BobMackay · HackerTrans

3 lata temudiscuss

I think one should also consider the failure modes when, for example, a tree falls into the wall. For a straight wall, it is possible that a falling section will propagate the failure along the entire length of the wall. For a wavy wall, it is likely to fail in shear, limiting the damage to one section.

BobMackay

3 lata temudiscuss

I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical!

BobMackay

3 lata temudiscuss

I have been waiting for this for 50 years! It is wonderful that Roger Penrose and my father, Alan Mackay, are still alive to see it! If only Escher could see it!

BobMackay

4 lata temudiscuss

Thanks. My copy was actually the copy that they sent to J.D. Bernal, and was signed over to him "with the compliments of the authors". My father was another PhD student of Bernal's, and became Professor of Crystallography at Birkbeck later. The diagrams are scanned in from the original, but I re-typed the text for web presentation. It is astonishing how much of Computer Science was completely understood by the end of the war.

BobMackay

4 lata temudiscuss

Here is their 1947 paper on Principles and Progress in the Construction of High-Speed Digital Computers: http://bobmackay.com/Booth/Booth.html

BobMackay

4 lata temudiscuss

I was present at the BMUG meeting on Berkeley campus when Andy demonstrated Switcher for the first time. He did no talking, but simply ran up two or three applications... and then the whole screen scrolled sideways and the audience was on its feet cheering! The event was amazing, only perhaps matched by Bill Atkinson's demo of Hypercard. Happy days!

BobMackay

5 lat temudiscuss

If you like such things, Nguyen Duc Thang has a ridiculously extensive collection he has been modeling, which can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/featured.

BobMackay

7 lat temudiscuss

The notion of "Programming" was mentioned and even defined in 1947 by Donald Booth. See http://bobmackay.com/Booth/Booth.html Principles and Progress in the Construction of High-Speed Digital Computers.

"The word 'programme' as used in this context may require explanation. Before a problem is ready for solution in a computing machine it must first be broken up into processes which the machine is capable of performing. Thus, as mentioned above, when using a digital machine the continuous process of differentiation must be replaced by a finite difference formula. This translating of a problem in terms of the available functions of the machine is generally known as programming."

However he did not use the word "language" as only assembler was known at the time, and he was the first to use even that.

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