The farthest object visible with the naked eye.

[the other mike]

 

[Wuwei]

You are right. I should have hung on to them. The one I had did not have the rounded corners as your picture shows. You could actually see saw marks on the top of the transistor. They were not shiny. I had about three of them.

What you describe sounds like the earlier plastic case. They later went to metal case. One of those could be worth over $100.

They didn't have an operating system so I wrote the application in hex assembly language. I'm not kidding. There was not too much in the instruction set and it was well organized. I used a teletype with punched paper tape for program storage and instruction input. The system was installed in a test car driven by an executive. His wife didn't like the neon color of the 100 tiny rectangles of the linear meter (according to rumors) so it was abandon.

Dude! You gotta be up there in years! Damn. I never got past FORTRAN and that was considered a fix so people DIDN'T have to program by assemly language! But I was lucky to have an instructor who actually worked on the ENIAC. He was a real cool dude.

I was one of the first to buy an 8 bit South West Technical products computer kit with a Motorola 6800. I also programmed that with a teletype/paper tape.
View attachment 335172

They had an assembly language, but no high level language, so I wrote a threaded interpretive code for it. I can't believe the energy I had back then.

That computer drew some serious power. I'll leave you with these two interesting images.

The first is a 5 MB HDD from 1956:

View attachment 335184


This second picture was a model of Rand Corporation's vision for the home computer in the year 2004, but it relied on technology not yet invented but which they were sure we would have by then. The only problem they saw was the average home affording one. If only they could see today.


View attachment 335189

Their vision for 2004! That is hilarious. With a steering wheel
Just how far have we underestimated technology 50 years from now?
.

 

[toobfreak]

Wow! That is so cool...certainly old school.

Yeah, I have a bigger, better picture of a larger 6" Clark refractor I came across at a star party that someone owned, but I can't find it right now. These are pretty rare scopes now. The airspace that Wuwei mentioned in his Tessar lens, I'm pretty sure Clark was the one that pioneered that. I often refer to it as a Clark modification.

Years ago I bought a Celestron Nexstar 8. My first scope. Joined an Astronomy club in Orange County Ca.

Know that scope well. Nice GOTO robotic scope. The C-8 has to be one of the most successful commercial scopes ever made. Hell, if you're in Orange Country, Meister, you ought to head inland to Riverside, I think they have a big star party there every year. Others I know up near San Fran often like to go to the big lookout at Yosemite. Here's a guy I know that lives just north of you in LA that bought a focuser off me last year. He goes to that place, Glacier Point, in Yosemite all the time.

Big star parties there all the time.

I moved to northern Id. and I have dark skies in my back yard. What a hoot that is. My favs are the Nebula's in the fall and winter.

I bet! It must be jet black there. When I was a kid, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. No street lights. I miss that. Idaho is a terrific place, beautiful country. You are very lucky. Used to have a friend that ran an astronomy business in Idaho. Not sure if he's still in business there anymore.

Here's a crop of a cross-section of a professional picture of Andromeda Galaxy, a very small area of it, about the highest resolution we can get showing individual stars in another galaxy. It was made as a composite between images taken both by the Hubble combined with the Subaru telescope.

If you click on it, it should give you the full file size.

 

[toobfreak]

Their vision for 2004! That is hilarious. With a steering wheel
Just how far have we underestimated technology 50 years from now?

Ain't that wheel great? I guess that was their idea for the forrunner of a mouse. Just goes to show, Rand is a think-tank for really smart people. If their guess of the future can be so far off, imagine how far off OUR ideas of 50 years from now will be?

 

[mamooth]

That image is not an old RAND computer. It's a photo of a navy nuclear reactor control station on display at the Smithsonian, adjusted with some photoshopping and a funny caption for a joke competition. It's similar to one I worked at, which did not have a TV monitor or teletype. It didn't have a single IC of any sort. It was impressive what could be done with all-analog.

And that thing on the left is not a steering wheel. Those are the valve control wheels for the ahead and astern steam turbines.

This second picture was a model of Rand Corporation's vision for the home computer in the year 2004, but it relied on technology not yet invented but which they were sure we would have by then. The only problem they saw was the average home affording one. If only they could see today.


View attachment 335189

 

[Wuwei]

That image is not an old RAND computer. It's a photo of a navy nuclear reactor control station on display at the Smithsonian, adjusted with some photoshopping and a funny caption for a joke competition. It's similar to one I worked at, which did not have a TV monitor or teletype. It didn't have a single IC of any sort. It was impressive what could be done with all-analog.

And that thing on the left is not a steering wheel. Those are the valve control wheels for the ahead and astern steam turbines.

LOL! Boy was I had. Come to think of it the TV does look like it's pasted on. It has the wrong perspective.

.

 

[the other mike]

It's mindboggling to look out at the ocean or fly over a mountain range and then realize just how small we really are in the universe.

 

[toobfreak]

That image is not an old RAND computer. It's a photo of a navy nuclear reactor control station on display at the Smithsonian, adjusted with some photoshopping and a funny caption for a joke competition. It's similar to one I worked at, which did not have a TV monitor or teletype. It didn't have a single IC of any sort. It was impressive what could be done with all-analog.
And that thing on the left is not a steering wheel. Those are the valve control wheels for the ahead and astern steam turbines.

This second picture was a model of Rand Corporation's vision for the home computer in the year 2004, but it relied on technology not yet invented but which they were sure we would have by then. The only problem they saw was the average home affording one. If only they could see today.
View attachment 335189

Hey, I guess anything's possible. The caption says it's a mock up of a future computer. Maybe someone did PS it. Maybe RAND borrowed one of your Navy control stations for re-purposing. It'd be interesting if you could provide a picture of said station in the Smithsonian or elsewhere.

 

[toobfreak]

That image is not an old RAND computer. It's a photo of a navy nuclear reactor control station on display at the Smithsonian, adjusted with some photoshopping and a funny caption for a joke competition. It's similar to one I worked at, which did not have a TV monitor or teletype. It didn't have a single IC of any sort. It was impressive what could be done with all-analog.

And that thing on the left is not a steering wheel. Those are the valve control wheels for the ahead and astern steam turbines.

LOL! Boy was I had. Come to think of it the TV does look like it's pasted on. It has the wrong perspective.

.

I have to admit I always wondered why RAND would use a full console TV complete with speaker system for a computer.

 

[toobfreak]

It's mindboggling to look out at the ocean or fly over a mountain range and then realize just how small we really are in the universe.

View attachment 335305
View attachment 335314

Here, you might like this, Angelo. Great video AND music. All you need now it to drop a hit of acid. Make sure you turn up the volume and full-screen it.

 

[the other mike]

Here, you might like this, Angelo. Great video AND music. All you need now it to drop a hit of acid. Make sure you turn up the volume and full-screen it.

Well, I had 16th row for Led Zeppelin on mescaline with my girlfriend in 1977, so I've been pretty close already.

Actually a better example would be front row for the 2112 Rush tour the year before and we were doing lsd25 .

Last trip was 1989 on shrooms

 

[toobfreak]

Here, you might like this, Angelo. Great video AND music. All you need now it to drop a hit of acid. Make sure you turn up the volume and full-screen it.

Well, I had 16th row for Led Zeppelin on mescaline with my girlfriend in 1977, so I've been pretty close already.

Actually a better example would be front row for the 2112 Rush tour the year before and we were doing lsd25 .

Last trip was 1989 on shrooms

Sounds about as good as the night we saw Law, Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express and the Mahavishnu Orchestra do Inner Worlds from the 6th row center as we tripped on double hits of Window Pane while the people behind us passed us 6-inch buds! The kicker: thirteen years later when the theater was redesigned into a much nicer concert hall, I got to be one of the people who helped design the new sound system!

 

[the other mike]

Here, you might like this, Angelo. Great video AND music. All you need now it to drop a hit of acid. Make sure you turn up the volume and full-screen it.

Well, I had 16th row for Led Zeppelin on mescaline with my girlfriend in 1977, so I've been pretty close already.

Actually a better example would be front row for the 2112 Rush tour the year before and we were doing lsd25 .

Last trip was 1989 on shrooms

Sounds about as good as the night we saw Law, Brian Auger and the Oblivion Express and the Mahavishnu Orchestra do Inner Worlds from the 6th row center as we tripped on double hits of Window Pane while the people behind us passed us 6-inch buds! The kicker: thirteen years later when the theater was redesigned into a much nicer concert hall, I got to be one of the people who helped design the new sound system!


View attachment 335395

You know, Carlos Santana was tripping his ass off when he played Woodstock ? Jerry Garcia gave him some LSD a few hours before they went on.

 

[ReinyDays]

Well, I had 16th row for Led Zeppelin on mescaline with my girlfriend in 1977, so I've been pretty close already.
Actually a better example would be front row for the 2112 Rush tour the year before and we were doing lsd25 .
Last trip was 1989 on shrooms

I remember the night well ... got my girlfriend up against the barrier, me right behind ... over on Jerry's side of the stage ... you could tell The Boys were screaming as loud as they could into their microphones ... but we couldn't hear them over the guitars ... bought the acid from a total stranger out front when we walked into the place ... good clean and powerful ...

The size of the universe ... what really drove this home for me was the results of the LIGO experiment ... they turned this on expecting to have to wait months if not years to detect even the smallest of gravity waves ... pfffft ... couple days they got a BIG hit, neutron stars colliding ... they're getting these about every week or two ... neutron stars colliding ... somewhere in the universe ... that's got to be rarer than Randy Johnson plinking a pigeon with 0-2 fast ball ...

 

[mamooth]

Hey, I guess anything's possible. The caption says it's a mock up of a future computer. Maybe someone did PS it. Maybe RAND borrowed one of your Navy control stations for re-purposing. It'd be interesting if you could provide a picture of said station in the Smithsonian or elsewhere.

Is This How a Home Computer Was Imagined in 1954?

Does a photograph shows RAND Corporation's 1954 design for a home computer?

www.snopes.com

 

[Wuwei]

Hey, I guess anything's possible. The caption says it's a mock up of a future computer. Maybe someone did PS it. Maybe RAND borrowed one of your Navy control stations for re-purposing. It'd be interesting if you could provide a picture of said station in the Smithsonian or elsewhere.

Is This How a Home Computer Was Imagined in 1954?

Does a photograph shows RAND Corporation's 1954 design for a home computer?

www.snopes.com

That explains everything, but why is there an accordion hanging on the wall instead of a TV?

 

[toobfreak]

Hey, I guess anything's possible. The caption says it's a mock up of a future computer. Maybe someone did PS it. Maybe RAND borrowed one of your Navy control stations for re-purposing. It'd be interesting if you could provide a picture of said station in the Smithsonian or elsewhere.

Is This How a Home Computer Was Imagined in 1954?

Does a photograph shows RAND Corporation's 1954 design for a home computer?

www.snopes.com

I gotta admit a little disappointment. I was really digging those big steering wheels, one for moving the cursor up/down, and the other right/left. Then all they needed was a foot pedal on the floor for the click/select. Plus all the gauges to tell me voltages and currents across my CPU, memory, etc. Very steampunk.