That Geniac looks suspiciously like the Brainiac K30 I had as a kid:
The rotary switch rotors held shorting staples which could be crimped into pairs of holes. Connections to the backplane were made by bent pieces of brass, held by screws, pairs of which got shorted together as the staples came in contact with them. The whole arrangement got pretty dodgy as the number of circuits on a switch increased. The bent brass pieces either got mangled or failed to make a connection. But it was entertaining, nonetheless. The most complicated example in the guidebook was a circuit that played a decent game of tic-tac-toe.
Phil, your aversion to all things mechanical may stem from frustrating experiences with dodgy hardware at a young and impressionable age. The very toys that were targeted at gifted children had this unfortunate and unintended side effect.
My father was thus encumbered. He was an intelligent and highly educated engineer but he was never able to divorce himself from treating a computer as a delicate instrument that could be upset by the slightest deviation from the one and only correct way of doing anything. He would not have dreamed of depressing a single key before reading every word of every manual, three times over. The accumulated effects of such slavish and unnecessary attention to detail was undoubtedly contributory to his early demise.
... He would not have dreamed of depressing a single key before reading every word of every manual, three times over. The accumulated effects of such slavish and unnecessary attention to detail was undoubtedly contributory to his early demise.
Based upon this observation, I'm guessing many of us on the forum should expect to live very long lives.
Totally. In fact I voided the warranty on my first computer before ever plugging it in. I simply had to inspect the insides first. How can I be expected to use something I haven't examined? How could that be any fun?
Heater - Great find! - I like how matrices can be used to time shift the axis of relays! Lots of ideas here for Propeller programming. Plus the paper is in the original mechanical typewriter font from the 1950s. It was a pain to erase in those days.
Humanoido
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I don't think it meant "125 computers" all at the same time, but I guess you could buy more than one:)
But wow, what a find. "GENIAC the original electric brain construction kit" I would love to get my hands on one complete with the seven books.
Best of all is "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits" by Dr Claude Shannon.
Yes, that's the famous Shannon as in communication theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon
Must find that book, it should be essential reading for all Propeller users.
Seems it was his masters thesis.
See magnificent picture in this paper jerome-segal.de/Publis/Shannon_Claude.pdf
The rotary switch rotors held shorting staples which could be crimped into pairs of holes. Connections to the backplane were made by bent pieces of brass, held by screws, pairs of which got shorted together as the staples came in contact with them. The whole arrangement got pretty dodgy as the number of circuits on a switch increased. The bent brass pieces either got mangled or failed to make a connection. But it was entertaining, nonetheless. The most complicated example in the guidebook was a circuit that played a decent game of tic-tac-toe.
-Phil
My father was thus encumbered. He was an intelligent and highly educated engineer but he was never able to divorce himself from treating a computer as a delicate instrument that could be upset by the slightest deviation from the one and only correct way of doing anything. He would not have dreamed of depressing a single key before reading every word of every manual, three times over. The accumulated effects of such slavish and unnecessary attention to detail was undoubtedly contributory to his early demise.
Based upon this observation, I'm guessing many of us on the forum should expect to live very long lives.