Time-Life "Mathematics" / was Re: OS/2 stillborn

[Brent Hilpert]

Ethan Dicks wrote:
> 
> There is, IIRC, a picture of a Stretch in the Time-Life book
> "Mathematics".  I don't have my copy close at hand, but I _think_ the
> one in the photo was being used for weather modelling.
> 
> The photographer set up colored spots to highlight different portions
> of the machine in different colors to match up with the descriptive
> text.
> 
> I remember reading this book when I was a very small kid.  The
> computer pictures (and descriptions of core memory, etc.) made a very
> strong impression on me.  The book would have been published in the
> 1964-1965 timeframe (before I was born), and was therefore rather
> dated when I would have read it in the early 1970s, but it was still
> really neat.
> 
> I guess I can trace my fascination with old machines back to that book.

I still have that book too, Ethan. I received it as a little kid in the late
60's and share your sentiments about it.

Looking at the double-page spread of Stretch right now: the text says it
belonged to the U.S. Weather Bureau ("analyses 90,000 weather reports at
once", "addition in 1.5 millionths of a second").

There's also the photo of the front panel of the IBM 704 with a chess board
in front of it and indicated to be running a chess-playing program,
... another IBM 70?0 series machine doing moon-flight calculations,
... imposing photos of Claude Shannon (in front of what may be part of
 Whirlwind) and Kurt Godel,
... John Kemeny having a discussion with some students at Dartmouth,
... etc, etc.