Re: ascii dates

["Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>]

On Mon, 22 Feb 1999 14:40:44 +0100, some pissed-off Anonymous wrote:

>The first computers used in launch guidance at Cape
>Canaveral had memory bits the size of your fist and
>were hand-programmed: for a 0, pass the wire through
>the doughnut in this direction -- for a 1, pass the
>wire through in that direction. Total memory something
>like 176 bits.

Yeah!  I grabbed such a card in an old PDP-7 that was rotting in the physics 
dept fifteen years ago.  The machine has been used by a student, maybe twenty 
years earlier.  It is now on display in a friend's store, as a piece of history.

I thought that by sending a pulse in one direction or another, you could write a 
1 or a 0 in the torus.  My unit is composed of two strips of 15 torus x approx 
125 rows, with hair-thin wire embroidered into the torus.  The ferrite torus are 
made from a sliced tube approx 1/16" outer dia x 1/32" inner dia, each slice 
about 1/64" long.

Most customer who visit the store and look at it don't even realize what it is!

Ciao

jfa



Youth Leader:  "We're teaching them [kids] climbing, canoeing, archery, shooting...."
    Interviewer: "Shooting, thats a bit irresponsible isn't it?" 
Youth Leader: "I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised all the time".
    Interviewer: "But aren't you equipping them to become killers"?
Youth Leader: "you're equipped to become a prostitute, but you're not one are you"?