<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:bookman old style, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>Thanks Stewan for the info and links I will do some more studying! <br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>And by the way as a child from behind the "Iron curtain" The Lawnmower Man in which you have been involved was I think first "computer heavy" graphic movie which I have seen, I guess around 1994-95.</span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br><span></span></div><div
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-family: bookman old style,new york,times,serif; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span>Sincerely,<br></span></div><div> </div><div>Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck<br><br></div><div>biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker</div><br><br><div>http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org</div><div><br><br></div><div>"There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Ghandi<br><br> <div style="font-family: bookman old style, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <div dir="ltr"> <font face="Arial" size="2"> <hr size="1"> <b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Stewart Dickson <mathartspd@gmail.com><br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Frantisek Apfelbeck <algoldor@yahoo.com>; Hackerspaces General Discussion List <discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org> <br> <b><span
style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:42 AM<br> <b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [hackerspaces] first time seeing tron<br> </font> </div> <br>
Hello, Frantisek,<br><br>Well, I was a computer programmer in a very interesting place in 1982,<br>when "TRON" came out. (Directly from graduating the Bachelors in<br>Electrical Engineering in 1981).<br>It was AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratory, Naperville, IL -- (Not New<br>Jersey) -- I was employed by Western Electric Company/AT&T<br>Technologies. But, the rest of Bell Labs was available by network<br>extension. AT&T/Bell Labs had their own satellites in 1982. That<br>was how the data network was run.<br><br>I was interested in computer graphics, and so I soon discovered that<br>Bell Labs had several Information International Inc. (III -- or<br>"Triple-I") FR-80/Comp80 vector-graphics microfilm printers -- the<br>same kind of printers used to render the digital imagery for "TRON".<br>In Illinois, the camera heads they used with the FR-80/Comp80 shot to<br>B/W positive 35mm unperforated film. The vector graphics
display had<br>a huge addressable resolution -- Like 40,000 points in any direction<br>-- and could resolve 33 lines-per-millimeter on 35mm<br>film -- I measured it using a microscope. It was good enough to<br>create optical diffraction gratings and Fresnel Zone Plates<br>(diffractive<br>lenses/single-point holograms). The FR-80/Comp80 with the 16mm cine<br>camera head, suitable for rendering animation was located<br>in Holmdel, NJ, but was available via the data network. You got your<br>film back in inter-office mail.<br><br>In those days -- prior to the US Department of Justice Consent Decree<br>of 1984 -- The networks were all open. After 1984, the walls came<br>down, like Berlin. The loss of freedom in the name of Security and<br>division of Intellectual Property. I had never heard this term<br>previously.<br><br>Remember that the Billy Kluever/Robert Rauschenberg Experiments in Art<br>and Technology took place
in cooperation with Bell Labs:<br>http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=306 (1966-1980)<br>Remember that AT&T launched Telstar in 1962 in a cooperative venture<br>with NASA. (AT&T had to pay the entire bill for the launch.)<br>Telstar's transistors were subsequently cooked by radiation in the<br>magnetosphere due to above-ground nuclear tests.<br><br>Remember that numerous luminaries in the Arts came from Bell Labs --<br>Max Mathews (Radio Baton), Kenneth Knowlton (ASCII Art),<br>Lillian Schwartz. Lillian flat outright denied to me that she ever<br>made Art at Bell Labs -- Although she was commissioned to make films.<br>Kenneth has related to me the stories of official corporate denial of<br>ASCII-Art until it made the popular press.<br><br>-Stewart, http://us.imdb.com/Name?Stewart+Dickson<br>
http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/~sdickson<br>http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/10/vedic_math_machines_and_3d_zoetrope.html<br>http://web.archive.org/web/20100218191347/http://emsh.calarts.edu/~mathart/Clock_Cam.html<br>http://boingboing.net/2011/06/17/jeff-bezos-co-to-bui.html http://longnow.org/clock/prototype1<br>http://longnow.org/people/associate/StewartDickson<br>http://www.hastac.org/blogs/sdickson<br>http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/author.html?author=Stewart+Dickson<br><br>On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 9:16 AM, Frantisek Apfelbeck <<a ymailto="mailto:algoldor@yahoo.com" href="mailto:algoldor@yahoo.com">algoldor@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>> Hi to all,<br>> I have seen for the first time The Tron, great movie!<br>><br>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron<br>><br>> Wishing for a moment to be a computer programmer back then but alas I was<br>> just one year old ...<br>><br>> I just wonder if the “master
control program (MCP)” was a kind of vision of<br>> “Windows” coming? Or was it a "generalisation" of "control versus free?"<br>><br>> Sincerely,<br>><br>> FA<br>><br>> Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck<br>><br>> biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker<br>><br>><br>> http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org<br>><br>><br>> "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Ghandi<br>><br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Discuss mailing list<br>> <a ymailto="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org" href="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org</a><br>> <a href="http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss" target="_blank">http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</a><br>><br><br><br> </div> </div> </div></div></body></html>