Sour Grapes

~~Reality vs. prediction from 50 years ago~~

My friend Max Lebow sent me this image from a 1954 issue of Popular Mechanics. It shows what someone thought a home computer would look like in the year 2004. Notice the steering wheel. The captions reads

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.

~~BTW, to give you an idea of what they had in mind by "easy to use," here's a small sample Fortran program to calculate the area of a tank (further documented here):~~



      REAL R,H,PI,A

      OPEN(5,FILE='C:\DATA\PANDAT.DAT',ACCESS='SEQUENTIAL',

     ;     STATUS='OLD',ERR=900)

  10  READ(5,FMT=1,END=99)R,H

   1      FORMAT(F4.2,F4.2)

          PI=3.14159

          A=PI*R**2+2*PI*R*H

       PRINT 11, H,R,A

  11      FORMAT(1X,'RADIUS= ',F6.2,10X,'HEIGHT= ',F6.1,10X,'AREA= ',

     ;           F8.1)

      GOTO 10

 900      PRINT 21

  21      FORMAT(1X,'INVALID DATA')

  99  CLOSE(5)

      STOP

      END

Updated by Hugh at 12/02/2004 15:38 PM

Like Mac said, in the comment, it's a hoax. Mea culpa, mea culpa!

Original post by Namenlosen Trinker at 11/30/2004 05:28:00 PM Eastern time :: 1 comment(s) ::

1 comment(s):

Hoax?
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

Originally posted by Mac (mac_z[at]hotmail[.]com) at 14:46 2004-12-02 Thu despite whatever else it might say around here.

Comment posted by Anonymous at 03 December, 2004 17:17