The Green Bag

Found this today during my morning scan of reddit.com.

From ed-thelen.org:

The Royal Precision Electronic Computer LGP-30 is a general purpose electronic digital computer. The phrase "general purpose" is intended to mean that the computer can solve to any required order of accuracy any mathematical problem expressable in numerical or logical terms. However, for any given computer there are always some problems beyond its practical reach because of the length of time required for their solution. By "electronic" is meant simply that the device uses vacuum tubes and germanium diodes. One way of classifying computers is by the terms analog and digital.

I also found these on reddit.

The first is something I've seen since I first had email. In fact, I think it went around by fax before we had email. The Story of Mel tells of a programmer who worked at the same company that produced the LGP-30 mentioned above:

Mel had written, in hexadecimal, the most popular computer program the company owned. It ran on the LGP-30 and played blackjack with potential customers at computer shows. Its effect was always dramatic. The LGP-30 booth was packed at every show, and the IBM salesmen stood around talking to each other. Whether or not this actually sold computers was a question we never discussed.

I suppose it would be interesting to actually read the LGP-30 manual, in light of Mel's tale. (Note: if you pick one of the above to read, try the second one.)

In Other News

The rest of today's roundup is by no means as interesting. We have articles from the BBC on the craziest road names in the US and a study that has determined that Americans know more about The Simpsons and American Idol than the First Amendment.

We also have a 1997 Billboard Magazine article on how much music has been lost, thrown away, or destroyed over the years. It's pretty pathetic, and sparks once again the argument for lifting copyright restrictions on out-of-print material and the legitimacy of p2p sharing of those materials.

Finally, for those of you who are into curling, and for those who are not, check out this amazing shot.

Uh, Hallie, I said it three times now: I found these all on reddit.com.