

George Dyson's continued downplaying of British computing efforts is tiresome - jgrahamc
http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/george-dysons-continued-downplaying-of.html

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michael_dorfman
The mythmaking around the early history of computing is fascinating (and
maddening) to watch. In the rush to create compelling narratives around a few
selected heroes, the complexities and the contributions of the many are too
often shunted aside.

~~~
vidarh
You keep finding this mythmaking pretty much up to present-day, and permeating
through other parts of the computing industry as well. It'll take a long time
to untangle this and separate the myths from reality.

My "favorite" example is the hyped up reverence for Apple's role in the early
days of the home computer, and the "cult of Woz", when they weren't first by a
long shot, and largely priced themselves out of the race for many years, with
sales a distant third after Radio Shack and Commodore.

Meanwhile a bunch of early guys at Commodore who directly influenced a lot
more people are pretty much ignored, not least Chuck Peddle (the father of the
6502 at MOS Technology without which most of the 70's and 80's home computers
would've looked _very_ different, and of the KIM and Commodore PET computers,
the latter which outsold Apple in the beginning, until replaced by the VIC 20)

To an extent it is down to who writes history - in this case Apple is the only
survivor of the home computer wars, combined with being the only one of the
larger players who were a predominantly Silicon Valley company (Commodore had
offices there, but moved East, and never did as well in the US as elsewhere).

But as an old Commodore / Amiga user who's very aware of how short-changed
Commodore has been by modern day mythmaking around the home computers, I
wonder how much else of early computing history is twisted or forgotten that
shouldn't have been...

~~~
crusso
But what are the rules of this "mythmaking" game you speak of? Seems like a
pretty subjective game to get excited about in terms of right or wrong.

To play Devil's Advocate: Apple has been extraordinarily successful at
inventing or popularizing multiple industries within the technology space.
They're still around and doing very well financially and in the eyes of the
consuming public.

Commodore/Amiga were neat in ways, but never could produce the "whole package"
experience and business model they needed to last for the long haul. Surely
they deserve some footnotes for their efforts, but their relative
popularity/myth within the computer industry is just about where it should be.

~~~
pyre
It's more of a "Apple created the home computer all by themselves at a time
when absolutely no one else was creating home computers. They invented the
home computer from scratch," myth. In a decade or so, we're likely to see the
same thing about Apple regarding the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple's
'marketing buzz' spiraling out of control within the general public until the
statement becomes something akin to, "Apple invented everything that they've
ever used from scratch... even their office furniture."

~~~
crusso
Yeah, I don't really know how to deal with your hyperbole. Who is passing
along this myth that Apple invented the personal computer from scratch? Maybe
you should add in that Woz invented electricity while you're spinning a tale?

~~~
vidarh
Perhaps that was hyperbole, but read this article for example, and you can see
the impression it leaves about relative historical importance:

<http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121598.htm>

Yet, at the time, nobody really cared about Apple. The two big sellers where
the TRS-80 and the Commodore PET. Apple was a distant third who most people
thought was too expensive. It was relevant only because it was the only third
place contender.

TRS-80 and PET were both pre-ordered in higher volumes than what Apple sold
per year in the first couple of years.

But they get the vast majority of the article, including a lot of attention
for the (for the purpose of that article) irrelevant Apple I (it was sold as a
kit, sold in the low hundreds, and had plenty of competition which the article
ignores).

The worst outright error in the article is to claim the 6502 was designed by
Rockwell - of course it was designed by Chuck Peddle, Bill Mensch and a few
others at MOS Technologies (Bill Mensch incidentally _still_ produce new
models of it). Peddle was the person who personally got the 6502 off the
ground and was responsible for the low price point - without Peddle, the Apple
computers would've looked a whole lot different...

And the PET entry gets an incorrect NOTE about Commodore's start of the PET
project which really only serves to diminish it's role (in reality, Commodore
had bought MOS long before, and it was Chuck Peddle who had the responsibility
to do a new computer and wanted to talk to Apple as an option before they
decided whether to go ahead and do their own machine - the note doesn't match
what _either_ Chuck Peddle or Woz says about it, though Peddle and Woz have
very different accounts of the discussions). It also makes it seem like
Commodore had nothing, but Peddle had designed numerous boards around the
6502, including the KIM computer.

If you're going to insert notes like that, why's there no note about how
Commodore bid for a deal with Radio Shack to be their computer supplier, but
Roach at Radio Shack opted to have his team develop his own instead? It's a
similar story, yet somehow it's important only when it involves Apple.

This is pretty par for the course for coverage of the start of the home
computer era. There are few outright errors in that article, but it's biased
in a way that contributes to making Apple seem far more important.

If you want to get a better idea of the mythmaking around Apple, I suggest
Brian Bagnalls "Commodore: A company on the edge", which contrasts a lot of
the coverage about Apple with contemporary sources and eyewitness accounts.

------
andyjohnson0
George Dyson is the son of the physicist Freeman Dyson, who worked at the
Institute for Advance Study from 1953 during the time when von Neumann et al
were building the IAS computer. He (George) gave a talk [1] in 2008 where he
mentioned that he used to hang out at the IAS as a child and met von Neumann,
Kurt Godel, and others. This probably explains his emphasis on the IAS and von
Neumann.

I do agree with the opinion expressed in the article, though, that the British
contribution tends to be downplayed. But as a brit myself we're used to
that...

The Manchester Baby is in the science museum here in Manchester and its worth
a look if you somehow find yourself in Manchester. The long-now talk is
interesting, but you might want to fast-fwd past the stuff about canoes and
tree houses.

[http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/jan/09/theres-plenty-of-
ro...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/jan/09/theres-plenty-of-room-at-the-
top/)

EDIT: typo

~~~
rst
The Manchester machines were very significant for at least two reasons. First
off, they were the first to feature "Williams tube" CRT memory, which was the
high-speed memory of choice in any early computer effort that could afford it
(including the IAS machine which is Dyson's subject, and for which he
apparently fails to give Williams proper credit).

Second, it was the first machine to feature any kind of an index register, a
facility that was quite widely copied. You can trace the influence from the
spread of the Manchester name for the facility: they called it the "B-tube", a
reference to the internal structure of their own machine. (Already having an
"A-tube" for the accumulator, and a "C-tube" for control registers, they used
the first free letter.) And if you read through the computing literature of
the '50s, you'll find frequent references to index registers using terms like
"B-boxes", which are otherwise inexplicable.

------
wmat
Is there an accurate account of the international history of computing in
existence in book form?

------
oneofthose
One often forgotten but truly fascinating character in the early days of
computing is Konrad Zuse [0] who arguably built the first computer. If you are
interested in computer history make sure to read his autobiography "The
Computer - My Life". At some point he was financed by Nazi-Germany arms
producers. About this he said (rough translation by me from German):

Too often is the inventor the Faustian idealist who tries to change the world
but fails due to the harsh reality. If he wants to implement his idea, he has
to get involved with powers, whose sense for reality is sharper and more
pronounced than his. Today such powers are, without expressing a value
judgment, military and management. [...] In my experience, chances are slim to
defend oneself against such pacts.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse>

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abecedarius
This review gives the impression that Dyson's book doesn't give credit for the
Williams tube. It does. (The linked article in the Atlantic is guilty,
though.)

It also links to an Amazon review championing Mauchly and Eckert; but there
was a recent bio of Atanasoff (whose title I'm blanking on) saying basically
that Mauchly ripped off Atanasoff, and von Neumann had plenty of contact with
both sides, had a better grasp of Atanasoff's ideas, and probably worked
behind the scenes to promote them and make sure they weren't patent-
encumbered. (IIRC Atanasoff had a universal computer in mind but didn't try to
make one as his first project because he wasn't going to get stuck Babbage-
style taking on too much at once.)

Not to say this review may not have a point. I haven't finished Dyson's book
yet.

------
gaius
Imagine what those wartime guys could have done with a BBC Micro!

