It was a chilly Fall morning in Montreal. A Saturday, the campus of McGill University was quiet. Students, not much different in 1914 from those of today, were sleeping off their Friday night activities. A cleaning woman entered the Physiology Laboratory to dust the glassware and wash the floors. As she turned a corner she… Continue reading George Mines and the Impermanence of Knowledge
Category: History
Relic from Computer History
Sitting on my mantle is a bronze letter M. This M has been in my family as long as I can remember. When I was growing up I didn’t think about where it had come from. I knew it stood for our family name of Mann. Later on I learned the story of the M… Continue reading Relic from Computer History
Prank Calling Kurt Gödel
Prank calling used to be a common, albeit annoying, form of entertainment back in the days when I grew up, before the invention of caller ID ruined it forever. Some prank calls were just simple and stupid jokes, such as the “do you have Prince Albert in a can?” call. On a slightly more elevated level… Continue reading Prank Calling Kurt Gödel
All the President’s Tapes
Richard Nixon’s downfall, a.k.a Watergate — a word whose suffix has become a part of the English language, has always fascinated me. In the summer of 1973, poised between graduation from college and the start of medical school, I spent an inordinate amount of time in front of the television watching the Senate Watergate hearings.… Continue reading All the President’s Tapes
Memories of Van Cliburn
In the long struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union, from the end of World War II until the end of the Soviet era in 1991, there were intense moments of high drama, like the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis, intermixed with moments when the icy hostility melted a bit. With… Continue reading Memories of Van Cliburn
Hacking at Dartmouth in 1969
It probably doesn’t say much about my character that when I first encountered the world of computers back in 1969 at Dartmouth College, my thoughts quickly turned to how I could use them for my own subversive goals. Yes, I was an early hacker. This was in the days before Microsoft, before Apple, even before… Continue reading Hacking at Dartmouth in 1969
Futurama Revisited
Fifty years ago my parents took me to the World’s Fair in New York. The year was 1964. I was twelve years old. It was a turbulent time in American history. The prior fall John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, initiating a long period of turmoil for the United States. But it was still the era… Continue reading Futurama Revisited
In the Catacombs of Paris
One night many years ago I was driving my son Kevin to a hockey tournament in Casper, Wyoming. It was winter and Denver had been hit by a snow storm. Although I had left Denver at a reasonable time, the traffic was very slow, so we didn’t arrive in Casper until very late. At about… Continue reading In the Catacombs of Paris