 Univac 1107, circa 1960 [Ed. note - The following article from the May-June 2005 Muse was actually an Email that Ian wrote to a friend, and passed it along to us. - - RDM] I ran across a 2001 email from my dad this morning that referenced what I was talking about yesterday, so I thought I'd pass along to you the following excerpt, just for [smiles]: "Yes, good old Univac. I enjoyed programming the 1107 in binary and octal. One thing I did made my cohorts smile: We didn't have screen savers in those days, so the screen was just black when you turned on the behemoth computer. I wrote a subroutine that caused dots of light to appear randomly, giving the appearance of twinkling stars in the sky." Though it is not a 'screensaver' per se because it does not work to preserve the monitor (credit for that innovation apparently belongs to Ringdale), you may agree with me that Dad's much earlier caprice was an avant-garde step in the right direction and seems worthy of at least a footnote in computer lore. |
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