Ken Iverson’s blackboard from his days at IPSA

From Peter Wooster at the group APL – A Programming Language at LinkedIn.com:

This blackboard was in Ken's office the '80s at IPSA. After that it was in Bob Bernecky's office and Tony Bailey's, I'm not sure if Benoit Paquin had if for a while or not. After the separation of Soliton, I inherited it and removed Tony's batman stickers and kept it in my office at Reuters until they eventually shut us down. The blackboard is on a wall in my studio and will remain there unless someone else wants it. It has plenty of chalk and a couple of erasers. It's still in excellent condition.

If you can come to Oakville and pick it up, it's yours.

Richard Lathwell confesses

My father mentions that he taught Benoit Mandelbrot APL

Ferranti's girl for Ada Lovelace Day

Wednesday March 24, 2010 is Ada Lovelace Day. This means almost 1700 of us around the world made a pledge to write a blog post about a woman in science or technology.

You can see them all at Finding Ada

Or if you want to read about who I picked to write about from our array language community so straight to Ferranti's Girl for Ada Lovelace Day

And I'm collecting names of female array programmers. I've made it a game, but seriously appreciate you naming names: Women!

Rediscovering APL’s history

A new article posted at Vector recounts Catherine Lathwell’s talk to APL BUG about her documentary film project.

50 in 50: Fifty programming languages in fifty minutes

Art or education? Or “pretentious drivel”? Guy Steele and Richard Gabriel presented fifty 50-word remarks on fifty programming languages at JAOO Århus 2008. Yes, APL too.

Kudos to Dave Thomas for the link.

Dyalog at 25

Mark Wickens writes:

Just wanted to say thanks for the Dyalog at 25 issue of Vector. I went to blood donors last night and needed something to occupy me during the inevitable wait (an hour this time) and located this copy of Vector propped on top of a pile of books under the bed, couldn't decide whether I'd read it or not and just took it along. Absolutely fascinating, and a powerful insight into the trials and tribulations of a small software company, especially from the 'geek' perspective.

For my sins I have an interest in old DEC hardware (alpha, vax etc) so was especially interested in the bits about the 64 bit version and the slow VAX implementation. My first job was on the VAX porting team of a small software house - so a lot of the details rang true.

For a reason unknown only to myself I had an interest in getting VAX APL installed (which it is on a VAXstation 4000/90) and at some point in the future will get the time to hopefully provide a little information to anyone interested on the web. Are there any versions of Dyalog APL still kicking around for the VAX or Alpha? I'd love to have a go at getting it up and running.

Thanks for the article and all your hard work on Vector. The dedication of the team shows through in the quality of the publication.

Right back to the day job, Enterprise Java...

Regards,

Mark.
http://www.wickensonline.co.uk

The Origins of APL - 1974

This is the Full 1 hour version: The Origins of APL - 1974

Origins of APL Intro

Here is the Intro sequence to the 1974 film Origins of APL

Dad & My APL Box

This is a refined version of the short film I showed at BAPLA2009. If you're a car enthusiast, it's worth another watch just to see the 1956 Caddy Adin Falkoff sold to Dick Lathwell in 1966 for $50!

Catherine Lathwell Rediscovers the History of APL

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/

Catherine Lathwell's APL Diaries

Catherine Lathwell has announced her documentary film project. The project blog is at www.aprogramminglanguage.com