December 17, 2004
New Gear
Sent to me by a former student (thanks Annie!) Putatively from a 1954 Popular Mechanics. The caption is priceless . . .
Update: The more I look at this the more I wonder if it’s a hoax. The caption is just a little too priceless (or precious). “With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.” And the suit looks like he’s superimposed—maybe. Oh, and that wheel. Opinions?
Posted by mgk at December 17, 2004 09:46 PMGiven that FORTRAN was not even widely available until 1957, this strikes me as a little unlikely.
But yeah, I'd say the wheel is the real giveaway.
Posted by: Orin at December 17, 2004 10:36 PM | Link to Commenthttp://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
But fun!
Posted by: Ross at December 17, 2004 11:38 PM | Link to CommentThe best part about it is actually the typography in the caption--very vintage looking and convincing, as is the multi-sentence format.
Posted by: MGK at December 17, 2004 11:51 PM | Link to CommentIt's a hoax, an image that was circulated around the Internet after a clever posting in a FARK photoshop contest--Popular Mechanics addresses the issue here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/computers/2004/12/hoax/
To put on my textual studies beanie for a moment, and look only at the caption: Even if you did convince me that Fortran (invented in 1954 at IBM but not released commercially until years later) was going to be mentioned in a popular magazine article in 1954, I'd a lot of trouble believing that it would be typeset as "Fortran" rather than "FORTRAN," as it consistently was for decades afterwards and often still is. Also, I would think that "teletype" would be at least be capitalized, and maybe used with another word, as the Teletype Corporation was well-known in those days at it would be obvious that "Teletype" was a trade name.
Posted by: nick at December 18, 2004 01:09 AM | Link to CommentI smelled a rat after the solecism of "how a 'home computer' could look like" vs "what a 'home computer' could look like".
Posted by: Ross at December 18, 2004 09:00 AM | Link to CommentThe teletype in the foreground is OBVIOUSLY too new -- it's 1970's vintage. The model 33 (introduced ten years after this picture) still had roll-feed paper, cylindrical keys, and no caps.
Posted by: Mark Bernstein at December 18, 2004 11:21 AM | Link to CommentAnd the socks the "scientist" is wearing use a stitch that was not widely known outside of East Timor until the early nineties.
This one resurfaced a little while ago.
The first tip-off for me was that the caption text was so loosely written.
Two of the four sentences are subordinate clauses, there are no hyphens in "not yet invented," and there's a split infinitive ("to actually work").
As for the sock sitches... is this the latest in digital image analysis -- the ability to see through the caption text that has been superimposed upon Clarence the "It's a Wonderful Life" Angel's feet?
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at December 20, 2004 07:33 AM | Link to CommentAnd the socks the "scientist" is wearing use a stitch that was not widely known outside of East Timor until the early nineties.
LOLOL.
Posted by: Aaron at December 23, 2004 01:14 PM | Link to Comment