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IP: LECTURE: "The Computing Environment at Livermore in the 1970's"
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:21:41 -0500
Bay Area Computer History Perspectives and The Computer Museum History Center present "The Computing Environment at Livermore in the 1970's" with Jed Donnelly, John Fletcher, and Dick Watson Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 5:30 PM, Thursday, Jan. 29 Caspian Room Sun Microsystems 901 San Antonio Road Palo Alto (directions at end) Back 35 years ago, if you took delivery of a new supercomputer by Seymour Cray (like the CDC 6600) you got a box with boards and wires and you had to write an operating system yourself, since you did not get one with the machine. If you wanted a comprehensive network environment delivering a wide range of services to an entire community of users, you had to do that job yourself too. You had to build the network hardware, write the network software, and integrate it all with your own custom operating system on a wide variety of machines from minicomputers to supercomputers. The result was a complete computing environment built and tailored to serve the needs of a particular group of users. Such an environment existed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1970's. It wasn't possible in the 1960's, and it had already become obsolete in the 1980's, with the arrival of generic network hardware and software. The 1970's may have been the only time in the history of computing that such an entire custom dedicated environment was possible or practical. And it had advantages: for example, you could at any time interrupt a long job taking hours or days, store the complete process to disk, and start it up again at that exact point, on the same machine or another machine, whenever you wanted (just try doing that today). Dick Watson will begin the program with an overview of the period. John Fletcher will take us back to the earliest times, since he came to Livermore first. And Jed Donnelly will discuss operating system developments with the network extensions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The staff of Bay Area Computer History Perspectives and The Computer Museum History Center wish to thank George Michael for his assistance with this program. George arrived at Livermore within a week of the delivery of the first computer there, back in 1953. He has been contributing to the development of computer technology at Livermore, and to recording and preserving the history of that technology, ever since. We thank him for his work for computer history. These talks are sponsored by The Computer Museum History Center and Sun Microsystems. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Directions Southbound on 101 in Palo Alto: take San Antonio Road South exit, then immediately exit on first driveway on right side of the road into Sun parking lot. Northbound on 101 in Palo Alto: take San Antonio Road exit. Turn left at the stop sign and drive back over the freeway, then exit on first driveway on right side of the road into Sun parking lot. Once in the Sun parking lot: enter through portico at far end of building, the entrance with the Network dog house beside the door. The Caspian Room is off the lobby on the left side. -- Dag Spicer Manager, Historical Collections The Computer Museum History Center Moffett Federal Airfield Mountain View, CA 94035 Offices: Building T12-A Exhibit Area: Building 126 Tel: +1 650 604 2578 Fax: +1 650 604 2594 E-m: spicer () tcm org WWW: http://www.tcm.org/history/ <spicer () tcm org> PGP: 15E31235 (E6ECDF74 349D1667 260759AD 7D04C178)
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- IP: LECTURE: "The Computing Environment at Livermore in the 1970's" Dave Farber (Jan 20)