


 I ran into this strange old guy and his wife at work the other night,  he
 seemed nice enough and somehow we got to talking about computers.  After 
 a little discussion I found out that this guy was a very old school programmer
 from back in the vacuum tube days.  I thought that was pretty interesting so
 with a little persuasion I talked him into an interview,  and here for your
 starved of the truth minds is how it really was with p.c.'s in 1956. 

 



q> How did you get started in computers?

a> I was a chemical operator at Union Carbide in South Charleston W.V. I went
to night school at Morris Harvey College in charleston for six long years. It
was all night school. I did shitwork the whole time, I had to support a wife 
and three children. I majored in math and economics and when I graduated I was
offered a job programming for production planning at union carbide. Of course I
took it, which was hard because I was also doing some work in New York. I was 
being paid $495 a month,  which was a pretty decent in 1956.

q> What did the programming consist of? 

a> Take end uses of a chemical and calculate backwards the entire amount you'd
   need for a whole month.   

q> So just basic number crunching ?

a> Right, but the further you get out on the tree the less precise it became.
   The more iterations there were of the projection the more room there was
   for error.


q> What kind of equipment did you work with?

a> Our basic computer was the ibm 650. which was a tube computer with a drum
   it had a capacity of 2000 10 digit words. 

q> How much space did that pc takeup?

a> It was 6ft high about 3ft wide and approximately 3 foot deep. It now resides 
   in a glass case in the Smithsonian Museum.


q> What was the most advanced technology you saw in your days as a programmer?

a> In 1960 they released IAC (Immediate Access Storage) and RAMAC (Random Access
   Memory Allocation Control) which stored info on records magnetically.  They 
   stored a lot for those days. we also had tapes, then the 360 came out which 
   meant we didnt have to manually program the coalater now. The coalater sorted 
  data before it went to the 407, which was a dot matrix printer that also did 
  math and and could be hooked into series with a 519 which was a card puncher. 
  It sounds a little confusing but it didn't seem confusing when you were in the
  middle of it all.  The only hard part to it all was hooking all these devices
  together, see we didnt have any standard hook-up, it was all wired by hand by
  us.  

q> you said you programmed in basic, could you name off a few of the
   mnemonics you used?

   Mnemonics didn't exsist then, we used machine level code. In 1960 they 
   came out with 2 programming techniques, soap 1 and soap 2 and they were 
   mnemonically based but I was pretty much on my way out then. The most 
   common ones i can remember are: 
   
   11 subtract
   15 add 
   70 read a card
   71 punch a card
   
q> So using a computer that takes up a room how much trouble was it to 
   transfer data?
a> The 650 put it on a puch card, then you took the cards to the coalater
   which put the data in print order.  Then to the 407 which would print the
   data.  You could not share data between two 650's without re-entering it.

q> Okay now I'm gonna stray off the beaten path here a little bit so the next
   couple of questions may seem a little irrelevant, just answer them as well
   as you can.

a> Well thats all I can do anyway. ( laughing )

q> I'm sure you have watched the news and seen reports of "hackers" getting 
   into all sorts of trouble,  what do you think about these so called "hackers"?

a> Well hiking is one of the most enjoyable things I ever did. We used to go 
   up into the Colorado Mountains and 

<< I really thought he said hacking at first, I swear >>

q>  No, no, not hiking. Hacking.


a>  I know nothing about it, I've been thinking of buying a computer though,  I used 
    to have a commmodore 64.

<< I'm not sure why he told me that, I figure he was trying to jump subjects on me >>

q> Back when you got your start did you ever hear about any hackers?

a> It was impossible to get into the data on the punch cards without 
   the 650 and to my knowledge no one even wanted to. I never heard
   about anyone doing it. There was no sneaky pete stuff back in those
   days.


<< No I'm really not sure what "sneaky pete stuff" is.. >>


q> How was security at the place you did your programming at?


a> They had a guard on first floor but it definately wasn't fort knox.
   As far as i know they never even locked the door.



q> how much trouble was it to make a phone call in those days?
  
a> We had rotary phones, and payphones were a dime. When I was a kid
   you had to pick up the phone and tell the operator your number,
   that was when they had the candlestick phones. 


q> Did you ever hear of anyone finding a way to make free calls back then?
 
a> No never.

q> Did you ever imagine that a phone line would be used to transfer data
   between millions of computers all over the world at once?

a> I did. What i wanted to do was program distillation from stills and 
   reaction units. In our days the tube pc wasn't that reliable every 
   monday or tuesday an IBM technician would come and run the 650 through 
   its processes, but i could easily forsee that someday computers would  
   be the future for communication.


q> Whats the most advanced piece of technology you've used to date?

a> A computer


q> What would you say was the single most important discovery to modern
   technology as we know it today?

a> The atomic bomb, nuclear energy. 

<< I wonder if that's "sneaky pete stuff"? >>

q> Do you think you could still program that room sized vacuum of madness?

a> I think that with a little review or study i could. If you get it out of 
   the smithsonian. I still remember the basics.

q> Well Otis thanks a lot for your time and I promise someone other than just
   me will get some use out of this interview.  By the way do you have any
   relics laying around I could have?

a> I will try to send you a card and some of my old programs.


<< End of interview >>



  And send that card he did.  I scanned it and put a link up on the blizzard page. 
  Check it out its pretty interesting. He also sent a mass of old documentation
  material which was old but still interesting anyway.  
