[inforoots] Fwd: The IBM 7090 & Yacht Handicapping

[Barrie Robinson]

Seems strange that yacht handicapping required such a massive machine 
but the story goes to show the brilliant marketing of IBM.  When 
students were exposed to computer science at MIT it was IBM that they 
learnt - thus when they went out into the world they spoke IBM to the 
detriment of the organisations they joined.   Similarly the yachteers 
- they probably worshipped IBM as saviours.  In the 70's I was shown 
the Data Centre of the University of Windsor by a recent computer 
science graduate.  When I asked why the huge IBM machine had to be 
'partitioned' and not run with memory dynamic allocation he responded 
that such an operation "was not technically possible".   Despite the 
fact that I quoted chapter and verse of machines with dynamic 
allocation, including the ICL 1900 series, he said if such technology 
was possible then the IBM machines would have it - and this a 
computer science graduate!

At 06:35 AM 11/13/2005, Michael Blasgen wrote:
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>IBM had been very generous to MIT in the fifties and sixties, 
>donating its biggest scientific computers. When a new top of the 
>line 36-bit scientific machine came out, MIT expected to get one. In 
>the early sixties, the deal was that MIT got one 8-hour shift, all 
>the other New England colleges and universities got a shift, and the 
>third shift was available to IBM for its own use. One use IBM made 
>of it was yacht handicapping: the president of IBM raced big yachts 
>on Long Island Sound, and these boats were assigned handicap points 
>by a complicated formula. There was a special job deck kept at the 
>MIT Computation Center, and if a request came in to run it, 
>operators were to stop whatever was running on the machine and do 
>the yacht handicapping job immediately.
>
><http://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html?1>http://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html?1 
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>As they say, in addition to being a sequence of trade-offs, life is 
>also a matter of priorities.
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Regards
Barrie

Barrie Robinson
(705) 721-9060 
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