"11/30" v.06 (11/30/2008)

Our seventh "11/30" party, "v06," was on 11/30/2008. Once again the incredible Computer History Museum hosted us, which we're very grateful for (a big thank you to them and their staff, especially to Dag Spicer, Senior Curator!). We had about 25 guests from around the country (maybe half former IBM people, with the remainder split between people who'd used the 1130 before and people who were interested but had never used one), and enjoyed dim sum, drinks, socializing, and three interesting presentations.

We do have audio and video from these presentations and we'll be putting them up here "soon." ( From Norm, 1/3/2009: I just got the video files and will be making audio and video files for download soon. Write to bug me about it you don't see the files by, say, 1/10/2009.)

Guest speaker #1: Bob Louden

Bob wrote Programming the IBM 1130 and 1800, a book you probably have or had a copy of: it sold 250,000 copies! He spoke for about half an hour on the decision to write the book, the writing process, and the effect it had when published, and he gave away three brand-new copies of the book at the end of his talk.

Guest speaker #2: Richard T. Stofer

Richard presented his FPGA ("field-programmable gate array")-based 1130 simulator last year and this year showed some more technical details and how it's improved, including the addition of a Compact Flash drive and IBM 1627 plotter output to a networked HP-GL printer.

Guest speaker #3: Robert Marinelli

Robert talked about and demonstrated an interesting contemporary of the 1130, the Olivetti Programma 101. This desktop machine, which was introduced virtually simultaneously with the 1130, addressed much of the same market for engineering, was also quite popular, and had beautiful design (in fact it's in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art).

If you weren't there, you missed out! (But you'll get to see the video.) Please try to come to next year's party. We don't know the exact date yet, but it should be near 11/30 -- write us if you want to prod us to choose the date.