Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:
>
> John Foust wrote:
> >
> > At 06:39 PM 6/17/98 -0700, Greg Troutman wrote:
> > >
> > >>From the photos I'd like to point out that he was actually using an
> > >800XL. Anyway the book is highly recommended not only for the Atari
> > >mention, but more so for it's majestic presentation of numerous
> > >individuals who pursue science purely for the love of it.
> >
> > One might argue that he didn't need something as powerful
> > as an Atari 800XL to do that. :-) These days, computer-aided
> > hobby astronomer hackers are modifying Quickcams to use as
> > el cheapo CCD imagers, running multimedia star-mapping tools
> > on Windows laptops in the field, etc. I've even thought about
> > writing a star-finder for my PalmPilot, having picked up
> > an 8" Dobs for my birthday. (Of course, it's been cloudy
> > ever since.) And the PalmPilot isn't far from the Atari ST
> > or Amiga 1000 - 68000-ish chip, 3 megs of RAM, except it
> > runs for three weeks on two AAAs.
> >
> > After all, Charles Moore created FORTH to control telescopes, too.
>
> No, Charles Moore created FORTH as a notation system for teaching
> mathematics -- it just happened that when the notation system was
> converted to a programming language that it became handy for such
> things as controlling telescopes.
Hmm. I'd read that he was just a prolific programmer and wrote FORTH
simply because he wanted something REALLY efficient for his own coding
efforts....
--
mor_at_crl.com
http://www.crl.com/~mor/
Received on Fri Jun 19 1998 - 02:12:14 BST