[HN Gopher] Bell Labs Holmdel Computer Center (1973)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Bell Labs Holmdel Computer Center (1973)
        
       Author : abrax3141
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2023-07-18 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | allenrb wrote:
       | What gets me about this video, in addition to the obvious
       | technological progress, is the social change.
       | 
       | First we've got the very visible Raquel Welch pinup. That
       | obviously wouldn't fly today and I'm a _little_ surprised it did
       | then.
       | 
       | But second, and this kind of blew my mind, the speaker seemed so
       | proud of consuming 1,000 lbs of paper each day. In 2023, that
       | almost seems more out of place than the pinup in a training film!
        
       | saqadri wrote:
       | 20,000 sq ft of space for a computer that processed only 1200
       | cards/min. The tone of the narrator made that sound very
       | impressive, which it was back in 1973.
       | 
       | 50 years from now I wonder what things we are amazed by today
       | will sound silly to future technologists.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | slickrick216 wrote:
         | Security operations centres for private companies that have
         | lots of screens in them and tiered rows of desks. Bonus points
         | if they have a podium at the front for briefings. Additional
         | bonus points for having glass window view plane for visitors.
         | Final bonus points for a button that converts the graphs on
         | screens to a world map or some other BS when actual guests do
         | arrive. It's like some type of Apollo 13 fever dream.
        
         | retrac wrote:
         | Funnily enough, you'd be hard-pressed to read cards much faster
         | than that today. The limit was on the mechanical side, moving
         | the cards fast enough without jamming or tearing them. The
         | processor would have been 99% idle if reading 1200 cards/min
         | was all it was doing. On big systems, since cards were such a
         | bottleneck, they would often be read in with a small computer
         | or dedicated card-to-magnetic-tape machine.
         | 
         | </random Hollerith trivia>
        
       | abrax3141 wrote:
       | From the ATT Archive: https://www.youtube.com/@ATTTechChannel
        
       | chrisco255 wrote:
       | When do you think "peak Bell Labs" was? In the 60s or 70s?
        
         | TMWNN wrote:
         | For basic science and engineering: The 1940s through the 1960s,
         | during which Bell Labs created the transistor, did work that
         | won Nobel Prizes, and built the first communications
         | satellites.
         | 
         | For computers: The 1970s, the Heroic Age of Unix.
        
       | abrax3141 wrote:
       | BTW, I didn't check every detail, but a card reader reading "up
       | to 200 cards/min" sounded way wrong, as I recall it. And it is
       | way wrong! The IBM 3505 could read up to 1200 cards/min.
        
         | allenrb wrote:
         | Thanks! I _thought_ 3 cards per second didn't sound
         | particularly fast, but I missed the punch card era. Not by a
         | lot, mind you.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-07-18 23:00 UTC)