Memories inside the boxes

© Mark Ollig

I am digressing from the usual weekly column topics to one I hope you find interesting.

Those middle-aged or older probably have boxes containing various possessions stored in the basement, closet, and garage.

Did I mention many of us (hand raised) can’t seem to part with our memorabilia packed inside plastic bins and containers in rooms throughout our home?

We have accumulated too much stuff and realize it has taken over our living space.

Also, how many of us regularly open a sealed box to look at the items inside?

As for myself, rarely do I open those boxes.

My kids are all adults and moved out of the house many years ago. After looking around my home, I realized the numerous boxes filled with items from my children’s youth and thought, “Why am I keeping all their stuff?”

Being honest with myself, I concluded there were just too many rows of stacked cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins in my closets.

Initially, I planned to give these stored-away items to my kids when they left home, assuming the value they had for them in their youth would still be there as an adult – or so I thought.

Because of their sentimental value, I reasoned that the kids would like having something from their childhood they could look at and remember from an earlier time in their lives.

The boxes are all neatly stored and labeled with their contents; however, it is obvious there are too many boxes.

My humble dwelling contains boxes filled with the kids’ old toys, model cars, books, crayon drawings, school assignment papers, board and video games, and radio-controlled vehicles.

After contacting my sons about coming over and picking up some of these boxes, I was surprised to learn they did not want them.

“I have no place to keep all that stuff,” was the shared reply adamantly explained to me.

I persisted about the items having sentimental value and how they’ll appreciate looking at them when they reach my age.

That line of reasoning didn’t work very well, although they did take a few boxes to keep me happy and cheerfully accepted the silver coins I had saved for them.

As to my collection, I have boxes of items collected over the years that bring back memories, such as a practice football jersey I wore in high school.

When I see that jersey, memories of the practices, games, coaches, and players flood back into my mind.

I felt getting rid of the jersey and other things I had saved for years would be like discarding memories.

It’s true. I am going through what has been described as “middle-age downsizing syndrome,” defined as the personal pain and heartache of parting with years’ worth of items that are no longer used and are seldom seen.

As difficult as it may be, I’ve decided it’s time to sort, sell, and donate what I no longer need inside those boxes and plastic containers.

I learned downsizing is the subject of much discussion, especially among middle and upper-aged folks.

Some people downsize because they no longer need to be living in a large house and want to move into a smaller one that is easier to manage and move around in.

Singles and couples are selling their house or moving out of their rental and taking to the road, living full-time in an RV or travel trailer, desiring to experience new adventures in different parts of the country.

However, many folks can’t part with all their boxes full of stuff and keep them in a commercial rental warehouse storage unit, paying a monthly fee for securely storing boxes they have not opened in years.

There is another solution for dealing with the emotional separation from our beloved boxed items.

Students from Penn State University performed a field study on successfully de-cluttering and parting with stored items.

Their research showed people were willing to separate themselves from personal items holding sentimental value if they took photographs of these things before parting with them.

“We found that people are more willing to give up these possessions if we offer them a way to keep the memory and the identity associated with that memory,” explained Rebecca Reczek, co-author of the field study.

“Don’t Pack up Your Sentimental Clutter . . . Just Keep a Photo of It, Then Donate,” reads a sign hanging on a wall at Penn State.

I do have boxes containing photo albums with hundreds (if not thousands) of pictures of birthdays, school activities, holidays, and other family get-togethers, which of course, I will keep.

However, I have decided to take photos of the personal items inside the boxes I no longer have any good reason to save before parting with them.

The memories inside those boxes will still be there whenever I look at the photographs.

The Right to Use this Clip Art image was paid for by me!

Someday, all computers will work like this

© Mark Ollig

In 1972, Xerox Corporation was known for its copier machines.

Unbeknown to the general public, during this time, Xerox researchers and engineers were busy designing a unique computer system.

Xerox deemed future technology favored digital over analog, so they began developing the technology and software required to allow their copier machines to communicate with digital computing systems.

April 27, 1973, Xerox Corporation’s California Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) division completed work on a new digital computing system and began using it within their organization.

Xerox engineered their digital computer with a graphical interface and a newly-devised point-and-click three-button mouse, significantly reducing users’ need to type text commands through a keyboard.

Using the mouse, Xerox employees navigated the graphical user interface on the newly-named Xerox Alto digital computing system.

The computer name “Alto” was chosen because it was developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center.

The Alto was designed to be used with the Xerox laser printer (Xerox invented the laser printer in 1969) and their copying machines.

Xerox employees using the Alto computer experienced a dramatic visual difference when manipulating the display screen’s graphical images, scrollbars, icons, windows, and file names by clicking the three-button mouse.

Xerox incorporated a portrait-presentation, 875-line, raster-scanned, bitmap display screen with the Alto computer. A bitmap display was essential in using a graphical user interface.

The Alto computer’s processor was based on Texas Instrument’s ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit) 7481 chip.

Single-platter 2.5MB removable disk cartridges stored the Alto computer’s software programs.

The computer’s processing components, disk storage units, and related systems were encased inside a small cabinet the size of a compact college dorm refrigerator.

Alto computers were connected to Xerox’s LAN (Local Area Network) using Ethernet — which, coincidentally, Xerox developed at PARC.

The LAN shared computer program files, documents, printers, office email, and other information with the connected Xerox employee computers.

Another method for entering commands used a five-finger “chord keyset” device; however, this never became popular with Alto users who preferred using the three-button mouse.

Software used with the Alto included word processors named Bravo and Gypsy.

Alto’s email software was called Laurel, and yes, someone with a sense of nostalgic humor named the next software version Hardy.

I can only imagine the comedic methods Laurel and Hardy would have come up with for selling computer email software.

Other software used with the Alto computer included a file transfer program, text-chat utility, computer games, and painting and graphics programs.

Although Xerox provided some Alto computers to university and government institutions, they were primarily used within their corporate business offices and not sold to the public.

In 1978, Xerox Alto computers were operational in four testing sites, including one in the White House.

By 1979, an estimated 1,000 Alto computers were being used by Xerox office personnel, engineers, and researchers.

In December 1979, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, visited Xerox’s PARC division.

A Xerox representative gave Jobs a demonstration of the Xerox Alto computing system, showing him the LAN connecting Alto computers.

The representative demonstrated their email software and an object-oriented programming language called SmallTalk.

Jobs appeared highly impressed while observing people operating the Alto computer’s graphical user interface programs with a mouse instead of typing on a keyboard.

“It was obvious to me that all computers would work like this someday,” Jobs correctly predicted.

In 1980, Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak introduced the Apple III computer (which included a bitmapped screen and a palm-sized mouse) for a price beginning at $4,340 or $13,727 in today’s dollars.

In 1981, Xerox Corporation began selling a graphical-user-interface desktop business computer called the Xerox Star 8010 Information System to businesses and the public for $16,595, which today would be $52,488 — a bit pricey for a home computer user.

During the same year, IBM introduced its IBM Personal Computer (Model 5150) at $1,565, which would be $4,959 in today’s dollars — much more reasonable than the Xerox Star 8010 and more affordable than the Apple III.

The IBM personal computers were popular and widely used by businesses and the home computing public.

In 1983, Apple released its Macintosh computer for $2,495 ($7,892 in 2022 dollars).

Throughout the 1980s, the three dominant names in computers and software: IBM, Apple, and Microsoft, continued improving their computer hardware, operating systems, software, and peripherals.

It was too late for Xerox to become a competitive player in personal computing. Being primarily a copying machine maker, they couldn’t generate enough computer revenue sales.

As a result, in 1985, Xerox Corporation discontinued the production of its Xerox Star 8010 computing system.

“Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry,” Steve Jobs once said, reportedly stating he believed all computers would someday work like the Xerox Alto.

Xerox Corporation had its start in 1906 as the Haloid Photographic Company, producing photographic paper and other equipment.

During the 1930s, American physicist Chester F. Carlson invented a unique electrostatic dry chemical image copying process called xerography, a Greek word meaning “dry writing.”

Carlson created the first xerographic image on Oct. 22, 1938.

In 1947, Haloid Photographic Company obtained the commercial rights for using xerography.

In 1958, the company changed its name to Haloid Xerox Company; the following year, it began manufacturing the Xerox copier machine, and in 1961, it became Xerox Corporation.

We first witnessed employees of a large corporation using a mouse to operate several computer graphical interfaces with the birth of the Xerox Alto digital computing system.

Xerox Alto digital computing system with CPU, Monitor, keyboard, mouse,

and the unpopular 5-key chording keyset. Source: Computer Museum

(1973)

Visiting the past and the present

© Mark Ollig

In the mid-1990s, when the internet and personal computing became a growing influence in our lives, someone began writing a column about it in their hometown newspaper.

This person was learning about home computing technology and the internet and wanted to share it in a weekly column.

Of course, I was that person who set out with an Omni notebook computer, typing away on its word processing program about my thoughts on computing and the emerging cyberspace landscape named The Internet in a column called Bits and Bytes.

In 1995, I reasoned getting a new computer and accessories would make a good story; my experience buying it would fill an entire column.

I remember walking into the computer store. The salesperson came over to me and asked, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for a home computer,” I replied. As the salesperson smiled, I immediately sensed he knew he would be making some serious money on this sale.

He asked how I would be using the computer, and I told him that since I would be doing a lot of writing, it needed to be installed with Microsoft Word and the Windows 95 operating system.

The computer included the MS-DOS.

I had them install 5 1/4 and 3 1/2-inch dual floppy drives on the computer, NEC MultiSync 15-inch VGA (Video Graphics Array) color monitor, IBM parallel port printer, 500 MB (megabyte) hard drive, and the Creative Labs CD-ROM with the Sound Blaster audio card.

In addition, I bought the computer with an Intel 486DX 100MHz central processing unit, which, at the time, was the latest state-of-the-art for home computing processing power.

I also needed communication software and a 28.8 kbps dial-up modem.

The salesperson asked, “Do you want an internal or external modem?”

Although I was buying a tower desktop computer, I thought it best to have an external modem, so I would not need to remove the computer housing cover to replace or set dip-switches inside the modem.

I believe the price for this 1995 computer setup was around $1,800, which, in 2022, would be about $3,350.

A home computer and processing power in the mid-1990s would be considered “Star Trek” technology compared to what powered the onboard computer guidance system of the Apollo spacecraft moon missions during the late 1960s and early ’70s.

In those days, NASA did most of the heavy computational number-crunching here on Earth, using rows of large mainframe computers with its output data relayed by satellite ground stations to the spacecraft.

In 1971, Intel built the first commercially available microprocessor chip, which sold for $60 ($420 in 2022). It was the Intel 4004 and had a clock rate of 750 kHz — thousand hertz, not mega.

The Intel 4004 was used in calculators, cash registers, and early automated teller machines.

Computer maker IBM usually comes up with challenging methods for testing their processors and software.

You might remember IBM’s supercomputer playing chess games against human chess grandmasters.

Before 1997, chess grandmasters proved the human brain superior when playing against a computer.

However, this changed in May 1997, when world chess champion Garry Kasparov competed in a six-game chess match against the $10 million IBM supercomputer named “Deep Blue.”

The computer surprisingly defeated Kasparov.

Today’s computer chess programs are not only winning because of better-written software with improved analytical processes; they also operate much faster and with greater processing power.

During the late 1990s, the story was about needing faster processing chips to calculate the algorithms for complex graphical computer gaming software programs being developed.

In the early 1970s, graphical computing games being played on our television sets included Pong.

The game console for Pong made by Magnavox was called Odyssey. Ralph Baer created it in 1969.

Some of the gaming software from the 2000s required computers equipped with what we considered a very sizable data hard drive of one or more TB (terabyte).

In 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) data hard disk drive weighed nearly a ton and occupied 16 square feet. It stored 5MB of data on 50 24-inch-diameter disks and cost $35,000, which amounts to about $365,000 in 2022.

Today, one can purchase a Seagate Expansion 18TB external hard drive for around $500.

And to think, in 1995, a 100MB hard drive was considered a lot of data storage capacity.

If parts of today’s column seem to have been a revisit to the past, you are right; portions of its content appeared in the Aug. 7, 2002 Bits and Bytes column with some (many) corrections and updates.

1995 Omnibook notebook personal computer

The missing 'LINC' ancestor of the personal computer

© Mark Ollig

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society acknowledged it as the first personal computer.

This computer represented a break from the generally accepted understanding that many users should connect to and share the resources of a single computer at the same time.

That design approach is known as “time-sharing,” linking multiple users to a single large computer known as a mainframe by rapidly switching the resources of the computer’s central processor from user to user.

In 1952, Wesley Clark worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developing the Memory Test Computer for the US Navy's Whirlwind Project, one of the first interactive digital electronic computers.

The mid-1950s saw Charles Molnar obtaining his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.

During the early 1960s, Wesley A. Clark and Charles E. Molnar were electrical engineers at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1961 and 1962, Clark and Molnar were busy designing and building a new computer named LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), intended for use in scientific, medical, and research centers.

The LINC project received funding from a grant through the National Institute of Health, a biomedical research agency of the US federal government.

The LINC configuration comprises an enclosed six-foot by twenty-inch cabinet rack, four smaller metal boxes containing two LINC-Tape drive units, an oscilloscope-sized display monitor, a control panel, and a keyboard.

Clark and Molnar engineered their computer to be uncomplicated to program and communicate with while operating and maintaining.

The LINC is a stored-program binary-coded digital computer designed to operate in the laboratory environment as a research tool.

It is a 12-bit computer with a one-half megahertz processor and a network of hand-wired and assembled soldered components, and 16 analog input and two output channels.

LINC provided a typing keyboard and screen with an alphanumeric-graphical display for an operator's interactive use.

The LINC is equipped with two Tape Units using three by three-quarter-inch diameter pocket-sized reels magnetic tapes for storing programs and data. The tape units operate much as diskette units found years later on personal computers.

Each tape holds 131,072 l2-bit words of information.

The LINC was engineered with a transfer rate of 125,000 words per second.

This computer was groundbreaking because 60 years ago, scientists believed a large time-sharing mainframe computer was best for researchers to use, and the LINC was a miniature “stand-alone” computer.

The compact design of the LINC allowed its administration, operation, programming, and maintenance to be easily assumed by an individual researcher or small laboratory group.

Software used with the LINC was designed by Mary Allen Wilkes, a computer programmer.

She also devised the prototype LINC user console and wrote the operator's manual for the console's final design.

A total of 20 LINCs were installed in various biomedical research laboratories, where they efficiently processed biotechnical signals and other input data.

As a young engineer who also worked at MIT in the 1960s, Severo Ornstein recalled Mr. Clark as one of the first to understand the consequences of the falling cost and shrinking size of computers.

“Wes  [Wesley Clark] saw the future 15 years before anyone else,” said Ornstein.

In 1976, Severo Ornstein worked at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, CA, where he designed a computer interface for an early production laser printer.

In 1965, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) built 50 LINCs and made them commercially available at $43,000 each, which today is equivalent to about $387,300.

Mary Allen Wilkes was 27 in 1965 and had a working LINC computer installed at her home in the living room next to the staircase.

During a 2012 interview, she said the LINC operated on a standard 15-amp circuit and “was designed to just plug in the wall.” My research said the LINC had a power requirement of 1,000 watts using 115 AC volts.

The typical hairdryer uses 1,875 watts on its highest setting.

Working at home with the LINC, Wilkes succeeded in developing a more highly advanced operating system software code for the computer.

Wilkes said her father, a clergyman, thought having a computer in the home “was absolutely fabulous” and told other people, “I bet you don't have a computer in your living room.”

I also noted with interest Wilkes saying she was a “Star Trek” fan.

In 1983, Molnar and Clark received the Director's Award from the National Institutes of Health for developing the first personal computer.

“PROGRAMMING THE LINC” is a 142-page report written by Mary Allen Wilkes and Wesley A. Clark. It can be seen at https://bit.ly/3r29Vs5.

In the early 1960s, MIT LINC engineers and programmers built a bridge from the era of sizeable complex mainframe computers generally inaccessible to the general public to today’s personal computers responding interactively with an individual user.

Charles Edwin Molnar passed away on Dec. 13, 1996. He was 61.

Wesley Allison Clark died on Feb. 22, 2016, aged 88.

Severo M. Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and is 92 years old.

Today, Mary Allen Wilkes is 84 and is considered the first person to work remotely from home with a personal computer.

The creation of the LINC provided a glimpse of the future we are now living in.

The Laboratory Instrument Computer, known as the LINC, is the predecessor, or ancestor if you will, of today's modern personal computer.

Wesley Allison Clark demonstrating the LINC in 1965

Specifications for the Laboratory Instrument Computer,
 known as the LINC. 

Mary Allen Wilkes in 1965 had a working LINC computer installed
at her home in the living room next to the staircase.

It was no ‘April Fools!’

© Mark Ollig

On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer in a single-story house at 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, CA, the boyhood family home of Steve Jobs.

Urban legend says Apple Computer started in the family garage; however, in a 2014 interview, co-founder Steve Wozniak said, “The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home.”

He added, “We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.”

On April 11, 1976, the company’s first Apple computer, built on an assembled circuit board and designed by Wozniak, was released.

“Byte into an Apple” was an advertising catchphrase thought of by Wozniak when the first Apple Computer “low-cost microcomputer system” went on sale for $666.66 ($3,348.94 in 2022 dollars).

Apple Computer manufactured about 200 of these computers, later known as the Apple I.

Recently, I listened to a radio interview with Steve Wozniak, also known as The Woz, where he talked about his early involvement with Apple Computer and the creation of the Apple I.

He recalled his early fascination with studying electronics and aptitude for math and science in grade school and his obsession with computer projects and ham radios during fifth and sixth grade.

In high school, Wozniak designed hundreds of computers, changing the design for each,  creating a new computer on paper using fewer and fewer computing chips.

He did this as a game, not realizing he would use these computer design engineering skills in his future work.

In 1975, Wozniak, along with his friend Steve Jobs, were members of an organization of computing hobbyists called the Homebrew Computer Club, located in today’s Silicon Valley in California.

The Homebrew Computer Club met every two weeks.

Wozniak gave a working presentation of the computer he designed and built during one of their meetings.

What made this computer unique were features incorporated into it not found on other hobbyist computers available at the time.

The computer Wozniak built contained a keyboard for the user to type information instead of physically flipping toggle switches like one would do when using the Altair 8800 computer, which during this time was a popular hobbyist computer.

A person using Wozniak’s computer typed programming code information on a keyboard. The coding input and computer output would be viewable on a television screen attached to the computer’s video terminal.

During the interview, Wozniak spoke in a somewhat broken sentence saying, “When I built this Apple I … and sort of the first keyboard . . . [I felt] the first computer should look like a typewriter. So it should have a keyboard. And the output device is the TV set.”

The computer screen he used was a Sears portable color television brought from his home for the demonstration. Wozniak wired the connections from a cable he ran from the tv to the computer circuitry board.

Wozniak then attached another wired cable end to the circuit chips on the computer’s component circuitry board (breadboard) and the small character coding input keyboard he designed.

He admitted wanting to impress the people watching him give the demonstration.

What Wozniak assembled to demonstrate at the Homebrew Computer Club eventually became the first Apple computer.

“I want to take credit for having done some very, very good things, some very good designs and software that was art like Mozart would do,” Wozniak said.

Wozniak explained how every computer before the Apple 1 included a front panel that looked like a piece of bland network switching equipment.

He wanted the design of the first Apple computer to look unique.

Wozniak noted from the time when the Apple I came out, every new computer since then has had a keyboard, and he takes credit for it.

“. . . yeah, my idea, so I started passing out the schematics and the code listings for that computer, telling everyone here it is. It’s small, and it’s simple, it’s inexpensive; build your own,” Wozniak explained.

He had no thoughts about starting a company until Steve Jobs told him, “You know, people are interested; why don’t we start a company?”

“He had more of the future vision. We can bring this to everyone; start a company; sell it,” Wozniak said about Steve Jobs.

Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer with Jobs and Wayne, and thus the birth of the first affordable “personal” computer company was born.

Jobs was more involved with company issues, while Wozniak worked on computer design and invention, including the Apple I, Apple II, and Apple III computer. Ronald Wayne provided administrative oversight.

An October 1976 advertisement for the first Apple “Low-Cost Microcomputer System” can be seen at https://bit.ly/35eIrb6.

In his 2006 autobiography, Wozniak explains how Apple got its name: “Steve [Jobs] suggested a name – Apple Computer. We both tried to come up with technical-sounding names that were better, but we couldn’t think of any good ones. Apple was so much better.”

In 2021, 45 years after it began, Apple’s worldwide total net sales amounted to $365.82 billion.

Starting Apple Computer has unquestionably proved not to be an April Fools’ Day hoax.

Speaking of April Fool’s Day, have you seen the London Italian restaurant photo of the bountiful harvest gathered from the spaghetti trees grown in Switzerland?

2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, CA