On Sun, 1 Mar 1998 10:58:04 -0800 (PST), Seth J. Morabito wrote:
>I'm kind of curious as to the demography of the Classic Computer
>Mailing List. What are people's backgrounds, what are they doing now,
>and so forth.
>
I probably fall into the older half of the list. I'm a physicist, 44,
and have not principally used computers in my work, focusing more on
'paper and pencil' theory (initially high energy physics, then
statistical dynamics of turbulent processes). My first practical
exposure to computing was learning Basic in high school in the late
sixties, then my batchelor's thesis at MIT in 1974-5 where I did some
computational modeling of nucleon-nucleon interactions, and some
fortran programming in graduate school at Columbia in 1976 for
neutrino experiments at Fermilab. On an entirely separate track, I
have recently been working collaboratively with some artists and
scientists exploring connections between the visual arts and
mathematical sciences. The work relies heavily on computational
graphics manipulations (though nothing 'classic' about the hardware
used).
My interest in collecting is recent, only the last couple years, as I
have seen lots of older things thrown out. I have a few interesting
older things (altair, kim, nec pda-80 -- thanks Allison!, northstar
horizon, misc s-100 boxen, etc), with possibly the most unusual being
the guts from two CADR lisp machines from the AI lab at MIT. Lots of
other stuff as well, all architectures. Shameless request: for some
reason I can't seem to find any kind of commodore pet, so if some kind
soul has a spare they'd be willing to part with, please let me know.
FWIW, I'm married to a seismologist who finds my collecting this old
stuff amusing, and have two children who also enjoy all the computing
paraphernalia around the house. Makes for an easily encouraged
collecting experience :-).
Hope this was of interest,
Frank
Frank Peseckis
frank_at_5points.com
http://www.5points.com/
Received on Sun Mar 01 1998 - 14:20:21 GMT