EDSAC was one of the very first computers to allow for loading programs, in 1949, and it sounds like a delightfully sensory experience.
(Previously computers were programmed by re-wiring their control panels. When ENIAC, the first fully electronic, digital computer, was upgraded from control panels to loading programs in 1948, it reduced the reprogramming time to hours instead of days.)
Here’s what loading an app on EDSAC was like, as related on Wikipedia:
Users prepared their programs by punching them (in assembler) onto a paper tape. … When a program was ready it was hung on a length of line strung up near the paper tape reader.
The machine operators would feed the tape in when its turn came. I like this image of a washing line, you can just imagine hanging up your program and sighing because there are so many already there.
And then:
A loudspeaker was connected to the accumulator’s sign bit; experienced users knew healthy and unhealthy sounds of programs, particularly programs ‘hung’ in a loop.
I am super into this noisiness.
But what I am into more particularly is the work of the computer being spread around the room.
I love Natalie Jeremijenko’s seminal Live Wire (Dangling String) (1995) created when she was artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC.
Created by artist Natalie Jeremijenko, the “Dangling String” is an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway, the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being obtrusive.
Here’s the closing statement of the paper:
The dangling string increases our peripheral reach to the formerly inaccessible network traffic. While screen displays of traffic are common, their symbols require interpretation and attention, and do not peripheralize well. The string, in part because it is actually in the physical world, has a better impedance match with our brain’s peripheral nerve centers.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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EDSAC was one of the very first computers to allow for loading programs, in 1949, and it sounds like a delightfully sensory experience.
(Previously computers were programmed by re-wiring their control panels. When ENIAC, the first fully electronic, digital computer, was upgraded from control panels to loading programs in 1948, it )
Here’s what loading an app on EDSAC was like, as related on Wikipedia:
The machine operators would feed the tape in when its turn came. I like this image of a washing line, you can just imagine hanging up your program and sighing because there are so many already there.
And then:
I am super into this noisiness.
But what I am into more particularly is the work of the computer being spread around the room.
I love Natalie Jeremijenko’s seminal Live Wire (Dangling String) (1995) created when she was artist-in-residence at Xerox PARC.
Here’s the closing statement of the paper:
Pre-symbolic, non-obtrusive, peripheral reach.