Professor Walter's History Lessons

With special thanks from the #2 Pencil Association

Reynold B. Johnson was a Michigan physics teacher in the 1930s and he was tired. After another late night of grading tests by hand, he decided that there had to be a better way. Working nights in his basement he developed a machine that could read the answers selected by filling in circles. After testing the conductivity of the paper, he found that, when the circle was filled in by pencil, the graphite changed the readings. The machine could recognize which answer was selected, allowing the answer to be read as either correct or incorrect based on an answer key. In 1934 IBM learned of Johnson's invention and hired him on the spot. The real breakthrough came in 1939 when the SATs switched to the automated system and standardized tests would never be the same.

Johnson stayed with IBM, eventually becoming manager of the Advanced Systems Development Division laboratory in San Jose, CA. In the course of his work he helped develop the prototype for the half-inch videocassette tape that Sony used, as well as leading the team that created the world's first disk drive. In 1965 he was named an IBM fellow, the first of many personal achievements. He obtained more than 90 patents, received the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan in 1986, the IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award was established in 1991, and in 1996 he was awarded the Franklin Institute's Certificate of Merit. Even after retirement he continued to invent, creating the microphonograph used in Fisher Price Talk to Me books.

Johnson died of melanoma on September 15, 1998 at the age of 92.

-Professor Walter

Professor Walter's Recipes of Yesteryear

Professor Walter has decided to expand with Professor Walter's Recipes of Yesteryear. Each weekday I will add another recipe from decades past.  Some are useful today, some are reminders of a time before refrigerators and microwaves. Make soup with a calf's head or coffee with egg whites. Enjoy the tastes of your grandparents, when exotic foods were ones that came from a town over.  And learn how we, as a society, used to live in "simpler" times.

Professor Walter's Recipes of Yesteryear is located at http://cooking.professorwalter.com

-Professor Walter

The Microsoft Desktop Revolution That Never Was

In 1995 Microsoft was looking for ways to make greater in-roads into the home computer market with Microsoft Windows.  One effort proved to be a magnificant failure, that effort was known as Microsoft Bob.  The idea was to create a new operating system interface that would resemble a normal home and bundle it with a word processor, calendar, and others.  It would sit on top of Windows 3.1 or 95and include an assistant in the form of an animal to help the user with day to day tasks.  The product was reguraly updated and bundled with some computers.  

The effort proved to be one of the great failures of Microsoft, becoming a hated program by many.  When PC Magazine listed the worst 25 products of all time, Bob won 7th place.  Time Magazine even gate it a spot on their list of the 50 wost inventions, and CNET.com listed it as the number ten worst product of the decade.

While Bob was a failure, it's legacy lives on in...

• Bob's face on Windows Live Messenger as "Nerd Smiley"
• Rover the yellow dog assistant is in the search function of Windows XP
• The font Comic Sans MS was created for BOB and is now one of the the ten core fonts for the web.

You can read a detailed review of Bob here, http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327

-Professor Walter

Back from the unscheduled break

A quick note to my readers, I was under some snow and lacking the in power department for a good portion so I was unable to keep the posts going.  Things are returning to normal and some great history is coming your way soon!

-Professor Walter

Burning bright for a short time is better than never suceeding at all

In the 1970's Dan Bricklin watched a professor at Harvard Business School create a financial model on a blackboard.  When the professor made an error he had to erase and re-write a series of sequential numbers.  Bricklin noticed this and thought that it could be automated via a computer.

The idea was refined by Bob Frankston and together they developed a product for their company Software Arts called VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet.  In 1979 they released it for the Apple II and the Apple transformed from hobbyist's toy to a useful financial tool for business.  The enormous success of VisiCalc spawned imitators and soon VisiCalc lost favor as newer applications worked better.  At the time there had never been a patent for an application so the VisiCalc team never received royalties from the successes of the VisiCalc's clones.  

Perhaps the greatest impact of VisiCalc was the high probability that it was the motivating factor that moved IBM into the personal computer market.  With IBM's entry came Microsoft's success and the dominant computer platform still in operation today. 

All because a Professor at Harvard made a mistake.

-Professor Walter

Be careful what you read...

In 1988 two juniors at the University of Wisconsin in Madison started a small parody tabloid newspaper called The Onion.  In 1996 TheOnion.com was started and by 2000 The Onion had achieved national success, eventually being purchased by Comedy Central in 2000.  The Onion's deadpan delivery of fake news articles has been quite convincing, enough so that other news organizations sometimes mistake them for real, and report on them.  Some examples include...

• In 1998, Fred Phelps posted the Onion article "'98 Homosexual-Recruitment Drive Nearing Goal" on his "God Hates Fags" website as "proof" that gay people were indeed actively trying to "recruit" others.

• On June 7, 2002, Reuters reported that the Beijing Evening News republished, in the international news page of its June 3 edition, translated portions of "Congress Threatens To Leave D.C. Unless New Capitol Is Built" with a retractable dome.  The Evening News initially stood by the story, demanding proof of its falsehood. It later retracted the article, responding that "some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them with the aim of making money."

• In late March 2004, Deborah Norville of MSNBC presented as genuine an article titled "Study: 58 Percent Of U.S. Exercise Televised".

• In 2006, the Danish television station TV 2 posted a story on the gossip section of its website that took seriously the Onion article titled "Sean Penn Demands To Know What Asshole Took [email protected]".

• An article on Harry Potter inciting kids to practice witchcraft was believed by many to be real and was forwarded by many concerned Christians. Columnist Ellen Makkai and others who believe the Harry Potter books "recruit" children to Satanism have also been taken in by the article, using quotes from it as "evidence" for their claims.

• In September 2009, two Bangladeshi newspapers, Daily Manab Zamin and New Nation, published stories translated from The Onion claiming Neil Armstrong had held a news conference claiming the moon landing was an elaborate hoax. Neither realized The Onion was not a genuine news site. Both of the newspapers apologized to their readers for not checking the story.

• In October 2009, the Russian news site Russia.ru repackaged clips from the Onion video piece "New Anti-Smoking Ad Warns Teens 'It's Gay to Smoke'" as legitimate news.

The quality of The Onion's delivery was convincing enough that the republishing of fake news became real news.  So, be careful what you read, otherwise you will believe that the U.S. has deported Lou Dobbs for being an illegal alien.

-Professor Walter

Just because you are first, doesn't mean you win

In the mid-1990s the internet was rapidly entered every home in the USA.  At the core of this new connectivity was CompuServe and AOL, as well as a few other names such as Prodigy.  CompuServe began in 1969 and defined many of the conventions and concepts that we accept today in a connectivity model, however it was AOL that marketed it properly, and built the successful modern business model.  Seeing the possible end of their viability CompuServe decided to try a new, radical idea, with a new online service called WOW.  WOW had it's own application, windows only, and a unique look and feel.  The most innovative concept WOW presented was a flat rate of $17.95 a month for internet service.  This was in a time where the other providers, CompuServe included, charge hourly rates.  Current CompuServe customers did not take to it, but new customers did come on-board.  Despite it's pricing innovation WOW was not a success and on January 31, 1997 WOW shut down for good.  CompuServe, which was owned by H&R Block was sold to Worldcom, and immediatly to AOL, which was later sold to Time Warner.  At this time Time Warner is in discussions to split AOL off into it's own company.  

Despite CompuServe's early presence, and later innovations, they were overpowered by AOL which was better built to match the market of the time.

-Professor Walter