Most of you have probably figured out that my name is Catherine Lathwell and I have begun working on a documentary film about the History of APL.
Last month, on May 11, 2009, I spoke publicly for the first time about this film with the APL Bay Area Users' Group meeting at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. I live in Toronto and had booked a trip to Palo Alto to touch base with some of the old timer APL folks as an informal kick-off trip for the film. Curtis Jones found out about these plans because I plastered them all over cyberspace and organised the meeting as well as a personal tour of the museum by Dr. Leonard Shustek, Chairman of the Board for the Museum.
The Museum is awesome. At the time, a fully functioning Babbage Engine had taken up residence is the foyer. It's beautiful. Later, I got goose bumps in the lab where they are re-conditioning old machines. The lab feels like one those old machine rooms, only smaller. They had card readers (oh, my) and those old machine room printers - I can't even remember what they are called. I do however, clearly remember Charlotte Dawson giving me what-for about not tying my hair back when I was setting them up. Charlotte was my (s)hero and boss :) so, the hair went up.
Back at the Museum they are in the midst of a massive fund raising campaign to support an ambitious exhibit featuring a time line of computer history. And incidentally, as far as I can tell, we haven't made it onto the time line in software languages category on the museum's web site, so there is an opportunity for advocacy here. In any case, a problem they will have with their exhibition, and a problem I will also share is, how do you explain something abstract, like a computer language to a general audience?
The meeting with the APL Bay Area Users' Group went much as one might expect. I introduced myself and talked about my ideas for the film. I then showed a short video interview with my father, and this stimulated discussion about the good old days. Discussion was lively and folks have a lot to say. The group supports the film idea and everyone is eager to help out. This is great.
I'm now getting ready to fly to the UK tonight so that I can talk about the film at the BAPLA2009 conference. This is very exciting and fun. I have a lot of energy for this project because I truly believe it is important - and if not now, When? And if not me, Who?
I'm looking forward to seeing you all on Monday. Keep watching this space...
http://www.computerhistory.org/
http://www.aprogramminglanguage.com/
