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A Short History of Computers In the Movies
Esther Schindler writes "The big screen has always tried to keep step with technology usually unsuccessfully. Peter Salus looks at how the film industry has treated computing. For a long time, the 'product placement' of big iron was limited to a few brands, primarily Burroughs. For instance: 'Batman: The Movie and Fantastic Voyage (both 1966) revert to the archaic Burroughs B205, though Fantastic Voyage also shows an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central. At 250 tons for each installation (there were about two dozen) the AN/FSQ-7 was the largest computer ever built, with 60,000 vacuum tubes and a requirement of 3 megawatts of power to perform 75,000 ips for regional radar centers. The last IBM AN/FSQ-7, at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, was demolished in February 1984.' Fun reading, I think."
Am I the only one here who's programmed that beast? Assembly language; Fortran had just been invented. Might fit one into a current Walmart, might not. I recall during our training (LA) we heard of another computer in the city! Had to go talk to those guys across town.
Still cranking out code, at 84.
First, vacuum tubes lasted much longer than 6 months, Second, that's what PM is for. Preventative Maintenance would have you replacing the tubes before they're reaching EOL, increasing system reliability.
You just have to accept a few hours of downtime every few months while they swap out thousands of tubes.
I don't read AC A human right
Here's something nice: http://starringthecomputer.com/. Various sightings of various computers in movies along with ratings of importance, realism, and visibility.
I think there's a ton of CDC equipment in Collosus: The Forbin Project. It has a fairly standard "computer takes over the world" plot line but is a bit of fun as well.
Note the movie trivia entry at this IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/trivia
"When the executives at Control Data Corporation found out that Universal was planning a major movie featuring a computer, they saw their chance for some public exposure, and they agreed to supply, free of charge, $4.8 million worth of computer equipment and the technicians to oversee its use. Each piece of equipment carried the CDC name in a prominent location. Since they were using real computers - not just big boxes with a lot of flashing lights - the sound stage underwent extensive modifications: seven gas heaters and five specially-constructed dehumidifiers kept any dampness away from the computers, a climate control system maintained the air around the computers at an even temperature, and the equipment was covered up at all times except when actually on camera. Brink's guards were always present on the set, even at night. The studio technicians were not allowed to smoke or drink coffee anywhere near the computers."
Where was WarGames, Weird Science, TRON, Electric Dreams, etc.? Who gives a crap about a Vaio showing up in The Pink Panther 2. (Oh, and that's Steve Martin. Who's Steve Allen?)
Program Intellivision!
Some of the the AN/FSQ-7 consoles keep showing up in movies because they're available for rental at Woody's Props in LA.
Those aren't even the control panels for the computer. Those are just the modems and serial ports. Here are the much larger AN/FSQ-7 maintenance control panels.
Those are just the control panels. Here's the CPU, with all the racks of tubes. Full-sized 12AX7 tubes (still used in some guitar amps), not even minature tubes.
That was an Unix system. More precisely, it was Silicon Graphics' IRIX with the fsn file viewer.
Circumcision is child abuse.
It actually was a Unix system, SGI's FSN, you can check it out.
Compare with the movie here.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
going from ~12 tubes to 60k
They used tricks, like reducing the filament voltage, to improve tube life. Nevertheless it was a problem, and I think these new solid state models show promise.
Everyone remembers the Minis, but the true geeks remember Benny Hill playing one of the cinema's first computer hackers.
The SAGE computer (AN/USQ-7) was truly mind blowing in scope. IBM produced a very cool movie of the system in operation in 1956 (along with some great cold war propaganda) that is a wonderful time capsule to boot. It shows a scale model of the building that housed the system to allow pointing out where all the pieces were located. My father spent some time as an operator of the huge display scopes at the McChord AFB installation.
Movie here: https://archive.org/details/0772_On_Guard_The_Story_of_SAGE_18_48_05_00
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down your computer properly by selecting Shut Down from the Start Menu.
Demon seed ... say hi.
Is that what it was trying to do? Something of a communication gap there.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I wonder if IMSAI 8080 paid for placement in WarGames?
They were not a big name by all means. I still have the IMSAI I put together from a kit sold out of San Leandro, California. I thought it was such a cool little machine.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Check out these old buggers, and the ads featuring Tom Baker, the legendary 4th Doctor Who.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSRC0S7pls8
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
It was provided as a demonstration of IRIX capability...
I've used it briefly - doing an ls was faster... Even in the movie it was slow.
It was part of a rather wide experiment in different ways to show a filesystem characteristics...
Not shown very well in the movie, it used blocks of different sizes to illustrate the number of files in the directory. Opening a "building"/directory drew a new scene with the contents of the directory and file size characteristics to select new blocks. Links in the diretory shown as lines. As I recall, only two levels were ever shown at a time The current directory as the central square, lines connecting building on the square would connect to the next level square. Browsing was done by rotating the scene/moving in/out and selecting a block to enter.
It worked, but was inherently slow.
For kids of the 1980s this movie was first exposure towards the medium. Additionally it heralded the dawn of the hacker and government misunderstanding of the hacker capabilities -- specifically some of the problems Kevin Mitnick faced. Really surprised it wasn't mentioned.
A lot of people in programming think its purely a young mans game. That may have been true in the 60s and 70s but its not any longer. That old guy (or gal) you see shuffling down the street may have once coded up some pretty neat algorithm that helped fly your plane or did your banking or controlled the fuel injection on your car in the 80s. It would be nice to have an article about retired coders, what they did and their opinions of the dev world now. And whether vi is better than emacs ;o) No, scrap that last idea...
> If an average vacuum tube lasted 6 months
This is a common misunderstanding about reliability, whether talking about solid-state or tubes. In fact, any manufacturer worth his/her salt can predict, with surprisingly accuracy, the number of failures over time -- say, 1% in the first month, 10% by the end of the first year, and so on. How they do this is fascinating to those who are interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_assurance
Thus, you can buy electronics, made in the same factory, by the same people, but one branded "Sharp" and the other with an off-brand name -- identical units -- but one has a 90-day warranty, while the other is 1 year. The latter will probably cost more because ('ere's the secret) the cost of the warranty is factored into the price of the unit. (Moral: a longer warranty does NOT necessarily mean a better-built device. Another secret that "They" won't tell you.) :)
In this case:
1. You test each tube thoroughly before it's even approved for use in the computer. (This testing is one reason why "mil-spec" components cost so much.)
2. Since each tube is about the same age when the computer is first built, there will be a *window* when you expect to begin having cascade failures. You schedule PM (i.e., tube replacement) to occur *before* that window. For each of those 60,000 tubes, there's a replacement log.
This is a great example of how statistics can mislead. When the first really big computers were proposed, there were indeed some who argued that they'd never work, because with 10,000's of tubes, they'd be constantly breaking down. But real-life proved them wrong, thankfully.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.