[XeTeX] Dinosaurs

[Barry MacKichan]

Ok, I'll contribute to this one. I learned programming on a IBM clone --a clone of an IBM 1620 at Oregon State University in 1960.
We wrote a few programs and then were told about a fabulous new tool called SOAP, the symbolic optimum assembly program. No more memorizing the numbers of machine instructions! The optimization part was that not only would it assemble your program but it would put each instruction on the right part of the drum so that it would be under the read head when the previous instruction had executed. Slick!

All input was on paper tape. The equivalent of the delete key, as I recall, was opaque tape that you could stick on the paper tape.

--Barry MacKichan 


On Sep 12, 2011, at 2:53 PM, maxwell wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:40:57 +0200, Tobias Schoel
> <liesdiedatei at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Shouldn't real dinosaurs (real as in MTV Real Life) calculate using only
> 
>> the Peano Axioms and the unary system? 
> 
> I believe binary arithmetic was introduced somewhere in the pre-Cambrian. 
> This was because when you add two digits, both of which are 1, you have to
> carry into the next column; hence the name, You Carry It, since corrupted
> to Eukaryote.
> 
>   Mike Maxwell
> 
> 
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