8fDk&t=19m50s Edit: btw, a few seconds later he mentions Bill English: “but anyway it worked, and the main reason it worked is because Bill English is a genius”.
- schmudde 6y agoThat quote on English is a great find! I added it to the article and made sure to give you credit. Thanks.
- drno123 6y agoWhenever the von Neumann EDVAC paper is mentioned, I feel it is rightful to point people to the book that gives proper backround to what we incorrectly call von Neumann architecture: https://www.amazon.com/Eniac-Triumphs-Tragedies-Worlds-Computer/dp/0802713483 https://www.amazon.com/Eniac-Triumphs-Tragedies-Worlds-Compu...
- rosstex 6y agoI'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as 'von Neumann architecture'...
- oofoe 6y agoAlso, if you're interested in that sort of thing, the book "From Dits to Bits" by Herman Lukoff is a good read from an engineer in the trenches. Seems that it's now available on the Internet Archive: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4436586M/From_dits_to_bits https://openlibrary.org/books/OL4436586M/From_dits_to_bits
- schmudde 6y agoThat's a fair point. I added this footnote to the piece in the same spirit: > The report helped popularize the term “Von Neumann architecture” as a way to denote computers that store programs in memory. The term and the original paper are both controversial because they both fail to acknowledge Von Neumann’s peers and predecessors. Although this seems to be an accident of history, the influence of Von Neumann’s first draft is undeniable. Sound good?
- _reza 6y agoIts notable how defective our current computers are compared to glorious days of 60s-70s.
- zan2434 6y agoHeh, I thought this was going to be an article about Engelbart, et. al.'s mothers!