[00:00.000 --> 00:03.200]  The fourth track on Felsenstein, across the way, it's unscheduled.
[00:03.340 --> 00:09.760]  If you want to go ahead and schedule a talk that you're going to give yourself, you can visit the info desk to sign up.
[00:09.840 --> 00:11.340]  And I think there's also a wiki online.
[00:12.160 --> 00:14.720]  That's a little bit different than what I had said yesterday, which was actually wrong.
[00:14.820 --> 00:16.720]  There's not a paper by the door to sign up there.
[00:17.340 --> 00:21.180]  The other thing is after the keynote, after the yes men speak today, there will be lightning talks.
[00:21.320 --> 00:25.920]  And that's another time to do a short little talk on all kinds of random things, whatever you happen to care about.
[00:26.740 --> 00:27.060]  Cool.
[00:27.240 --> 00:30.700]  So I think we, if you guys are ready to go, testing.
[00:31.220 --> 00:31.580]  Testing?
[00:32.080 --> 00:32.740]  Is there a second mic?
[00:32.940 --> 00:34.980]  I imagine they're probably both fine AVS.
[00:34.980 --> 00:35.300]  Evan, go ahead.
[00:35.840 --> 00:36.540]  Hello, Raul.
[00:36.800 --> 00:38.000]  Well, duly on top of things.
[00:38.180 --> 00:38.300]  All right.
[00:38.580 --> 00:44.280]  So now we're going to have a vintage computer talk, and I'll let the speakers introduce themselves, if that's all right.
[00:44.720 --> 00:44.920]  Cheers.
[00:45.900 --> 00:50.840]  My name is Bill Degnan, and I just want to thank whoever it is that keeps trying to get into my droid every five minutes.
[00:51.080 --> 00:51.860]  Appreciate that.
[00:52.360 --> 00:53.000]  It's a lot of fun.
[00:53.660 --> 00:55.240]  So, you know, I know I'm in the right place.
[00:56.360 --> 01:04.320]  And I am the vice president of the Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists with my friend over here, Evan, who's the president.
[01:05.320 --> 01:07.400]  And why don't you introduce yourself further?
[01:07.500 --> 01:07.560]  Okay.
[01:07.840 --> 01:09.940]  I'm Evan, and I have turned off the Wi-Fi on my laptop.
[01:10.440 --> 01:11.640]  I don't even have that on.
[01:12.680 --> 01:13.120]  Somebody.
[01:13.300 --> 01:14.000]  Cellular hacking.
[01:14.220 --> 01:14.400]  Yeah.
[01:14.900 --> 01:15.520]  Good for them.
[01:15.560 --> 01:19.840]  So those of you who are HOPE veterans, I'm sure you've seen us here last couple times around.
[01:21.360 --> 01:24.780]  So we run this user group called March, which is a meta word.
[01:24.780 --> 01:27.240]  It was a mid-Atlantic retro computing hobbyist.
[01:27.300 --> 01:28.360]  We formed in 2004.
[01:29.060 --> 01:32.740]  And we have dozens of members around these, many states around.
[01:33.160 --> 01:36.680]  And we have a bricks and mortar computer museum in central New Jersey.
[01:37.760 --> 01:38.960]  So there's that.
[01:41.180 --> 01:43.020]  Bill's expertise is history of hacking.
[01:43.320 --> 01:45.400]  My expertise is history of portable computers.
[01:45.620 --> 01:47.200]  So we said, let's put them together.
[01:48.440 --> 01:49.220]  That's what we're doing.
[01:51.800 --> 01:52.280]  Okay.
[01:53.640 --> 02:01.980]  A lot of people, when they, you know, if you say what's a portable computer, the first thought is something you can fit in your pocket or at least carry around in a backpack or whatever else.
[02:02.880 --> 02:08.200]  But all portable means is designed to be moved around, regardless of size.
[02:09.240 --> 02:17.640]  So you could have a computer that's very small, like say, I don't know, a Commodore 128, but it's not a portable computer.
[02:17.860 --> 02:19.880]  It could be moved around, but it's not its primary intention.
[02:20.560 --> 02:27.880]  On the other extreme, you could have a computer as big as a tractor trailer, but if it's made for that purpose versus just being put in the truck as an afterthought, then it is a portable.
[02:27.880 --> 02:32.660]  So my point is portable is not synonymous with small size necessarily.
[02:34.100 --> 02:34.900]  What is a hack?
[02:34.960 --> 02:35.740]  What is a hack?
[02:36.720 --> 02:50.260]  So you all know what a hack is in a traditional sense, but as far as we're concerned, a hack also means something interesting that was done to make the product in the first place, as opposed to something that the product was made to do that it wasn't meant to do.
[02:50.760 --> 02:58.540]  And in many of these early examples of large portable computers, there were fascinating hacks involved to create them.
[02:58.860 --> 03:03.560]  So the first half or two-thirds of our talk will focus quite a bit on that.
[03:03.760 --> 03:07.860]  And then some of the more modern devices will get into interesting hacks that they were used for.
[03:08.060 --> 03:10.100]  And there's a little bit about how to hack with...
[03:10.100 --> 03:10.380]  Yes.
[03:10.580 --> 03:14.560]  This is more of a historical talk than a technical one, but there's room for everybody.
[03:16.880 --> 03:17.960]  I can't see the slide.
[03:17.960 --> 03:23.940]  This is the cool guy with his portable sort of Exidy Sorcerer computer.
[03:24.840 --> 03:29.620]  And you can see he's moving in on the woman on campus who happens to be holding a tape recorder.
[03:31.000 --> 03:35.800]  Back in the 70s, in certain colleges, what women would do is they'd walk around with tape recorders.
[03:36.260 --> 03:39.820]  And then the guys would come up to them and that's how they knew they were, you know, available.
[03:42.940 --> 03:45.840]  So that's like an early mating ritual there.
[03:45.840 --> 03:47.580]  But we just wanted to show the portable computing.
[03:47.720 --> 03:49.380]  It's like saying, I know how to use a computer.
[03:49.500 --> 03:51.120]  So these guys have been walking around with...
[03:51.120 --> 03:51.800]  But guys, we mean...
[03:51.800 --> 03:55.480]  We're very serious about the topic of our talk, but there'll be plenty of humor as well.
[03:55.880 --> 03:57.200]  Like that, for example.
[03:57.480 --> 03:57.600]  Like that.
[03:57.740 --> 03:58.020]  Okay.
[03:58.620 --> 03:59.820]  So this is DYSEAC.
[04:00.840 --> 04:04.740]  This is one of DYSEAC's two 40-foot tractor trailers.
[04:06.640 --> 04:10.020]  DYSEAC was a vacuum tube computer.
[04:10.020 --> 04:16.500]  It was pretty much the last of the vacuum tube generation from 53 or 54 or so.
[04:18.960 --> 04:21.420]  And lots of interesting hacks involved with DYSEAC.
[04:21.500 --> 04:24.180]  First, let me tell you what it was and why it was made.
[04:25.560 --> 04:28.120]  Well, how it got to be portable is sort of a mystery.
[04:28.240 --> 04:28.780]  No one knows.
[04:29.220 --> 04:32.540]  I've personally interviewed many of the engineers who worked on it.
[04:32.640 --> 04:35.540]  And no one can quite figure out whose idea it was to make it portable.
[04:38.420 --> 04:45.760]  But what they do know is, you know, if you go back to ENIAC, for example, in World War II, obviously not a portable computer.
[04:45.900 --> 04:48.500]  It filled a room of 15,000 square feet.
[04:49.080 --> 04:54.260]  But when it was moved from the University of Pennsylvania to Aberdeen Proofing Ground, they did put it on a truck.
[04:55.020 --> 05:00.320]  When Conrad Zeus was escaping bombardment in Germany, he put his computer on a truck.
[05:01.060 --> 05:07.780]  And there are a couple other examples of computers that weren't portable, but people started to think, you know, it would help if you could move these things around.
[05:09.970 --> 05:10.530]  Next.
[05:11.350 --> 05:17.820]  One of the interesting things about DYSEAC was, it was the first computer ever with printed circuit boards.
[05:18.820 --> 05:26.040]  And it used something called an auto assembly technique, which was a primitive way of manufacturing circuit boards at the time.
[05:28.220 --> 05:29.200]  Do you want to go to the next slide?
[05:29.380 --> 05:30.720]  No, no, not yet, not yet, not yet.
[05:33.440 --> 05:34.300]  Let's see here.
[05:36.520 --> 05:46.280]  So I have a, oh, about a thousand word paper, which I'm not going to read to you, on all of the techniques they used to make it rugged to survive the truck.
[05:47.040 --> 05:48.600]  And one of these days I'll publish that.
[05:48.600 --> 05:50.780]  But I'm not going to, I'll spare you the PowerPoint karaoke.
[05:55.940 --> 05:58.620]  As interesting as DYSEAC was, it never really worked.
[05:59.300 --> 06:04.160]  What they did was, it was designed by the National Bureau of Standards, which is now NIST in DC.
[06:04.800 --> 06:10.780]  And it was driven to the White Sands Signal Corps, the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico.
[06:11.280 --> 06:14.180]  And they had a sample, a test app, a sample app for it.
[06:14.180 --> 06:17.900]  And the test app was for measuring speeds of winds aloft.
[06:18.320 --> 06:24.220]  The problem was, the circuit boards were so primitive, they didn't count on the white sand getting inside the computer.
[06:24.820 --> 06:26.620]  And that was pretty much the end of that.
[06:29.120 --> 06:31.740]  So they put it away, and that was the end of that computer.
[06:32.420 --> 06:33.780]  But it was a proof of concept.
[06:35.880 --> 06:36.840]  Next slide, Bill.
[06:37.380 --> 06:38.740]  There was only one of these ever made.
[06:39.200 --> 06:43.500]  Okay, this is one of two 30-foot trailers from Moby Dick.
[06:43.500 --> 06:49.620]  And any of you who attended our talk two years ago about the history of computing in the New York area may remember this part.
[06:51.140 --> 06:53.440]  Moby Dick had several advantages over DYSEAC.
[06:53.580 --> 06:57.100]  One, it was smaller, 25% smaller per truck.
[06:59.660 --> 07:03.140]  Moby Dick was the fourth or fifth computer in the world to use transistors.
[07:04.020 --> 07:06.380]  And it used something called field data.
[07:06.960 --> 07:15.380]  Field data was, as far as I know, the first method to make different makes of models so computers talk to each other in a common format.
[07:15.840 --> 07:19.820]  Most of you never heard of field data, but it evolved into something called ASCII.
[07:20.620 --> 07:22.260]  If you ever wonder why ASCII...
[07:22.260 --> 07:24.160]  I mean, anyone can tell me what ASCII stands for.
[07:24.240 --> 07:25.320]  You guys know what it stands for, right?
[07:25.980 --> 07:26.280]  Anybody?
[07:27.500 --> 07:29.300]  The other code for information interchange.
[07:29.620 --> 07:31.080]  But why does it stand for that?
[07:31.300 --> 07:33.840]  Well, the reason why is it was a joint...
[07:33.840 --> 07:36.700]  Field data was a joint project of the military-industrial complex.
[07:36.700 --> 07:39.920]  So it really was an American code for information interchange.
[07:40.220 --> 07:42.360]  There's a reason it came up with that horrible acronym.
[07:45.480 --> 07:50.380]  There's a great story, a hack, a social hack, about why it became a portable computer.
[07:51.000 --> 07:58.180]  So there was a secret Army Signal Corps laboratory on the Jersey Shore, which, by the way, now is the home to our museum we'll talk about later.
[07:58.940 --> 08:00.260]  It was called Camp Evans.
[08:00.460 --> 08:01.860]  No relationship to me, I'm Evan.
[08:02.920 --> 08:08.560]  And these guys in the early to mid-50s had a vacuum tube computer or Burroughs Electrodata 205.
[08:09.120 --> 08:11.580]  But at 55, 56, it was hardly obsolete.
[08:11.700 --> 08:13.280]  They wanted a modern transistor computer.
[08:13.540 --> 08:18.920]  And they went to the Army for funds, and the Army said, no, we'll only give you money for field technology.
[08:19.340 --> 08:21.740]  So their social hack was, okay, we'll put it in a truck.
[08:21.880 --> 08:22.860]  We'll call it field technology.
[08:23.060 --> 08:24.360]  When it gets here, we'll take the wheels off.
[08:24.460 --> 08:25.200]  We'll have our own computer.
[08:26.360 --> 08:27.840]  So that's hack number one.
[08:30.940 --> 08:40.540]  The opposite extreme, there were about a half-dozen field data-compatible computers made by Philco, Sylvania, RCA, et cetera, IBM.
[08:41.200 --> 08:50.500]  The opposite extreme of Moby Dick was a computer called Micropack, which stood for Micromodule Data Processor, I think.
[08:51.840 --> 08:55.380]  Micromodule, well, okay, and here's another hack number two.
[08:55.920 --> 09:06.240]  In the late 50s, 58 or so, the integrated circuit was invented, you know, competitively by TI and Fairchild.
[09:06.300 --> 09:07.000]  No, not Fairchild.
[09:08.180 --> 09:09.860]  TI and who did a microchip?
[09:11.020 --> 09:11.460]  Fairchild.
[09:11.460 --> 09:11.760]  Fairchild, yeah.
[09:12.800 --> 09:14.200]  Well, I'll think of the company later.
[09:14.280 --> 09:14.620]  Maybe it was Fairchild.
[09:14.720 --> 09:19.540]  Anyway, it took 10 years for integrated circuits to be feasible, even by the military standards.
[09:19.540 --> 09:33.080]  So, the Air Force and the Navy and the Army all had competing projects to make, like, Lego-like modular assemblies of components, and the Army's project is the one that won.
[09:33.220 --> 09:34.660]  The Navy's was called Project Tinker Toy.
[09:34.840 --> 09:35.400]  It didn't work.
[09:35.940 --> 09:38.960]  The Air Force's, I forget what it was called, something in Westinghouse.
[09:39.120 --> 09:41.800]  They built crystal organic circuits way ahead of its time.
[09:41.960 --> 09:43.420]  The Army's was called Micromodule.
[09:43.420 --> 09:56.520]  So, they would have these little things the size of sugar cubes, and they would have, like, a diode transistor one, and transistor capacitor one, et cetera, and they could plug them in and make circuits that were faster and had better heat, you know, heat variables and whatnot.
[09:56.880 --> 09:58.280]  So, that was a hack as well.
[09:58.460 --> 10:04.560]  So, Micropack was only a hundred pounds in 1962 or three or so.
[10:06.300 --> 10:08.920]  It was listed as a man-carriable computer.
[10:09.660 --> 10:15.720]  The other micromodule application that everyone has heard of was the handy talkie, the walkie-talkie.
[10:16.540 --> 10:20.340]  Also, so, the engineers referred to this one as the breakie-backie.
[10:23.100 --> 10:24.980]  So, I can't make this stuff up.
[10:25.640 --> 10:27.740]  So, yeah, okay.
[10:27.960 --> 10:33.820]  Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about DYSEAC.
[10:33.940 --> 10:34.940]  It's a little step backward.
[10:35.600 --> 10:51.440]  So, they had these four-letter codes for each of the program commands, and then women, human computers, were introduced as, you know, secretaries of programmers to the team, and they realized that some of the four-letter codes might not be appropriate.
[10:52.680 --> 10:58.100]  So, they had a program they had to come up with to go through and find those words and change them.
[10:58.340 --> 11:00.620]  And this is hack number three, or it should have been hack number two.
[11:00.680 --> 11:01.240]  I went out of order.
[11:01.240 --> 11:08.540]  That little program became the basis for one of the preeminent papers on error checking in the ACM.
[11:10.860 --> 11:11.340]  Okay.
[11:11.640 --> 11:12.820]  That's... what's next, Bill?
[11:12.980 --> 11:13.480]  The Donner.
[11:13.480 --> 11:13.780]  Donner.
[11:14.040 --> 11:14.540]  This is Bill.
[11:14.840 --> 11:16.880]  This is one of my favorite computers.
[11:17.120 --> 11:17.940]  This is a Donner.
[11:19.020 --> 11:20.740]  It's considered to be the first...
[11:20.740 --> 11:22.180]  At least Evan tells me this, anyway.
[11:22.180 --> 11:26.400]  This is the first production portable computer ever made?
[11:26.940 --> 11:31.280]  I would say the first production man-carryable.
[11:31.420 --> 11:32.000]  Man-carryable.
[11:32.060 --> 11:33.360]  Single man-carryable.
[11:33.380 --> 11:33.840]  Yeah.
[11:33.920 --> 11:39.180]  And this particular one, I think, is the oldest one, because it's the lowest serial number one that exists.
[11:40.080 --> 11:52.620]  And this also goes by what's your definition of computer, where we're not counting the abacus, we're not counting the IBM Simon, you know, toy logic trainer, electronic, well, not digital, but electronic computer is analog.
[11:52.800 --> 12:03.160]  But what's good about this thing, and aside from how old it is and all that, from 1959, but you can see that this has got a plug board on top of it, and it's an analog computer, for those of you that are knowledgeable about that stuff.
[12:03.340 --> 12:06.400]  And the screen on the front, the voltmeter, is the display.
[12:08.380 --> 12:14.860]  However, what I would do is I would hook an oscilloscope up to this and use it.
[12:14.860 --> 12:18.000]  And what I wanted to say is that you could...
[12:18.000 --> 12:19.680]  Here's another view of the inside.
[12:19.860 --> 12:24.860]  This is the blue ribbon bus exposed connector.
[12:25.020 --> 12:32.140]  I pulled out one of the amplifiers, and you can see the big amplifier on the right of your photo there.
[12:33.120 --> 12:37.940]  And here's some wiring that I did with another analog computer.
[12:38.020 --> 12:47.040]  But the idea with one of these things is you could hook one of these up to a phone system, and you could read the signal of the data coming in.
[12:47.140 --> 12:50.080]  So you could get the quality of the data coming in, returning to you.
[12:50.200 --> 13:01.220]  And if you could do that, you could also, you know, intercept phone signals, and so you could more or less just create your own little phone exchange with this kind of an analog computer.
[13:01.220 --> 13:07.880]  So the very earliest phone hacking would be done with analog-type equipment, not digital equipment.
[13:08.040 --> 13:23.320]  So, you know, even in the late 50s, early 60s, someone like that would have been using something that looks a little bit like this potentially to, at first in their job, maybe actually doing real work, and then maybe after work, you know, in the middle of the road,
[13:23.380 --> 13:24.340]  they need to make a phone call.
[13:24.440 --> 13:35.880]  And so they just go up to their local junction box, take their portable Donner 3500 and a battery and an oscilloscope and, you know, maybe make a quick phone call because they forgot to tell somebody they were coming.
[13:36.240 --> 13:37.060]  Just a theory.
[13:39.020 --> 13:39.380]  Okay.
[13:40.940 --> 13:41.300]  Okay.
[13:44.380 --> 13:47.740]  So ENIAC was the opposite of this.
[13:48.640 --> 13:59.840]  The man in the picture is John Walkley, who was the physicist professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and he was the main inventor of ENIAC.
[14:01.240 --> 14:09.940]  By the late 50s or so, of course, electronic data processing was the buzzword of the day, and it was very widespread, and computers were no longer a newfangled thing.
[14:10.960 --> 14:17.860]  And then John Walkley and his partner, Jay Presbrecher, each had a series of startups, mostly failed after they left UNIVAC.
[14:18.120 --> 14:19.420]  They were has-beens, frankly.
[14:19.600 --> 14:20.640]  Their time had passed them.
[14:21.540 --> 14:23.540]  But John Walkley had one more trick up his sleeve.
[14:26.060 --> 14:29.740]  In 59, he formed a company called Walkley Associates, a consulting company.
[14:31.340 --> 14:39.980]  And what they did was they did project management software for construction companies, engineering firms, that sort of thing.
[14:41.120 --> 14:49.560]  And they were very close friends with the people at DuPont, who a couple years prior had invented PERT and things like that, all the project management techniques.
[14:53.100 --> 14:59.340]  So their software was designed to be run on these massive mainframes, you know, the size of a room.
[14:59.740 --> 15:03.580]  And obviously they couldn't take down an airplane to potential customers and demonstrate it.
[15:04.760 --> 15:10.020]  A lot of customers were pondering buying such a computer based on the availability of software.
[15:10.300 --> 15:12.980]  So how would they demonstrate your software without the computer?
[15:13.200 --> 15:14.360]  Well, it's a catch-22.
[15:16.340 --> 15:20.840]  So, Walkley set out to build a portable computer and a briefcase, also analog.
[15:25.730 --> 15:26.430]  Let's see.
[15:28.010 --> 15:29.470]  So, but here's the catch.
[15:29.630 --> 15:30.550]  It was vaporware.
[15:32.230 --> 15:37.190]  What happened was there's a wonderful book just called ENIAC by a guy named Scott McCartney.
[15:37.550 --> 15:40.430]  Scott McCartney is a Wall Street Journal reporter, and I recommend reading it.
[15:40.510 --> 15:42.450]  In my opinion, it's the best ENIAC book written.
[15:43.270 --> 15:45.410]  And I read it a few years ago in the last chapter.
[15:45.410 --> 15:47.250]  It's an epilogue sort of, you know, where are they now?
[15:47.370 --> 15:48.230]  What happened to these guys?
[15:48.870 --> 15:57.410]  And the reporter wrote that he had one sentence or two sentences that Walkley, you know, 15, 20 years before Osborne made a suitcase portable computer.
[15:57.990 --> 15:59.730]  And I said, well, whatever happened to it?
[15:59.890 --> 16:00.970]  And so I emailed the reporter.
[16:01.050 --> 16:01.610]  He said, I don't know.
[16:01.710 --> 16:03.530]  If you can find out more, you know, good luck to you.
[16:03.810 --> 16:05.910]  So I made it my mission to find out all about this computer.
[16:09.170 --> 16:10.210]  There was a patent.
[16:11.070 --> 16:18.450]  There was many, many documents about cost to build it and blueprints and everything else.
[16:19.790 --> 16:21.130]  There was a press release.
[16:21.390 --> 16:23.090]  There were articles in the mainstream media.
[16:23.270 --> 16:25.950]  There were dozens of letters from potential customers.
[16:26.210 --> 16:27.730]  There were cost evaluations.
[16:28.390 --> 16:31.030]  There was this wonderful press photo at a trade show.
[16:31.510 --> 16:36.090]  There was everything you could possibly have for a computer except the computer.
[16:37.790 --> 16:40.630]  I've talked to a few former employees of Walkley Associates.
[16:40.690 --> 16:41.950]  Unfortunately, Mr. Walkley is deceased.
[16:42.410 --> 16:44.950]  They all said it was never made.
[16:45.070 --> 16:46.030]  It was an idea.
[16:46.270 --> 16:47.450]  One or two prototypes were made.
[16:47.570 --> 16:48.290]  They barely worked.
[16:48.970 --> 16:54.830]  In the Walkley archives at the University of Pennsylvania, I found an original marketing document.
[16:55.050 --> 16:59.250]  Oh, the computer was called Skeduflo, S-K-E-D-U-F-L-O.
[16:59.710 --> 17:02.390]  And someone had crossed out flow and wrote slow.
[17:03.030 --> 17:03.850]  The sketch is slow.
[17:04.750 --> 17:06.670]  And the idea was there would be different versions.
[17:06.870 --> 17:09.690]  You could have, you know, 5, 10, 20 things at a time.
[17:09.890 --> 17:12.630]  And what it would do is, you know, you would plug in your plug board.
[17:13.270 --> 17:18.930]  And so you would turn the electricity a certain amount on one side, and it would affect the amount on the other side.
[17:19.070 --> 17:28.490]  And so this could be correlated, the analog, of how if you change something in your schedule or cost of your project, or edit parts, whatever else, it would affect the rest of the project.
[17:28.770 --> 17:30.310]  So that's what it was supposed to be.
[17:33.010 --> 17:42.690]  So even though it was never made, and even though it was, you know, a year or two after the Donner, you know, it took...
[17:42.690 --> 17:49.150]  Donner was the company that produced it, but it took the man who invented ENIAC to come up with the idea for it.
[17:51.470 --> 17:51.830]  Next.
[17:52.550 --> 17:53.510]  Okay, what's next?
[17:55.450 --> 17:56.430]  I can't see.
[17:56.490 --> 18:00.770]  This is the Texas Instruments Silent 700 Terminal.
[18:01.010 --> 18:02.730]  Has anyone ever seen or used one of these before?
[18:04.050 --> 18:08.530]  This is actually the 707 with the acoustic coupler attachment.
[18:10.210 --> 18:12.930]  And this actually would have been a later version.
[18:13.090 --> 18:14.450]  It originally came out in 1971.
[18:15.230 --> 18:32.170]  And the reason that we're showing this slide is just to demonstrate that before the microcomputer, where portables and such were available, there was a period of time in the early 70s where if you wanted to have access to computing from home for whatever reason,
[18:32.410 --> 18:41.130]  you would use some sort of a terminal-type device as an alternative to a teletype or a phone system or whatever.
[18:41.130 --> 18:46.450]  So this was revolutionary because this gave you the ability to actually hold something and carry it.
[18:46.530 --> 18:48.130]  So it's one of the first portable terminals.
[18:48.970 --> 18:54.190]  It used paper instead of a glass terminal, but it was the first portable type terminal.
[18:54.310 --> 18:56.230]  There was one or two others, but this is my favorite.
[18:56.230 --> 19:01.850]  And it's one that I have something I can take a photo of that was used for that purpose.
[19:06.800 --> 19:07.160]  Okay.
[19:09.480 --> 19:13.460]  So these are all suitcase computers from the mid-70s.
[19:14.620 --> 19:18.900]  And before I get into the slide, there's one more slide I forgot to put in, but I'll tell you a little story.
[19:19.080 --> 19:21.140]  This is the only time I will read to you, I promise.
[19:23.420 --> 19:29.980]  So Malky, I mentioned a minute ago, got a Time Magazine reporter interested in his suitcase computer, which was vaporware.
[19:31.200 --> 19:35.440]  And the Time Magazine reporter kept prodding Malky about, you know, what's the future of portable computers?
[19:36.100 --> 19:40.540]  So Malky just made up something on the spot, and the reporter took it seriously.
[19:41.600 --> 19:44.440]  And it's hysterical, so I will read to you, and I'll try to read slow.
[19:44.580 --> 19:45.360]  I don't want to talk to you fast.
[19:46.160 --> 19:47.500]  It was called Time Magazine.
[19:47.500 --> 19:49.080]  The headline said, Pocket Shopper.
[19:49.540 --> 19:51.480]  And this was in the 60-something.
[19:52.020 --> 20:05.220]  And it says, definitely not yet on the market, but envisioned by Dr. John Malky is a miniature computer for household use that will not only make shopping lists obsolete, but will also mark the extinction of the grocery clerk and the checkout counterman.
[20:06.240 --> 20:07.120]  Oh, it gets better.
[20:07.660 --> 20:11.440]  Before going to market, a woman will slip her computer into her purse.
[20:11.680 --> 20:16.800]  It will have an inventory of what she needs in the way of staples and supplies stored in the wafer-thin memory cells.
[20:17.980 --> 20:25.520]  Once at the market, she will plug her computer into a socket in a vacant delivery alcove and wait for the results.
[20:26.100 --> 20:35.800]  The computer will carry out the business of identifying itself, making the proper accounting entries in its own memory, and authorizing a charge against its mistress's universal checking account.
[20:37.020 --> 20:42.020]  In less than a minute, the order slides down to shoot, and the housewife brings home the electronic bacon.
[20:43.860 --> 20:50.900]  Dr. Malky, who invented some of the original big computers and already built one the size of a suitcase, is working on the pocket monster.
[20:52.440 --> 20:55.920]  Malky was working on no such thing in 1964, I assure you.
[20:57.120 --> 21:02.860]  But it was, you know, it certainly was, you know, pretty accurate of what would happen 20, 30 years later.
[21:04.360 --> 21:06.240]  Except for the horrible sexism part.
[21:08.860 --> 21:20.840]  Okay, so the computer here on the top left side of the slide with the two giant, like, cassette-looking things in the middle, that's from a company in Toronto called Micro Computer Machines.
[21:20.980 --> 21:22.440]  Any Toronto people here?
[21:23.300 --> 21:23.640]  No?
[21:24.720 --> 21:26.960]  The computer was called the MCM-70.
[21:27.460 --> 21:28.620]  What did I miss?
[21:28.740 --> 21:29.220]  I missed something.
[21:31.080 --> 21:33.400]  The computer was from MCM-70 from 1973.
[21:34.140 --> 21:35.940]  And this is really, really interesting.
[21:37.880 --> 21:50.640]  Because 1973, to have an all-in-one, ready-to-go, non-kit microcomputer, I'm not gonna say it was the first microcomputer, but it's got a damn good case, 1973.
[21:51.140 --> 21:53.500]  I mean, not much, I don't know what beats that.
[21:53.660 --> 21:54.540]  What was a processor?
[21:55.960 --> 21:56.800]  I don't know.
[21:57.040 --> 21:57.880]  I'll get back to you on that.
[21:57.960 --> 21:58.140]  Okay.
[21:58.140 --> 22:00.920]  It ran a programming language called APL.
[22:01.120 --> 22:02.080]  You guys know what APL is?
[22:02.260 --> 22:02.640]  Yeah.
[22:02.940 --> 22:03.840]  A programming language.
[22:04.300 --> 22:04.700]  Yes.
[22:05.360 --> 22:06.160]  That's true.
[22:06.340 --> 22:06.760]  Look it up.
[22:07.620 --> 22:08.840]  So, it was an APL computer.
[22:09.900 --> 22:11.940]  And there's only a few of these in existence.
[22:13.100 --> 22:16.320]  There is the university, I'm sorry, York University in Toronto.
[22:17.020 --> 22:20.160]  The guy has like four of them there, and he literally wrote the book on this computer.
[22:21.180 --> 22:25.920]  His last name is Stachniak, S-T-A-C-H-N-I-A-K, if anyone wants to look that up.
[22:27.460 --> 22:35.480]  And IBM plagiarized it with a computer that's not on the slide in 1975 called the IBM 5100.
[22:35.900 --> 22:37.720]  It was called the portable computer.
[22:37.900 --> 22:38.580]  There was no handle.
[22:38.660 --> 22:39.280]  There was no case.
[22:39.440 --> 22:40.060]  There were no wheels.
[22:40.060 --> 22:41.520]  It weighed 52 pounds.
[22:42.460 --> 22:44.940]  Its 8-inch disk drive weighed about 70 pounds.
[22:45.000 --> 22:46.480]  And it was definitely not a portable computer.
[22:46.860 --> 22:49.940]  But in 1975, in IBM's view, that was a portable computer.
[22:50.160 --> 22:52.240]  So, that's an example of what I was talking earlier about.
[22:52.420 --> 22:53.880]  Size is not equal portable.
[22:55.460 --> 22:57.100]  But the MCM did have a handle.
[22:58.120 --> 23:02.260]  The top right is the Xerox PARC note-taker.
[23:04.200 --> 23:06.580]  PARC was the Palo Alto Research Center.
[23:08.080 --> 23:09.540]  Xerox had this computer...
[23:09.540 --> 23:16.100]  Well, a couple years before this, early 70s, Alan Kay of Xerox PARC came up with something called the Dynabook.
[23:16.100 --> 23:19.260]  A lot of people think the Dynabook was the thing.
[23:19.440 --> 23:19.880]  It wasn't.
[23:20.000 --> 23:20.740]  It was a concept.
[23:20.860 --> 23:21.400]  Just an idea.
[23:21.660 --> 23:23.060]  There never was a Dynabook.
[23:24.000 --> 23:28.900]  Basically, he invented, predicted, dreamed up the iPad in 1970 or so.
[23:31.040 --> 23:37.120]  But the note-taker was referred to internally as the interim Dynabook.
[23:37.780 --> 23:41.340]  Because their focus was the software, not the hardware.
[23:42.260 --> 23:49.260]  But what they did sort of inadvertently was invent, you know, something like an Osborne six or seven years before an Osborne.
[23:49.940 --> 23:54.280]  And Alan Kay personally told me he took this on an airplane and used it on battery power for a while.
[23:56.580 --> 23:58.660]  It weighed, I don't know, 30, 40 pounds.
[24:00.860 --> 24:03.840]  Bottom left is the... what computer is that?
[24:04.140 --> 24:09.520]  Oh, that is the Microw V from a company called R2E.
[24:09.520 --> 24:11.320]  It stands for something in French I can't pronounce.
[24:13.200 --> 24:15.180]  And so it was a French company called the Microw.
[24:15.660 --> 24:20.100]  And V does not... I thought it meant fifth because there were other Microw's before this.
[24:20.340 --> 24:23.860]  I was informed that V was the first letter of the word.
[24:24.020 --> 24:25.140]  I don't know how to pronounce it.
[24:25.240 --> 24:28.600]  It was valet or something, which means briefcase in France.
[24:28.760 --> 24:29.920]  I'm sure I butchered the pronunciation.
[24:30.480 --> 24:31.500]  But that's what V meant.
[24:32.220 --> 24:34.940]  So it's very hard to see on the picture because it's a lousy picture.
[24:34.940 --> 24:40.440]  But if you squint, you can see on the right side, there's a five and a quarter floppy disk drive that sort of pops up.
[24:40.840 --> 24:47.660]  And the monitor, unlike an Osborne, where the keyboard folds down from the front, this actually opens up like a suitcase and the monitor's in the middle.
[24:48.000 --> 24:49.000]  So that was that.
[24:49.200 --> 24:51.280]  That was a 78 or so.
[24:51.920 --> 24:55.840]  And then finally on the bottom right is a company called GM Research.
[24:56.400 --> 24:57.600]  Nothing to do with General Motors.
[24:58.480 --> 25:02.420]  I asked these guys, late 70s, I asked them where they got the name of the company from.
[25:02.860 --> 25:07.380]  And they said, well, there was already a company called Delco Electronics.
[25:07.540 --> 25:09.800]  So they figured it was okay to rip off the GM name too.
[25:11.540 --> 25:12.900]  It was actually their initials.
[25:12.960 --> 25:14.420]  So it was a guy with GM and a guy with Dem.
[25:14.540 --> 25:15.480]  And they figured it's good marketing.
[25:15.620 --> 25:16.060]  They call it GM.
[25:16.060 --> 25:17.020]  People will associate it.
[25:18.020 --> 25:22.140]  But this also, what happened here was this guy, I forget what industry he worked in.
[25:24.100 --> 25:27.960]  But he bought a Crememco, which is a big old S100 computer.
[25:28.220 --> 25:30.000]  And he got tired of schlepping it around.
[25:30.040 --> 25:33.300]  So he had the idea, let's put it in a suitcase size thing.
[25:34.260 --> 25:35.600]  So that's what that was.
[25:36.320 --> 25:40.040]  And these are not all of the suitcase computers in the 70s.
[25:40.040 --> 25:41.300]  These are some of the examples.
[25:42.680 --> 25:49.900]  By 81, when Osborne came around, a lot of people credit Osborne with inventing the suitcase computer.
[25:49.900 --> 25:51.780]  They did obviously no such thing.
[25:52.000 --> 25:56.560]  They had the first mass success suitcase computer.
[25:56.780 --> 25:57.880]  But clearly, they're not invented.
[25:58.060 --> 26:01.160]  So these are prior art examples of interesting hacks attached to them.
[26:03.300 --> 26:03.640]  Okay.
[26:04.300 --> 26:06.540]  Portable companion was the Osborne magazine.
[26:06.780 --> 26:07.760]  This was the first issue.
[26:08.420 --> 26:14.180]  A reporter from Chicago went to Afghanistan and brought his Osborne with him.
[26:14.760 --> 26:16.080]  And this was the result.
[26:19.080 --> 26:20.680]  I know Lee Felsenstein.
[26:20.760 --> 26:24.500]  Lee Felsenstein was the engineer who actually designed the Osborne for Adam Osborne.
[26:24.720 --> 26:27.460]  And he autographed one of these for me a couple years ago.
[26:28.040 --> 26:31.800]  And on the inscription he wrote, I hope they never catch the guy who wrote the manual.
[26:32.000 --> 26:32.480]  Which was him.
[26:33.180 --> 26:33.400]  Yes.
[26:34.520 --> 26:38.000]  He actually came and visited with us two weekends ago at our club.
[26:38.000 --> 26:40.680]  And I was working on a Sol 20.
[26:42.040 --> 26:43.740]  And I don't know if you know what that is.
[26:43.860 --> 26:45.840]  But that's the computer he invented before this one.
[26:45.960 --> 26:47.440]  And so I'm actually working on his computer.
[26:47.540 --> 26:49.480]  And he was helping me with the schematics and everything.
[26:49.520 --> 26:52.100]  It's like having Henry Ford show off to help you restore your Model 2.
[26:52.380 --> 26:53.960]  Jimi Hendrix showing you how to play the guitar.
[26:54.320 --> 26:55.060]  You get the idea.
[26:55.060 --> 26:55.680]  Speaking of which.
[26:56.880 --> 26:58.020]  Speaking of guitar playing.
[26:58.400 --> 26:58.720]  Yeah.
[26:58.920 --> 26:59.420]  Next slide.
[27:01.120 --> 27:02.100]  Not that Osborne.
[27:02.540 --> 27:02.940]  Yes.
[27:03.780 --> 27:04.420]  Next slide.
[27:04.420 --> 27:05.440]  What a segue.
[27:05.760 --> 27:05.920]  Okay.
[27:06.140 --> 27:06.500]  Huh?
[27:07.180 --> 27:08.360]  Not that Osborne.
[27:08.580 --> 27:10.880]  This is the Osborne.
[27:10.980 --> 27:11.700]  Just a better photo.
[27:12.660 --> 27:17.900]  And so unlike the four suitcase computers I showed her, this was expressly designed for this purpose.
[27:18.560 --> 27:20.880]  It weighed 23 pounds or so.
[27:21.980 --> 27:24.280]  A couple interesting things about the Osborne.
[27:26.220 --> 27:29.060]  Except for the Xerox note taker, which is only a prototype.
[27:29.440 --> 27:33.720]  The other three computers I showed on the previous slide were commercial ones.
[27:33.720 --> 27:34.540]  But they were portable.
[27:34.660 --> 27:35.820]  You still had to plug them in the wall.
[27:36.000 --> 27:36.760]  There were no batteries.
[27:37.920 --> 27:39.840]  This is a story that has never been told.
[27:40.160 --> 27:41.860]  I know because Lee told it to me personally.
[27:42.080 --> 27:43.500]  And he said he never told anybody else.
[27:44.100 --> 27:45.220]  And so I'll now tell you.
[27:46.300 --> 27:50.940]  There is a battery port on the front of the Osborne, which has battery on it.
[27:51.000 --> 27:52.920]  It was for a future upgrade that never existed.
[27:53.440 --> 27:55.700]  There were two options for batteries that were never made.
[27:55.980 --> 28:02.540]  There was a company Osborne contracted with that was going to take a 12 volt car battery and somehow attach it to this thing.
[28:02.640 --> 28:03.780]  That didn't come to fruition.
[28:04.540 --> 28:08.400]  But the better story is, Bill, you've taken apart a few Osbournes in your time, right?
[28:08.540 --> 28:09.000]  Yes, I have.
[28:09.080 --> 28:11.220]  Did you ever wonder why the keyboard is hollow inside?
[28:11.860 --> 28:13.380]  It had lots of empty room in it.
[28:13.660 --> 28:15.040]  To put the battery in there?
[28:15.380 --> 28:15.740]  Yes.
[28:16.220 --> 28:18.040]  They were going to fill it with C cells.
[28:20.940 --> 28:21.920]  That didn't come...
[28:21.920 --> 28:23.500]  Unfortunately, Osborne, Inc.
[28:23.600 --> 28:25.200]  was out of business before it came to fruition.
[28:25.200 --> 28:29.420]  But they had a plan to fill that keyboard with all the empty space with big old C cells.
[28:29.580 --> 28:30.160]  And that didn't happen.
[28:30.500 --> 28:30.520]  Yeah.
[28:32.660 --> 28:33.180]  All right.
[28:33.560 --> 28:34.500]  So why do I have this?
[28:35.440 --> 28:36.200]  I just...
[28:36.200 --> 28:36.940]  I...
[28:36.940 --> 28:43.280]  When I was younger, I went to the store and I wanted to get a video game for myself.
[28:43.480 --> 28:46.760]  And I went to the video rental place.
[28:46.860 --> 28:50.020]  And I grabbed this one to see if it would be any good to play.
[28:50.180 --> 28:50.900]  I took it home.
[28:50.900 --> 28:55.660]  And then I liked it enough that I didn't get to the end of the game, but I had to return it.
[28:55.840 --> 28:58.300]  So this really is what got me interested in hacking.
[28:58.500 --> 29:01.140]  How do I keep this and return it at the same time?
[29:02.280 --> 29:08.300]  So what I did was through a series of events, I figured out how to get through.
[29:08.460 --> 29:15.300]  There's three files on there that you need to change so that they're located where they're supposed to be located anywhere.
[29:15.300 --> 29:19.360]  And it gives you the ability to not have to have the master disk.
[29:19.360 --> 29:23.000]  And this is the computer that I used for it.
[29:23.080 --> 29:25.540]  It's a portable that if you were...
[29:25.540 --> 29:26.340]  If you're into...
[29:26.340 --> 29:43.560]  Back in those days, if you were using a computer as kind of a central infiltration system, or if you needed something to just do your utility work with, and you needed it to be portable so you could take it wherever, these I found to be very useful.
[29:43.560 --> 29:46.520]  You could put another three and a half inch disk drive into it.
[29:46.840 --> 29:50.500]  And this would give you the ability to transfer disks from one system to another.
[29:50.740 --> 29:58.800]  And the IBM, with this being relatively solid, would give you the ability to write to Tandy disks and write to other format disks like CPM disks and so on.
[29:58.860 --> 30:00.840]  So this was one of my favorite.
[30:01.040 --> 30:06.700]  It's not pretty, but it definitely had a lot of utility for things.
[30:07.820 --> 30:12.040]  Now, Evan's going to talk about the KIM, and I have no idea how this fits in.
[30:12.500 --> 30:12.640]  Okay.
[30:14.340 --> 30:16.360]  First of all, a little note about the computer it built to show.
[30:16.500 --> 30:17.700]  That was an IBM 5155.
[30:18.540 --> 30:18.560]  Oh, yeah.
[30:18.600 --> 30:19.360]  Forgot to mention that.
[30:19.460 --> 30:24.500]  And, you know, Osborne, the case was 23 pounds, but it was still plastic.
[30:25.220 --> 30:27.680]  IBM being IBM, theirs had a metal handle on it.
[30:27.680 --> 30:28.340]  Yeah.
[30:28.440 --> 30:29.640]  I mean, those are beautiful computers.
[30:29.800 --> 30:30.120]  They're heavy.
[30:30.340 --> 30:33.480]  They're IBM XTs, basically, portable IBM XTs.
[30:33.640 --> 30:34.680]  And they're the first serious...
[30:36.100 --> 30:39.900]  I mean, although IBM had that portable, this was the first time it was actually, you know, productive.
[30:39.940 --> 30:43.080]  If you hit someone with your IBM suitcase computer, they would be hurt.
[30:43.760 --> 30:43.800]  Yes.
[30:45.120 --> 30:45.780]  So the KIM.
[30:47.040 --> 30:52.780]  KIM was made in 1976 by Moss Technology, the inventors of the legendary 6502 chip.
[30:54.200 --> 30:58.280]  After our speech, we're going to go downstairs, set up our club booth, and we'll have a working computer that came on display.
[31:00.400 --> 31:20.740]  A lot of people had the idea, well, this computer is really small, and it has very, very low battery requirements, so I could pretty easily stick it in a small case, small briefcase, or a binder, or a book, or whatever else, and put some batteries in,
[31:20.800 --> 31:22.380]  and I've got a full-fledged portable computer.
[31:23.000 --> 31:24.460]  A lot of people did that.
[31:24.460 --> 31:32.460]  There were even some companies whose names, Lumi right now, maybe Bill recalls, that actually sold computers in binders in cases like of this variety.
[31:33.300 --> 31:33.900]  Syngetics?
[31:34.660 --> 31:35.220]  I don't know.
[31:35.360 --> 31:36.400]  I think it's Syngetics.
[31:37.240 --> 31:39.540]  So anyway, my point here is not...
[31:40.380 --> 31:55.180]  I mean, these computers, we'll talk about later in our booth, but single-board computers were an alternative to S100 computers of the mid-70s, and they were very easily made portable because they had such low power requirements, and they were so small to start with.
[31:55.360 --> 31:59.060]  So that was a frequent hack to do, was take your SBC and make it portable.
[31:59.620 --> 31:59.740]  Yeah.
[31:59.940 --> 32:05.840]  Whenever we come to HOPE to do a presentation, we always have to have portable vintage stuff, because we have to take it on the train.
[32:06.120 --> 32:08.240]  Because we're from the suburbs, we take that transit.
[32:08.740 --> 32:08.800]  Yes.
[32:12.100 --> 32:13.660]  Now we're getting into the more modern stuff.
[32:13.660 --> 32:17.440]  Yeah, but did you get the slot I sent to you of the...oh, never mind.
[32:17.540 --> 32:18.500]  I'll skip the crypto stuff for now.
[32:18.740 --> 32:18.820]  Okay.
[32:20.400 --> 32:25.120]  In a few slides down the presentation here, we're going to go back and fill in the gap here.
[32:26.040 --> 32:35.420]  This is called...the company called DVW, which stood for David Viewing...the guy's name, whatever it was.
[32:36.280 --> 32:37.040]  British company.
[32:39.100 --> 32:52.860]  This computer was manufactured in 1981, and within the arbitrary definition of laptop computer, in my opinion, this is the first laptop computer.
[32:53.800 --> 32:54.900]  That is my opinion.
[32:55.500 --> 32:57.020]  It's hard to prove, that's my opinion.
[32:57.900 --> 33:06.940]  This is the first computer that is the form factor of a laptop, with a full QWERTY keyboard, an integrated screen, and runs on battery power by default.
[33:08.380 --> 33:16.440]  It was commissioned by water utilities and other utility companies in Britain, and then sold commercially.
[33:19.560 --> 33:26.680]  It was originally designed with a keyboard that was A through Z, but people would customize it for their utility needs.
[33:28.600 --> 33:31.940]  And the first customer was a water company called Severn Trent.
[33:40.090 --> 33:48.450]  They went out of the way to have a lot of custom things built in terms of keyboard, batteries, software, because there was no precedent to build anything like this before.
[33:48.950 --> 33:50.550]  They used DoraCell batteries.
[33:51.010 --> 33:53.070]  People often substituted for NICADs.
[33:53.690 --> 33:57.350]  So, the first laptop from a company you never heard of.
[34:01.560 --> 34:02.920]  This is the space shuttle.
[34:03.580 --> 34:05.300]  Nerds in space!
[34:05.940 --> 34:14.800]  And the reason that this is... this is another example of where manufacturers had to come up with something in order to accomplish a goal.
[34:15.000 --> 34:21.410]  And the goal here was to get a computer that had the capabilities of an early 80s computer into space.
[34:21.410 --> 34:29.410]  Now, one of the things that we've worked with, but we don't have pictured in the slides, is the computer modules from the Apollo mission.
[34:30.120 --> 34:34.180]  And there are these huge, you know, pizza boxes that are stacked on top of each other.
[34:34.410 --> 34:42.890]  But by the time we got to the space shuttle era, a company called GRID came up with this... the GRID compass.
[34:42.890 --> 34:46.180]  And this computer was actually taken in the space shuttle.
[34:46.750 --> 34:53.790]  And it had to have certain NASA specifications for withstanding G-forces and so forth.
[34:53.950 --> 34:59.120]  So, this is... I'm not sure what first this is or whatever, but from a hacking standpoint...
[34:59.120 --> 35:00.460]  I can talk about that.
[35:00.460 --> 35:01.200]  Everyone's going to talk about it.
[35:01.290 --> 35:01.770]  But just let me finish.
[35:02.230 --> 35:02.330]  Okay.
[35:02.330 --> 35:07.310]  From a hacking standpoint, this was motivated by trying to accomplish something.
[35:07.310 --> 35:14.060]  And that's always really the backdrop to any good hacking project is the fact that you're trying to accomplish something.
[35:14.640 --> 35:22.910]  In terms of firsts, which is a dangerous, dangerous word in history, what's interesting about the GRID compass 1100 is that it's a last, not a first.
[35:24.120 --> 35:25.980]  It is a laptop form factor.
[35:26.180 --> 35:30.500]  The original plan for the GRID called for a flat design like the one I just showed you.
[35:30.660 --> 35:31.850]  They changed it to a clamshell.
[35:32.560 --> 35:34.290]  But this did not have batteries either.
[35:34.600 --> 35:35.430]  Later versions did.
[35:35.430 --> 35:38.040]  This had to be plugged in to 110 volts.
[35:39.020 --> 35:46.270]  So, I would argue because of the lack of batteries, Bill, this is the last of the suitcase computers rather than the first of the laptops.
[35:46.830 --> 35:48.700]  It's the smallest, last of the lockables.
[35:49.270 --> 35:50.060]  End of an era.
[35:50.250 --> 35:50.870]  Not the start of one.
[35:51.180 --> 35:52.020]  So, there you go.
[35:52.230 --> 35:58.080]  But, in terms of the shape, it will be the first with that design of the folding down screen.
[35:58.620 --> 35:58.980]  Yeah.
[35:59.810 --> 36:00.250]  So...
[36:00.250 --> 36:01.730]  They didn't have any batteries for it.
[36:02.250 --> 36:02.520]  Nope.
[36:02.750 --> 36:03.600]  Not even a car battery.
[36:04.060 --> 36:04.270]  Nope.
[36:04.270 --> 36:04.310]  Nope.
[36:04.830 --> 36:05.980]  Well, they had a space shuttle.
[36:06.560 --> 36:06.790]  Yeah.
[36:06.790 --> 36:08.980]  There was a portable space in the space shuttle.
[36:09.080 --> 36:09.290]  Yeah.
[36:09.390 --> 36:12.980]  Now, there was a commercially available version, which I...
[36:12.980 --> 36:14.640]  You just had to have a space shuttle attached to it.
[36:14.790 --> 36:14.950]  Yes.
[36:15.660 --> 36:19.500]  The commercially available version called the 1101, which I had and sold the bill.
[36:21.260 --> 36:24.020]  The 1100 was only for defense contractors.
[36:24.230 --> 36:27.600]  So, if you ever find the 1100, it's a real gem because they weren't meant to be in the wild.
[36:27.600 --> 36:31.350]  The only difference between the 1100 and 1101 is the amount of RAM.
[36:34.560 --> 36:35.200]  All right.
[36:35.320 --> 36:42.240]  Speaking of space shuttles, I remember two hopes ago, somebody had a TRS-80 Model 100 and they were tracking satellites with it.
[36:42.320 --> 36:43.900]  Is that person here by any chance?
[36:44.760 --> 36:47.800]  I was kind of just watching more than anything.
[36:47.980 --> 36:53.920]  But this is another very popular portable computer that's used for connecting to things.
[36:53.920 --> 36:56.400]  It's got... very often has a modem built into it.
[36:56.600 --> 36:57.580]  It's an early laptop.
[36:57.780 --> 36:59.660]  It's not the first laptop or anything like that.
[36:59.780 --> 37:01.620]  But it's certainly a very popular one.
[37:01.980 --> 37:07.420]  And it's got a good legacy for, you know, messing around and coming up with stuff.
[37:09.140 --> 37:11.520]  I hate to criticize the media because I'm in it.
[37:11.600 --> 37:13.200]  My day job is I'm a technology journalist.
[37:13.420 --> 37:16.080]  But the media often points to this and says, first laptop.
[37:16.320 --> 37:21.500]  What they mean, even if they don't know it, is they mean first huge smash hit commercial success laptop.
[37:22.240 --> 37:24.480]  I will now say... keep a slide, keep a slide.
[37:24.760 --> 37:26.400]  I will now say an evil word.
[37:26.600 --> 37:27.460]  Please don't boo me.
[37:28.080 --> 37:28.440]  Microsoft.
[37:31.440 --> 37:32.660]  Wow, you really didn't boo me.
[37:32.980 --> 37:33.120]  Okay.
[37:34.520 --> 37:37.580]  This computer was commissioned by Billy Gates.
[37:42.600 --> 37:46.620]  Gates was, you know, somebody suggested the idea of a port of a laptop computer to him.
[37:46.780 --> 37:47.620]  He didn't like...
[37:47.620 --> 37:52.560]  By 82 or so, there were lots of computers of this size and shape and cost.
[37:52.840 --> 37:56.160]  There was the Epson HX20 and many others of the general size.
[37:56.320 --> 37:57.300]  But Gates wanted his own.
[37:58.760 --> 38:02.860]  Microsoft, then as now, is not a hardware company, despite what they say about Surface.
[38:04.960 --> 38:06.800]  By the way, a little quick aside.
[38:07.060 --> 38:12.960]  At the press announcement for Surface a few weeks ago, Balmer was going on and on about Microsoft's rich history in hardware.
[38:12.960 --> 38:15.340]  And only example he could point to was the mouse.
[38:17.740 --> 38:19.080]  He made a fool of himself.
[38:19.780 --> 38:20.300]  Yeah, right.
[38:20.360 --> 38:21.300]  They ripped it off, actually.
[38:21.440 --> 38:21.580]  Yeah.
[38:22.360 --> 38:23.480]  And it wasn't Xerox.
[38:23.560 --> 38:24.580]  Xerox did the GUI.
[38:25.000 --> 38:26.860]  Stanford Research Institute did the mouse.
[38:27.020 --> 38:27.480]  Doug Engelbart.
[38:28.020 --> 38:28.520]  Anybody.
[38:28.780 --> 38:29.180]  Anyway.
[38:30.160 --> 38:37.440]  So Gates approached his good friend who worked for Kyocera in Japan.
[38:38.220 --> 38:41.400]  And so what happened was Kyocera designed the computer.
[38:42.060 --> 38:46.820]  And they sold it to various companies to sell it to the public.
[38:48.400 --> 38:50.480]  Kyocera had a division called Kyotronic.
[38:50.760 --> 38:54.800]  So in Japan, this computer was known as the Kyotronic KC85.
[38:55.540 --> 39:00.620]  In Europe, it was the Olivetti M10 and the NEC PC8201.
[39:01.100 --> 39:04.840]  And here in the States, it was the Tandy RadioShack TRS-80 Model 100.
[39:05.100 --> 39:07.700]  If anyone would wonder what TRS was, Tandy RadioShack.
[39:09.620 --> 39:12.680]  So anyway, Microsoft commissioned computer.
[39:14.120 --> 39:16.180]  Best known to us as a RadioShack computer.
[39:17.320 --> 39:29.920]  And I also saw, in addition to the satellite thing, I mentioned that, at the Fort Monmouth Museum in New Jersey, which is no longer there, I saw a picture of this in the field when it was new being used to talk to a satellite as well.
[39:30.640 --> 39:31.600]  So for whatever reason...
[39:31.600 --> 39:32.280]  That was an original application.
[39:32.560 --> 39:37.040]  I don't know what it was about the satellites in this thing, but apparently I'm not in on it.
[39:37.140 --> 39:44.660]  It was also very, very popular among sports journalists who would go to games and bring this with them and hook it up to your acoustic modem, et cetera.
[39:48.120 --> 39:48.520]  PicoFlex.
[39:49.080 --> 39:49.480]  Pico.
[39:50.080 --> 39:50.480]  PicoFlex.
[39:50.820 --> 39:52.500]  We're going to get into some crypto examples.
[39:52.560 --> 39:53.340]  Everyone likes crypto.
[39:54.860 --> 39:56.160]  This is really cool.
[39:56.160 --> 40:00.540]  This was built by Philips in 1976.
[40:02.020 --> 40:03.660]  Someone please turn your ringer off.
[40:05.740 --> 40:15.420]  This is basically a full-fledged laptop computer, five years before Husky invented the laptop computer.
[40:16.200 --> 40:23.560]  I just found out about this computer last week after studying the history of portables for the last ten years and writing a book about it.
[40:24.320 --> 40:29.220]  The actual computer part in the middle comes out to be a standalone laptop computer.
[40:29.480 --> 40:30.200]  It's amazing.
[40:30.900 --> 40:33.180]  The part on the left is a thermal printer.
[40:33.680 --> 40:36.760]  And the contraption on the right on the top is your acoustic modem.
[40:37.360 --> 40:41.740]  And there was a civilian version made, it turns out, which I didn't know about and now I feel foolish about.
[40:43.720 --> 40:44.520]  Called the...
[40:45.460 --> 40:46.440]  I forget what this is.
[40:46.540 --> 40:48.020]  Something with an M that doesn't help you.
[40:50.960 --> 40:52.740]  Anyway, I have to learn more about it.
[40:52.940 --> 40:54.940]  I'm not clear if it had its own batteries.
[40:55.200 --> 40:56.840]  I'm not clear if it could be programmed.
[40:57.220 --> 41:01.080]  I'm not clear if there were any apps or customization available.
[41:01.680 --> 41:07.320]  So, in other words, I'm not clear on whether it's an appliance or more of a general purpose computer.
[41:07.320 --> 41:08.960]  I suspect...
[41:08.960 --> 41:10.740]  A couple of things I didn't put a slide in.
[41:12.740 --> 41:21.520]  In 80 or 81 or so, you know, as the laptop was dawning, there were a couple of devices that I consider to be almost laptops.
[41:22.160 --> 41:25.060]  Sort of like, you know, Neanderthal man, right?
[41:25.840 --> 41:26.800]  Cro-Magnon man.
[41:27.480 --> 41:29.460]  Sony had something called a type quarter.
[41:30.000 --> 41:32.420]  The type quarter was a word processor.
[41:32.720 --> 41:37.580]  It looks and feels, it works exactly like a Tandy Model 100 and HX20.
[41:38.920 --> 41:43.060]  Except the only app in it was a word processor and you couldn't change that.
[41:43.620 --> 41:46.700]  So, it had a micro cassette drive, batteries.
[41:46.900 --> 41:51.100]  It was a full-fledged laptop computer, but it wasn't really a laptop because it wasn't a general purpose laptop.
[41:51.260 --> 41:52.100]  It did one thing.
[41:53.080 --> 41:59.520]  Looking back, it's kind of funny because Sony was one far away from having a laptop.
[41:59.740 --> 42:00.760]  They didn't know it.
[42:00.980 --> 42:04.780]  If only they had put BASIC in there, they would have beat everyone else and had a laptop.
[42:06.280 --> 42:07.380]  This thing as well.
[42:07.660 --> 42:09.820]  I think it was not general purpose.
[42:10.040 --> 42:12.100]  I think it was the app in it is the app you got.
[42:12.820 --> 42:15.500]  So, again, so close to a laptop.
[42:15.720 --> 42:17.280]  It didn't cross that threshold.
[42:18.260 --> 42:20.960]  So, interesting history that almost happened.
[42:23.240 --> 42:23.880]  All right.
[42:24.020 --> 42:25.440]  Anyone recognize something like this?
[42:26.800 --> 42:27.280]  No?
[42:27.940 --> 42:37.700]  Anyway, this is a typical rig used for if you're at a hotel and you need to use the phone, but you don't want to pay for it.
[42:39.100 --> 42:45.700]  This is like what you would call the portable hacking kit that, you know, you read about this in a number of different places.
[42:46.500 --> 42:49.500]  It's a portable computer with a built-in modem in the back.
[42:49.620 --> 43:04.980]  And then you can't quite see it, but on the left there's an RJ11 that comes around the side and then it's been spliced with banana clips that would then go to a phone line, the host phone line, and then you'd have an alternative modem, acoustic modem,
[43:05.060 --> 43:10.780]  in case that you couldn't disconnect the RJ11 from the back of the phone.
[43:10.860 --> 43:19.100]  So, those are some fun tools that used to be very popular when trying to access the telephone line system for portable hacking.
[43:22.750 --> 43:27.490]  This is another device that's useful and it's an RJ...
[43:28.550 --> 43:33.150]  I'm sorry, a RS232 port scanner.
[43:33.710 --> 43:36.630]  It's port, you know, just... I forgot what I call this thing.
[43:37.210 --> 43:37.950]  Breakout box.
[43:38.430 --> 43:47.290]  But anyway, I use this a lot just to see where the signals are coming through from one serial cable to another from troubleshooting a problem.
[43:49.790 --> 43:50.350]  Okay.
[43:50.970 --> 43:52.970]  So, another interesting crypto example.
[43:56.510 --> 44:07.970]  Seventy-six or so, a man whose name I'm not going to remember, came to the US and had a little pocket dictionary, you know, translator from whatever language he spoke to English.
[44:11.170 --> 44:17.050]  and had a friend who worked at Intel, and he was telling his friend at Intel, his friend at Intel was explaining what a computer was.
[44:17.450 --> 44:22.290]  And he told his friend, it would be great if you can take one of these little pocket translators and make that computerized.
[44:23.530 --> 44:28.330]  So, his friend introduced him to an entrepreneur, and they came up with this thing.
[44:33.210 --> 44:33.970]  Let's see.
[44:34.530 --> 44:39.170]  The company, it was sold to Nixdorf, it wasn't made by Nixdorf, which is now Siemens.
[44:41.510 --> 44:46.110]  Basically, it was a little handheld thing about the size of, you know, like a VHS tape.
[44:47.530 --> 44:49.490]  And it had a cartridge slot.
[44:50.130 --> 44:56.970]  And the company sold all these different cartridges, a dozen or so, actually more like 20, of all these different language combinations.
[44:57.150 --> 44:59.530]  English to Spanish, Spanish to French, Spanish to English, etc.
[45:00.110 --> 45:04.110]  And so, you would buy the device, which had a battery and a screen and a keyboard.
[45:04.670 --> 45:09.210]  And you would buy whatever cartridge you wanted, plug it in, and that's your translator.
[45:09.910 --> 45:11.450]  But, here's where it gets cool.
[45:12.610 --> 45:16.190]  They also had a calculator cartridge.
[45:16.510 --> 45:19.050]  And they had a flat file database cartridge.
[45:19.330 --> 45:20.750]  They had a notepad cartridge.
[45:21.250 --> 45:25.610]  It was essentially a decentralized PDA, if you will.
[45:26.530 --> 45:30.990]  It had all the apps to be a PDA, but you had to carry around a separate cartridge for each one.
[45:33.830 --> 45:37.670]  One of their best customers was the National Security Agency.
[45:39.110 --> 45:40.750]  NSA loved these things.
[45:40.970 --> 45:43.010]  They converted them into crypto devices.
[45:43.990 --> 45:47.030]  Unfortunately, I don't know any details of that, but I am trying to find out.
[45:50.180 --> 45:52.640]  This one is equally interesting.
[45:53.900 --> 45:56.100]  There's a hack of incompetence involved.
[45:56.780 --> 45:58.760]  And a hack of Apple involved.
[45:59.600 --> 46:10.920]  This was made by one guy named Judah Klausner, who became infamous a few years ago for being a patent troll and suing Apple for visual voicemail.
[46:12.440 --> 46:17.740]  Anyway, Judah and his friend Bob Hato were recent NYU graduates here in the city.
[46:18.640 --> 46:20.460]  In 77 or so.
[46:21.280 --> 46:23.340]  And they were looking for internships, summer jobs.
[46:24.380 --> 46:27.360]  So Judah went to his uncle who owned the Rolodex company.
[46:28.360 --> 46:31.180]  And he said, you know, what can I do to summer technology?
[46:31.780 --> 46:35.180]  So the uncle said, well, you know, work, you know, go learn about microchips.
[46:35.340 --> 46:37.760]  Maybe you can make, you know, make something out of that.
[46:38.580 --> 46:44.200]  So Judah was inspired by what was around him and made this thing, this little gadget.
[46:45.260 --> 46:46.640]  I know it looks like a calculator.
[46:46.820 --> 46:47.700]  It's not a calculator.
[46:48.060 --> 46:48.940]  It's a PDA.
[46:51.540 --> 46:56.760]  Apple coined the term PDA in 93, but this is from 78, 15 years before that.
[46:57.800 --> 47:09.760]  I would point out as an aside that in the 1920s there were panel trucks, in the 50s there were Land Cruisers, in the 70s there were Broncos, in the 90s some marketing schmo invented the SUV, right?
[47:11.120 --> 47:13.100]  So Apple did not invent the PDA.
[47:13.440 --> 47:15.800]  Anyway, 15 years before that there was this little PDA.
[47:16.520 --> 47:20.540]  And you look very closely, you can see on top of each key there was a letter as well.
[47:20.640 --> 47:21.940]  I don't know if you can see it on the screen or not.
[47:22.060 --> 47:24.820]  But it has, you know, an alphabetical keyboard.
[47:25.680 --> 47:30.400]  And you can see on the top there's keys that say read, write, and letter.
[47:31.060 --> 47:37.060]  So you can go into those modes and store phone numbers and appointments and names and things like that.
[47:38.720 --> 47:40.880]  Anyway, first interesting point here at a three.
[47:41.720 --> 47:47.540]  So he invented this thing over the summer, brought it back to his uncle and said, you know, can we do this?
[47:47.700 --> 47:50.000]  And the uncle said, no, no, no, we make Rolodexes, we're not interested.
[47:50.000 --> 47:54.140]  The uncle didn't realize this was a Rolodex of the future, missed a huge opportunity.
[47:55.380 --> 48:03.400]  So looking for a buyer for his invention, Judah went to the Trenton Computer Show in 1978 or so.
[48:05.060 --> 48:09.400]  And happened to run into Steve Jobs, who was preaching Apple II.
[48:10.540 --> 48:14.680]  And Judah personally told me that he tried telling Steve Jobs about this thing he invented.
[48:15.100 --> 48:17.980]  And Jobs purged reputation and wanted to talk and not listen.
[48:19.040 --> 48:26.420]  And had Jobs not been like he is, Apple could have possibly had a Newton 15 years before they did.
[48:26.680 --> 48:29.380]  Apple could have said we had the first PDA, it would have been true.
[48:29.680 --> 48:30.600]  But they didn't.
[48:31.300 --> 48:47.880]  The third interesting story for this, in the journal called Cryptologia, I have an article I found where some scientist actually found a way, he told the public or the public readership of the journal, you know, wow, this thing is a great crypto device because it's got memory,
[48:48.100 --> 48:51.540]  it's got a long-lasting battery, and it's got alphanumeric capabilities.
[48:52.140 --> 48:54.780]  This could well be used for crypto purposes.
[48:55.020 --> 48:56.040]  So it's a fun little device.
[48:56.180 --> 49:00.980]  You could find these on eBay for pretty cheap, too, because most people don't realize how rare and important they are.
[49:03.600 --> 49:04.240]  Okay.
[49:05.580 --> 49:12.960]  This is the Panasonic handheld computer 1400, made by Matsushita, also the Quasar.
[49:13.900 --> 49:20.120]  This is one, this is representative of a generation of what was known as handheld computers.
[49:20.540 --> 49:23.100]  These are, you'd have to have an awfully big pocket to store these.
[49:25.140 --> 49:30.520]  I forget what the hack was I wanted to tell about, except that this is representative of a generation.
[49:30.820 --> 49:33.880]  And these have programmable little ROM cartridges as well.
[49:34.500 --> 49:37.800]  You can actually buy apps and plug them in like that.
[49:38.040 --> 49:41.520]  I forget what my example was, so I just skip this one.
[49:42.460 --> 49:42.840]  Okay.
[49:43.040 --> 49:46.100]  This is from 84, the Casio PF8000.
[49:46.380 --> 49:47.660]  Here's the hack here.
[49:48.040 --> 49:51.580]  Handwriting recognition, nine years before Newton.
[49:51.580 --> 49:54.100]  You see the part on the right, that grid.
[49:54.340 --> 50:14.180]  You would take your fingertip and draw a block letter, and it was designed to recognize your block letter alphabet, which precedes the idea of Palm having graffiti, having an idea of you learning the computer's handwriting instead of the other way around to increase percentage recognition.
[50:16.800 --> 50:17.640]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[50:17.700 --> 50:18.360]  Go back, by the way.
[50:21.820 --> 50:28.060]  It's hard to tell, but on the bottom left, the second key from the bottom is labeled secret.
[50:29.540 --> 50:35.960]  It had a password protection feature, which again, wasn't put into modern smartphones and handhelds until fairly recently.
[50:37.860 --> 50:38.260]  Okay.
[50:38.320 --> 50:41.100]  This is the civilian version of the PicoFlex.
[50:41.360 --> 50:42.180]  Some people have an M.
[50:42.240 --> 50:43.060]  I forgot what it was.
[50:43.900 --> 50:44.980]  85 or so.
[50:45.460 --> 50:51.820]  And it was, you know, civilian in a sense it was sold to companies, not just defense contractors, but it was still a crypto device.
[50:52.980 --> 50:54.740]  Another example I did not put in here.
[50:54.740 --> 50:56.060]  What year did the movie...
[50:56.060 --> 50:57.380]  What year did Terminator come out?
[50:57.680 --> 50:58.360]  Or Terminator...
[50:58.360 --> 50:59.740]  I guess...
[50:59.740 --> 51:00.040]  84?
[51:00.820 --> 51:01.100]  Right.
[51:01.320 --> 51:03.040]  Terminator 2 in 89 or so.
[51:03.840 --> 51:05.360]  The Atari portfolio...
[51:05.360 --> 51:05.940]  Close enough.
[51:06.260 --> 51:11.720]  The Atari portfolio was something about this size and a little Atari handheld.
[51:12.340 --> 51:15.140]  And John Connor used one in the movie to hack into an ATM.
[51:16.080 --> 51:18.300]  So that was a fictional portable computer hack.
[51:20.460 --> 51:23.500]  This is called the Linus Right Top 86.
[51:24.080 --> 51:27.620]  It was the first commercially available tablet computer.
[51:29.060 --> 51:29.780]  Enough said.
[51:32.840 --> 51:33.320]  Okay.
[51:33.480 --> 51:34.940]  This is not what you think it is.
[51:35.180 --> 51:37.180]  Most people say, oh look, a brick phone.
[51:37.280 --> 51:37.920]  A bag phone.
[51:38.100 --> 51:38.520]  No.
[51:38.880 --> 51:41.740]  This is from 92 or so by IBM called the Simon.
[51:42.080 --> 51:44.580]  And from all the research that...
[51:44.580 --> 51:49.140]  I've looked far and wide and from what I can tell, this is the first smartphone.
[51:49.220 --> 51:53.120]  The first time anyone took a PDA and a cell phone and put them in the same box.
[51:54.040 --> 51:58.100]  It had everything a modern smartphone has in terms of apps with one glaring exception.
[51:58.900 --> 51:59.860]  PDA stuff.
[52:01.160 --> 52:02.000]  Cellular stuff.
[52:02.700 --> 52:04.780]  Even had a predictive keyboard feature.
[52:05.440 --> 52:06.600]  It had faxing.
[52:06.860 --> 52:11.420]  What it didn't have was a web browser because the consumer web didn't exist in 1993.
[52:12.200 --> 52:13.000]  It had email.
[52:13.720 --> 52:16.480]  And it was a flop, but it was a first smartphone.
[52:16.860 --> 52:17.740]  So, IBM.
[52:18.080 --> 52:18.820]  Not just hackers.
[52:21.240 --> 52:21.760]  All right.
[52:21.840 --> 52:22.240]  This is...
[52:22.240 --> 52:24.020]  I didn't know how to categorize this one.
[52:24.160 --> 52:27.860]  This is Steven Roberts from the Nomadic Research Labs.
[52:28.700 --> 52:29.480]  And what...
[52:29.480 --> 52:30.080]  This isn't...
[52:30.080 --> 52:30.420]  This...
[52:30.420 --> 52:32.640]  I'm not sure if it's this one or his first one.
[52:32.920 --> 52:34.500]  This is called the behemoth.
[52:34.500 --> 52:39.020]  The big electronic human energized machine only too heavy.
[52:39.560 --> 52:46.980]  And I remember as a kid watching this guy and being inspired by this concept.
[52:46.980 --> 52:52.180]  He built a bicycle and he published his writings while he traveled across the United States.
[52:52.860 --> 52:53.720]  And he, you know...
[52:53.720 --> 52:54.140]  A live blog.
[52:54.380 --> 52:55.200]  He had a solar...
[52:55.200 --> 52:55.740]  A solar...
[52:55.740 --> 52:59.260]  I don't know, you know, how he would publish and, you know, go at the same time.
[52:59.360 --> 53:04.800]  But they had, you know, film of him like on the news of him going across the country in this thing.
[53:04.880 --> 53:07.880]  So, I think this is an awesome kind of use of a laptop.
[53:08.040 --> 53:10.360]  That looks like a Toshiba there.
[53:10.360 --> 53:12.180]  And so, this is probably one of his later...
[53:12.660 --> 53:16.980]  This is probably from the early 90s, maybe late 80s.
[53:17.080 --> 53:17.700]  But I think...
[53:17.700 --> 53:18.340]  I think...
[53:18.340 --> 53:20.580]  That could also be a Tandy Model 200, I'm not sure.
[53:20.720 --> 53:20.880]  Yeah.
[53:21.460 --> 53:22.460]  Or, yeah, whatever it is.
[53:22.580 --> 53:23.440]  But, I mean, it's...
[53:23.440 --> 53:24.700]  I believe he was...
[53:24.700 --> 53:28.680]  This was one of his later bicycle computer things.
[53:28.960 --> 53:33.800]  So, this was portable computing in his eyes in the 80s.
[53:33.800 --> 53:35.480]  And just to come full circle.
[53:35.660 --> 53:37.340]  So, we started with a computer in a truck.
[53:37.800 --> 53:39.040]  We ended with a computer in a bicycle.
[53:39.620 --> 53:40.960]  Bill mentioned the funny...
[53:40.960 --> 53:41.880]  What behemoth meant.
[53:42.060 --> 53:43.040]  One thing I forgot to mention.
[53:43.160 --> 53:43.940]  I mentioned Moby Dick.
[53:44.340 --> 53:46.600]  Moby Dick stood for Mobile Digital Computer.
[53:46.820 --> 53:48.060]  Engineers understood Moby Dick.
[53:48.220 --> 53:48.660]  Big as a whale.
[53:49.220 --> 53:50.660]  It was manufactured by Sylvania.
[53:50.920 --> 53:53.680]  And it was one in Massachusetts that was a non-mobile version.
[53:53.860 --> 53:55.740]  So, the engineers called it Rigid Dick.
[53:58.340 --> 53:58.780]  Okay.
[53:58.920 --> 53:59.280]  Next slide.
[54:00.280 --> 54:01.080]  So, as mentioned...
[54:01.080 --> 54:03.640]  So, we use a group called Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists.
[54:03.860 --> 54:05.320]  Come meet us downstairs at our booth.
[54:06.540 --> 54:08.740]  If you have praise, email me.
[54:08.740 --> 54:10.420]  If you have criticism, email Bill.
[54:11.480 --> 54:12.040]  Thank you.
[54:13.300 --> 54:14.220]  And Q&A.
[54:14.440 --> 54:15.560]  Yeah, we have like one minute.
[54:15.800 --> 54:17.240]  Heckling, Q&A, whatever you want.
[54:17.700 --> 54:17.880]  What?
[54:18.680 --> 54:19.280]  Two minutes.
[54:30.340 --> 54:30.880]  All right.
[54:30.940 --> 54:31.260]  Thank you.
[54:31.380 --> 54:32.220]  There's no questions.
[54:33.260 --> 54:34.400]  There's a question over there.
[54:34.880 --> 54:35.480]  Thank you.
[54:37.380 --> 54:37.680]  Hi.
[54:38.800 --> 54:44.340]  I've got about 50 old computers because, I don't know, I have the disease.
[54:44.920 --> 54:52.840]  One of the things I've been looking to do is to repair the modem that came with my Osborne, which was fried because it was like a 300-baud modem.
[54:52.920 --> 54:55.520]  Do you have any resources or point me in a direction to do that?
[54:55.520 --> 54:56.800]  Talk to us after privately.
[54:56.920 --> 54:58.540]  Just bring it to our booth.
[55:00.340 --> 55:01.360]  Oh, you don't have it?
[55:01.380 --> 55:02.000]  Talk to us privately.
[55:02.240 --> 55:02.860]  We do that kind of thing.
[55:02.860 --> 55:05.200]  It's probably just got fried by an electrical surge.
[55:05.500 --> 55:06.020]  Any other questions?
[55:06.020 --> 55:08.860]  For future reference, should anyone ask.
[55:09.020 --> 55:17.040]  There was a disemboweled, disembodied Tandy 100 in the handlebar cowling of the behemoth.
[55:17.240 --> 55:17.840]  Ah, okay.
[55:18.980 --> 55:19.740]  There you go.
[55:21.380 --> 55:32.780]  So, I know that back in late 40s, early 50s, Bell Labs built a couple, or at least prototyped some, what I understand as quasi-portable fire control computers for the military.
[55:34.140 --> 55:35.980]  Do those fall into this at all?
[55:36.080 --> 55:37.280]  Yeah, you're thinking of Tritik.
[55:37.620 --> 55:37.740]  Yeah.
[55:38.580 --> 55:42.500]  Tritik was a transistorized digital computer, one of the first two transistor computers.
[55:42.900 --> 55:46.540]  It was portable in that it was meant to ride on a B-52 Superfortress.
[55:50.040 --> 55:51.920]  All right, well, any more questions?
[55:52.600 --> 55:53.120]  One minute.
[55:53.200 --> 55:53.620]  Oh, hey, Bernie.
[56:01.670 --> 56:02.890]  He's been assimilated.
[56:03.450 --> 56:03.810]  Yeah.
[56:04.150 --> 56:04.610]  Okay, we're done.
[56:04.750 --> 56:06.290]  All right, come visit us downstairs sometime.
[56:06.290 --> 56:06.470]  We'll see you in more time.