- That's an early version of the system. I've seen pictures of a later version, which was an IBM 3270 display with a phone handset, but no keyboard. The idea was that the executive would pick up the phone and be connected to someone in a call center who would then do spreadsheet-type operations for them. Don't know if that was deployed much.
- I find it interesting how Dunlop was trying to solve the same kinds of problems Engelbart was, with the added constraint of preserving the shifgrethor of the top IBM executives. The fact that late-20th-century businessmen viewed such things as typing to be subordinates' work has had a more profound effect on the adoption of computer technologies, their development, and their marketing that we in modern times could guess without having known.
I'm also reminded of the Ashton-Tate software package Framework, which is one of my favorites from the 1980s. It's what they used to call "integrated software", which was a package of several productivity applications: word processor, spreadsheet, maybe a communications program or database or graphing capability, bundled together and sold as a unit. Unlike, say, Microsoft Works or DeskMate, Framework featured powerful versions of these tools and the ability to create composite documents, as well as a programming language with Lisp-like semantics to automate workflows. Because of this, Ashton-Tate pitched Framework as an executive decision-making tool, which was quite a bit different from how competitor programs like Lotus 1-2-3 were marketed:
- I visited the Computer History Museum this year during Vintage Computer Festival West. When not only can you tour the museum, but the upstairs rooms are crammed full of hundreds of amazing personal collections of vintage computing hardware all powered up and usable. It was a religious experience.
- Huge "Control" vibes from this article. If you like the aesthetics, action gaming, and the paranormal...yet for some reason have not played this game yet, definitely give it a try.
- Very interesting contrasting visions between IBM's hierarchical approach and Englebart's Mother of All Demos. The IBM vision isn't really even computing based. it's obvious from the video which shows an on-demand point-to-point analog video link between a senior executive's office and a central reference library. The video is only from the library to the executive but the audio is bi-directional allowing the researcher to receive requests, assemble materials which could include documents placed on a video camera stand, transparencies, microfilm or the display output of a video terminal and then display them on the video feed using a video source switch box. It's really more a demo of a dedicated corporate video calling system.
> Dunlop’s 1968 video demonstration of the Executive Terminal and the Information Center proceeds in three acts.
The article doesn't make this clear but the linked videos are not a video demonstration but instead unedited B-roll shots without audio probably captured to be cut-aways edited into a narrated video demonstration. Unfortunately, that video demonstration isn't part of this collection (or was never created).
- ĀN ĒXAMPLE is "An Example".
Uppercase characters are represented using a bar/macron over the top - I was a bit slow to work that out and I don't remember seeing that convention before.
Link just to video: https://youtu.be/UhpTiWyVa6k
Edit: pulvinar said "It's clearly a vector display". You can see a graph using vector lines at 24:13, zooming at 20:50, and there's graphic lines mixed with text at 28:36.
- Recording the history of computing for future generations will be so important for a wide range of studies.
It's great people collect, restore, and publish valuable historical pieces like these.
- Interesting video. It seems like they imagined some sort of pair programming but with the boss sitting behind you.
I wonder if it failed it practice due to no boss having the patience of watching a programmer slowly writing out a program. Like, the video reminds me more of scifi computer interaction than actual programming. The boss voice sounds like the robot cops when beating the protagonist in TXH123 or whatever it is called.
- It's comforting to know the demo gods have been cursing us since the 60s.
- > Once the results were assembled, the information specialist conveyed all this information to the executive, cutting from one video feed to another, guided by the executive’s interest and direction.
Anyone else reminded of A Deepness in the Sky?
- Wow:
“I don’t know why we call it a mouse. Sometimes I apologise. It started that way and we never did change it”
Truly a sense of looking back into the past and seeing history in the making.
- One very small correction: QUIKTRAN wasn't a “mathematical utility”, but an early timesharing system, I think running on a 7044 (coincidentally, my first mainframe). It offered an interactive Fortran system, with editing and debugging facilities. IBM's later CALL/360 system was a successor to this, adding PL/I and Basic.
Interesting UX fact: IBM researchers looked at user satisfaction on this system. They found that it wasn't poor response time that bothered people, but variability of response times. If users couldn't predict how long an operation would take, that bothered them. So they inserted delays so that average response times were maybe longer, but variance was lower. And users were happier.
- -Dunlop saw the opportunity to run another experiment in 1967-68, which he called the “Executive Terminal.”
Accessing Dunlop's archives on the Xerox Star that would not have been a stand-alone system ended up requiring a Memorex machine that was accessed through multiple time-sharing CRT models. Piecing together the original audio in archival footage moved restoring the tape in an information management system to Englebart's accelerated NLS database.
- Looking at this it is absolutely amazing and almost incomprehensible how far technology has advanced in the years since then.
- Some of those screen images seem incredibly modern, like a Windows 2000 machine attached to a CRT with a BW filter.
- I love that one of the examples is a shopping list for groceries. Given the cost of the system...
- Reminds me a bit of Chile’s Project CyberSyn room. [0]
- Can someone explain why the font looks so disjointed on the presentation screen?
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- Cool.