Prescience

[lal_truckee]

I'm re-reading _The Star Beast_ and noticed this time through that Mr.
Kiku makes an observation that the thinking part of his brain is
probably sub-conscious while the conscious part functions "merely as a
display window for results arrived at elsewhere, like the 'answer'
window in a calculator."

So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can
describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early HPs which
first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

[J. Clarke]

In article <niasc5$qgv$1...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...

Comptometer, Friden, Burroughs, IBM . . .

Or if you wanted a portable, Curta.

[Don Kuenz]

The Friden Model STW-10 Electro-Mechanical Calculator [1] appeared in
1952. (Perhaps other Friden calculators appeared earlier?)

It plays the "Friden March" [2] when it cogitates. The "March" reminds
me of Colossus' own cogitations in the "Colossus: The Forbin Project"
movie.

Note.

1. http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/fridenstw.html
2. http://www.rauck.net/friden/FridenMarch.htm

--
Don Kuenz KB7RPU

[a425couple]

"lal_truckee" <lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote in message...

From even WWII times,
Go to Google, Images and enter
Battleship Fire Control calculator
Perhaps it is not what we think of, when we say "calculator",
but it was what it was.

[Don Bruder]

In article <niasc5$qgv$1...@dont-email.me>,

My grandmother had a gizmo that she claimed to have "liberated" when she
mustered out of the WACs at the end of WWII. It was battleship gray, a
bit more than a foot square, stood about 10 inches high at the back,
sloping down to about 3 inches at the front, and weighed (or at least,
seemed like it did to me when I was a kid) something like 50 pounds. The
thing was a regular friggin' TANK! It had a keyboard consisting of 7
columns of 10 buttons, labeled 0 through 9 from bottom to top, plus four
operation buttons (+, -, X, and the old-style
"colon-overstruck-with-dash" division symbol) in a column on the right,
and a button labeled "Reset" on the top left corner, just to the left of
a legend reading "<illegible smudge>iley Numerical Calculator" .

To do a math problem, you'd click down the buttons (They'd click down
and lock into place when you pushed 'em) for the first number of the
operation, then reach over and pull a handle on the side that swung in
an arc. There'd be a fairly impressive mechanical clatter as you were
swinging the handle, and a bunch of dials behind a window near the top -
looked a lot like a car odometer - would spin to show whatever numbers
you'd pushed. Once you finished that pull-stroke, the buttons for the
number you'd punched in would pop up and the handle would spring back.
Once it did, you'd hit the appropriate operation button and punch in the
second number, then reach over and pull the handle again. During the
pull, the numbers in the answer window would spin like an odometer gone
insane, and once you let go of the handle, all of the buttons would be
popped up into the initial position, and the answer window (where the
odometer-like dials could be seen) held - THE ANSWER! If you were doing
a column of numbers, you could then punch the "+" or "-" button, and
punch in the next number before pulling the handle again to get a
running total. Otherwise, you mashed the button tagged "Reset", which
caused any keys that might be punched to pop up, and held it while you
pulled the handle, which rolled all the numbers in the window back to
zeros before starting your next calculation.

Oddly enough, the answer window was located right below the smudged
label next to the reset button. If forced, I'd say the smudge was
probably "Bailey", but don't hold me to that...

I hear you... "So what's your point???" Easy: at least to me, after
growing up playing with the beast I just described, the idea of somebody
in 1954 talking about an answer appearing in a window on a "calculator"
is your basic "Yeah? So?" concept.

--
Brought to you by the letter Q and the number .357
Security provided by Horace S. & Dan W.

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

Don Kuenz <gar...@crcomp.net> wrote in news:2016...@crcomp.net:

> It plays the "Friden March" [2] when it cogitates. The "March"
> reminds me of Colossus' own cogitations in the "Colossus: The
> Forbin Project" movie.

I suspect it's the other way around, actually.

--
Terry Austin

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

[Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy]

lal_truckee <lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:niasc5$qgv$1...@dont-email.me:

Perfectly adequate description of mechanical calculators (which were
called just that) that date back to the late 1800s (and really, well
before that).

"Display window" would not be an obscure term, either, in other
contexts (like retail stores).

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/mechanical_calculators.html

has pictures.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <niasc5$qgv$1...@dont-email.me>,
lal_truckee <lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

They were more likely to be called "adding machines", but they certainly
existed. I well recall my parent's adding machine with its sleek black
plastic case with number buttons, the black slide that cleared them and
the red handled lever that worked the mechanism once you had entered the
a number. And I especially remember the sound it would make on a lever
pull, something I heard many times lying in bed as my parents balanced
their checkbook at night..

I think Heinlein was a quartermaster before he was invalided out of
the Navy. I suspect he probably balanced accounts too.
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Greg Goss]

Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taus...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Perfectly adequate description of mechanical calculators (which were
>called just that) that date back to the late 1800s (and really, well
>before that).
>
>"Display window" would not be an obscure term, either, in other
>contexts (like retail stores).
>
>http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/mechanical_calculators.html
>
>has pictures.

Don Brudner claims to have played with such a machine that could do
addition and division with a single pull of the power lever. I never
encountered one of those, but I liked setting division on the electric
calculator on my mother's desk at the office in 1968 or so. Set a
division with many digits and it would chug for thirty seconds or so.

My mother talked about choosing between an electric comptometer and
some other device to be trained on in her business machine class in
the forties. She was glad to have chosen the comptometer, but I don't
remember the reasoning nor the competing design.

From that page, our toybox had both an Addiator that my brother loved
and an addometer built onto a pencil box that I liked. There was also
a chain adder somewhere around. I get my love of gadgets from my
mother, though she couldn't express it much because my father was a
die-hard "practical" and we didn't have much money.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Butch Malahide]

The college biostatistics class I took sometime in the 1950s had lecture
and lab. The lab was in a room full of electric calculators. Monroes, I
think, and maybe Fridens too.

[J. Clarke]

In article <nib0g...@news3.newsguy.com>, a425c...@hotmail.com
says...

That was actually an analog computer, a cousin to the Differential
Analyzer.

Mechanical calculators date back to the 1600s or earlier as one-off
experiments. As commercial products they date to the late 1800s.

[J. Clarke]

In article <nib21d$su9$2...@dont-email.me>, dak...@sonic.net says...

Lyric from a Doris Day song in a 1949 movie

"It isn't any larger than an adding machine"

[J. Clarke]

In article <dqsmsk...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
says...

Heinlein as a graduate of the Naval Academy would have been a line
officer.

[Mike Dworetsky]

There were electromechanical calculators in regular use in physics and
astronomy departments both before and after WWII, right up to the 1960s when
electronic devices replaced them. Richard Feynman's reminiscences of Los
Alamos during the Manhattan District describes scientists using them, as
well as early examples of calculations being done stepwise with IBM card
sorters. Brand names included Monroe, Friden, and in Europe, Brunsviga.
Students at our observatory used these until the mid-1970s; cheaper to
operate because they were mechanical (with a hand crank) and used no
electricity.

Undoubtedly Heinlein was familiar with some of these and his remark is in
character with the computing facilities of those days (early 1950s).

I did my first asteroid orbit calculations (based on 3 observations) with a
Monroe in 1965, for a class. Doing the matrix multiplications was truly
hairy because you had to write down the intermediate steps and then add them
up. One mistake and you found your asteroid either far beyond Saturn or
deep inside the Earth.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Any office supply shop. They are found just next to the (mechanical)
typewriters.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
When men talk to their friends, they insult each other.
They don't really mean it.
When women talk to their friends, they compliment each other.
They don't mean it either.

[Chris Zakes]

Don't forget that during part of his Naval career, Heinlein was a fire
control officer in a battleship (the Oklahoma), so he would have been
quite familiar with those machines.

-Chris Zakes
Texas
--

GNU Terry Pratchett
Mind how you go.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 28 May 2016 00:22:35 -0700 (PDT), Butch Malahide
<fred....@gmail.com> wrote
in<news:f91d6c40-9095-4c56...@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> The college biostatistics class I took sometime in the
> 1950s had lecture and lab. The lab was in a room full of
> electric calculators. Monroes, I think, and maybe
> Fridens too.

Back around 1958 I used to end up in my father’s office in
the chemistry department at Amherst College after my
Saturday morning violin lesson, and I distinctly remember
playing with a Friden electro-mechanical calculator in one
of the labs. Almost as much fun as blowing glass in his
private lab.

Brian
--
It was the neap tide, when the baga venture out of their
holes to root for sandtatties. The waves whispered
rhythmically over the packed sand: haggisss, haggisss,
haggisss.

[lal_truckee]

With a "display window" such as Heinlein describes?
Everybody's displaying their historical knowledge while skipping the
details that make the passage interesting.

[lal_truckee]

On 5/27/16 8:11 PM, Don Bruder wrote:
> I hear you... "So what's your point???" Easy: at least to me, after
> growing up playing with the beast I just described, the idea of somebody
> in 1954 talking about an answer appearing in a window on a "calculator"
> is your basic "Yeah? So?" concept.

This cite both provides a possible source for Heinlein's description and
(since I'm unfamiliar with the machine as descibed) explains my
miss-guided intrigue. It wouldn't take much in the way of SF
extrapolation for Heinlein to derive the calculator as described.

[John Dallman]

In article <nicdrr$1vg$1...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com

(lal_truckee) wrote:

> With a "display window" such as Heinlein describes?
> Everybody's displaying their historical knowledge while skipping
> the details that make the passage interesting.

A common way for mechanical calculators to show their results was to have
a set of wheels with numerical digits on their edges inside the case (for
units, tens, hundreds, and so on), with a glazed window in the case that
let you see one digit from each wheel. That's the "display window", and
those words describe something different in a modern context.

John

[J. Clarke]

In article <nicdrr$1vg$1...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...

Display windows, plural, if you want to be nitpicky.

[J. Clarke]

In article <nicek0$4ip$1...@dont-email.me>, lal_t...@yahoo.com says...

You might find the Smithsonian's collection of calculating machines to
be of interest.

<http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/subjects/science-mathematics?
edan_start=0&edan_fq=topic%3A%22Calculating+Machines%22>

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <MPG.31b3268b5...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Hmm. I don't know how I got that idea..

[lal_truckee]

On 5/28/16 9:16 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
> You might find the Smithsonian's collection of calculating machines to
> be of interest.

Nice addition to the discussion - thanks for the link.
Friden calculating machines were common when I started at Lockheed circa
1969. I do not consider a Friden etc to have a "display window" but
looking at the Smithsonian collection and reviewing the discussion I
understand how others view the passage cited. It is clearly not in the
prescience class of the mobile phones in Space Cadet and Between Planets.

I re-read The Star Beast because I just acquired a library first edition
formerly owned by the El Segundo High School library. It's barely
possible that someone of you read this same copy these many years ago. I
remember the illustrations well.

[Butch Malahide]

On Saturday, May 28, 2016 at 1:58:13 PM UTC-5, lal_truckee wrote:
> On 5/28/16 9:16 AM, J. Clarke wrote:
> > You might find the Smithsonian's collection of calculating machines to
> > be of interest.
>
> Nice addition to the discussion - thanks for the link.
> Friden calculating machines were common when I started at Lockheed circa
> 1969. I do not consider a Friden etc to have a "display window" but
> looking at the Smithsonian collection and reviewing the discussion I
> understand how others view the passage cited. It is clearly not in the
> prescience class of the mobile phones in Space Cadet and Between Planets.

As for Heinlein's mobile phone in his 1948 Space Cadet, he probably got the
idea from reading science fiction. There was a mobile telephone in Donald
Wandrei's "Finality Unlimited" (Astounding Stories, Sept. 1936) and there was a
pocket videophone in Thomas McMorrow's "Mr. Murphy of New York" (The Saturday
Evening Post, March 22, 1930).

[Michael F. Stemper]

Also, Erich Kästner's _The 35th of May_, which was published in 1931,
has a scene where a gentleman steps off of the slidewalk to call his
wife and let her know he'd be late for lunch.

--
Michael F. Stemper
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

[P. Taine]

On Fri, 27 May 2016 21:58:21 -0400, "J. Clarke" <j.clark...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Don't forget Marchant.

[Alie...@gmail.com]

The Antikythera analog computer is a bit older. No display window as such though.


Mark L. Fergerson

[P. Taine]

On Fri, 27 May 2016 18:34:23 -0700, lal_truckee <lal_t...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>I'm re-reading _The Star Beast_ and noticed this time through that Mr.
>Kiku makes an observation that the thinking part of his brain is
>probably sub-conscious while the conscious part functions "merely as a
>display window for results arrived at elsewhere, like the 'answer'
>window in a calculator."
>
>So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can
>describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early HPs which
>first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

When I met my (to be) wife in 1957 she was in grad School in women's phys-ed.
She was on a project studying movement patterns in children. She had spent
weeks with electro-mechanical calculators constructing table which would give
trajectory information (angle of release and speed) for thrown balls, based to
time of flight and height of impact point on a target.

After we married (that fall) I took the only programming course at the
University, using a IBM 650, and programmed the computations. We invited one of
the professors over and showed her the table being printed out in minutes. A
few years later, having return to the University for a class reunion, I went
over to the computing center (then boasting a CDC 6400) and found either two or
three grad assistants there from the Women's Phys-ed department!

[Michael Black]

ON old cash registers, what was the part where you read the total called?

Michael

[Michael Black]

On Sat, 28 May 2016, lal_truckee wrote:

Not me.

But someone I knew was a member of the children's library where I used to
be amember, this was about 1995 versus 30 to 25 years before for me. And
I checked, and found they still had that copy of "A Year When Stardust
Fell", so I took it out on her card, not having read it since I was a kid.
Now it's different, you can get it at Project Gutenberg. I wasn't able to
get "Son of the Stars", though I read it out of that library. But now I
cant' remember if it was no longer there, or at the time I could't
remember the title.

Michael

[Cryptoengineer]

"Michael F. Stemper" <michael...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:nicvto$8j1$1...@dont-email.me:

I call your attention to this 1907 Punch cartoon:

http://punch.photoshelter.com/image?&_bqG=6
&_bqH=eJxtj0FrwzAMhX9Ncxs0HWYj4INja0Fr4nSyXZqT6EroGsoOzaDs388OZQvbdJC_
9.Rno4e9aNY0hAPv8hW95JtxuFZl_Xnnj8X9Y7ESyyJfxiqQjdPyerr0534cM2RnlIeFKJtmI
YycGcYkw5iZ1cVKZjqjDb.j8DcK_
0c1.m76zMdxAt0G66ljdG2SLSHYOMPWJomOCWpQDsxNbubateQlKbvOpvVYWSM_IgcHxGhkSK
sPz8NJ0Ov7GY9xtEXyQdWsKrC6S5cy1iVjfDhGbxi.kZ5.sEmotJdjv78c3rLtlK6mrlP_Ajv
QciQ-&GI_ID=

aka

http://tinyurl.com/zvpu5j3

It even predicts the social isolation ubiquitous mobile communication
could create.

pt

[Cryptoengineer]

"Mike Dworetsky" <plati...@pants.btinternet.com> wrote in
news:fcidnQkNNPhG_NTK...@supernews.com:

Even into the mid-1980s, I used an analog 'computer' to calculate the
area under curves in a biochemical lab - the machines would produce
graphs as traces, but to determine the area (ie, amount of material)
under any given peak, we'd use a mechcanical gadget to trace the peak,
the answer turning up on a dial on the machine.

The alternative method was to cut the peak out with scissors, and
weigh the paper (we had *very* accurate scales).

When I showed the senior researchers what could be done with a
spreadsheet (Visicalc on an Apple ][) they were boggled.

pt

[Mike Dworetsky]

You are describing a planimeter, a very clever analog device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter

In astronomy we used to use these to measure equivalent widths of spectral
lines on tracings, areas of nebulae on photographs, etc. Used regularly in
student labs until the late 1980s. By the late 1970s the "pros" were using
digitised images and computers to do this.

> The alternative method was to cut the peak out with scissors, and
> weigh the paper (we had *very* accurate scales).

For stars with hundreds of absorption lines, very tedious!

>
> When I showed the senior researchers what could be done with a
> spreadsheet (Visicalc on an Apple ][) they were boggled.
>
> pt

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

And before that, the Shaggy Man of Oz carried a small instrument in his
pocket, called a wireless telephone, which he could use to contact Ozma.
This was shown in _Tik-Tok of Oz_, published in 1914. And we know
Heinlein read the Oz books.



--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Michael R N Dolbear]

"Butch Malahide" wrote

> As for Heinlein's mobile phone in his 1948 Space Cadet, he probably got
> the
idea from reading science fiction. There was a mobile telephone in Donald
Wandrei's "Finality Unlimited" (Astounding Stories, Sept. 1936) and there
was a
pocket videophone in Thomas McMorrow's "Mr. Murphy of New York" (The
Saturday
Evening Post, March 22, 1930).

RAH was not in fact making a prediction since Bell sold car phones before
the pub date

1946: First Mobile Telephone Call

http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reputation/timeline/46mobile.html

"By 1948, wireless telephone service was available in almost 100 cities and
highway corridors. "


--
Mike D

[Dan Tilque]

lal_truckee wrote:
>
> So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can
> describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early HPs which
> first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

Lots of others have pointed out that calculators were around then. Some
years ago, I noticed that in Citizen of the Galaxy, Heinlein had Thorby
pull out a "pocket calculator" to follow the voting at the corporate
annual meeting. I wondered about this, as I didn't think the term had
been in use that far back (1957). But posting about it here (rasfw), I
learned that some of those mechanical calculators were in fact small
enough that they were called by that term.

There's an early 50's Asimov story where the protagonist has a digital
clock on his nightstand with glowing red numbers. So he predicted the
LED alarm clock? Well maybe, but it had a metallic face rather than
plastic, and when the numbers changed, it took them several seconds to
fade away, rather than changing immediately. So maybe not.

--
Dan Tilque

[Greg Goss]

For certain vague values of "red" you could get a nixie display.

I had a digital clock that moved blocking discs of clear and black
patterns in a manner I never understood. It was backlit by an array
of standard NE2H (or equivalent) bulbs and the effect was a
seven-segment per digit digital clock where the segments would take
about three seconds to settle into a new configuration. Someone went
to a lot of effort to make it look like an array of 2.5 inch orange
LEDs.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Robert Carnegie]

An electric cooker was demonstrated at the
"World's Columbian Exposition" in 1893.
I don't know if it was the type with the
wiggly element that glows red, which could
be made in number shapes...

[Scott Lurndal]

lal_truckee <lal_t...@yahoo.com> writes:
>I'm re-reading _The Star Beast_ and noticed this time through that Mr.
>Kiku makes an observation that the thinking part of his brain is
>probably sub-conscious while the conscious part functions "merely as a
>display window for results arrived at elsewhere, like the 'answer'
>window in a calculator."
>

>So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can
>describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early HPs which
>first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

Adding machines. The burroughs adding machines circa 1918 had a
"answer window" (behind bevelled glass!).

[Lynn McGuire]

On 5/27/2016 8:34 PM, lal_truckee wrote:
> I'm re-reading _The Star Beast_ and noticed this time through that Mr. Kiku makes an observation that the thinking part of his brain
> is probably sub-conscious while the conscious part functions "merely as a display window for results arrived at elsewhere, like the
> 'answer' window in a calculator."
>
> So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early
> HPs which first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

I scored one of the excellent trade paperback versions that Baen republished in 2012.
http://www.amazon.com/Star-Beast-Robert-Heinlein/dp/1451638078/

But I gave it away to a niece so I am going to buy another copy.

Lynn

[John F. Eldredge]

On Fri, 27 May 2016 18:34:23 -0700, lal_truckee wrote:

> I'm re-reading _The Star Beast_ and noticed this time through that Mr.
> Kiku makes an observation that the thinking part of his brain is
> probably sub-conscious while the conscious part functions "merely as a
> display window for results arrived at elsewhere, like the 'answer'
> window in a calculator."
>
> So - where did Heinlein get a "calculator" in 1954? So well that he can
> describe it? I don't remember a calculator before the early HPs which
> first showed up around 1969 +- a few...

There were mechanical or electromechanical calculators that preceded the
electronic calculator.

[John F. Eldredge]

That "several seconds to fade away" sounds like a Nixie tube, where the
number segments were heated filaments.