TOD:
A catalog of my computer experiences would be almost as lengthy as a catalog of my debauchery (but not as interesting).
Since this is a family site, we'll stick to part one.
In college (Naval Academy) I was introduced to both mechanical and electro analog computers - both used to aim and fire guns. (Mechanical computers consist of a dizzying array of rods, gears, cams, travelers, and other Rube Goldberg parts. Electo-Analog computers consisted of vacuum tubes, rheostats, diodes, and a varying collection of resistive bridges, and LC circuits).
Early Navy tours had me working with analog computers for generating solutions for delivering ordnance to kill submarines I also spent 18months working with a research group that was using my ship to develop experimental deep-submergence detection systems (cameras towed at the end of very long cables searching the sea bottom). This effort provided a very special challenge - the cameras had a look distance of about 20 feet and were dangling at the end of about 2 miles of cable, streaming through ocean waters a million miles from nowhere. Presuming the camera spots something, how do you know where it is, and how can you return to that point? (Knowing "about" is not good enough, you must be within 25 ft! We needed to erect high metal towers on the ship to hold antenna that communicated with special aircraft that could relay radio signals from land beacons so we could compute our position - then we had to develop sophisticated computer programs to try and figure out where the cameras were in relation to the ship - this was the prototype of the system that was used to find the USS Threasher, the sunken submarine in the North Atlantic.
In Post Graduate School, I was introduced to digital computers with Fortran programs on punched cards input and folded paper printouts for output. (And like many "clever" programmers I did manage to submit a program that got caught in an endless loop that included a print command. Many a valiant tree died to provide the reams of paper spewing forth for my pick-up box before the operator caught the problem and halted the program.)
Next came the Cruiser missile systems with their digital computer controlled targeting and guidance radars. Following these was a tour on an early NTDS (Naval Tactical Data System) frigate where I was in charge of the new digital system that linked all our sensors and weapons to a central command point, and provided digital data links to other units to co-ordinate combat operations - This is the system I took to the Viet-Nam War. All of the combat air operations, including search and rescue, were coordinated from our ship that was sailing in the Gulf of Tonkin. Our job was to direct our planes on the desired course, keep them from flying over Red China, provide them with heads up on enemy planes, and make sure we didn't endanger commercial aircraft.
Next came civilian life, based on my extensive background in surface navy operations and air control I naturally gained employment working on Submarines and Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. (One of my favorite stories of this era involves a dispute I had with Univac over software programming. I had provided them with a list of "programming constraints" that were necessary to move target and control date between their computer and the torpedoes or missiles via our Digital to Analog converter. They firmly announced that there was no way they could be expected to abide by my guidelines. Hell, said I, if the Navy wants, we could redesign our box so you can send your outputs any way you want, and we will prepackage your inputs in tables for your use. Fine says the Navy -do it! On the plane ride back my boss asked how we would do such a thing. My Answer - "I haven't the foggiest, I was winging it assuming I could embarrass UNIVAC into doing their job." Well, we got a multimillion dollar contract mod and I had the job of putting their money where my mouth was. I took what was basically an Analog Converter Box that had a computer interface, embedded one newly designed special purpose computer system that intercepted all the Univac generated commands and repackaged them in accordance with our Programming Guidelines and embedded a second special purpose computer that dummied up computer commands for data gathering and packaged the results in tables that were sent back to the Univac mainframe. In answer to the question "Did it work?" I direct your attention to the CNN reporter during the first Gulf war commenting on the missile flying down the street outside his Bagdad hotel - that had been launched from our submarines using this system.
On the PC level, I first started working with a Varian (8 inch floppys, CPM programming), followed by my first home computer a Kaypro (on loan from a sub-contractor).This was CPM based and I ran TMaker (an early spreadsheet program) and DbaseII. The first PC to hit my work desk was an IBM PC XT, which I quickly duplicate at home. The work environment started having in the Mac vs PC wars in earnest. Since I was responsible for directing organizations that used both, I ended up with one of each - MAC-SE on the table to my left (with DARPA Net Connections), and my AT on my desk in front, with the MacLink interconnect cables between. As a result, I also ended up as the "go-to-guy" for converting files from one system to the other. At home I finally broke down and added a MAC to my collection (which I abandoned when we moved East).
For those of you who think your desk computer is too complicated, consider it's ancestor:
ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was the first all-electronic computer designed to be Turing-complete, capable of being reprogrammed by rewiring to solve a full range of computing problems.
Physically ENIAC was a monster—it contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand- soldered joints. It weighed 30 tons, was roughly 2.4 m by 0.9 m by 30.5 m, took up 167 m² and consumed 160 kW of power. Input was possible from an IBM card reader, while an IBM card punch was used for output. These cards could be used to produce printed output offline using an IBM accounting machine, probably the IBM 405 .
der Brucer
I leave it to Prof Orr to expound on "Turing-complete"
