Milestones

[Eulalia]

26th July 1621 - Oxford University Botanic Garden was founded



The oldest in Britain, still occupying its original site, and still a major centre for plant sciences research
and conservation of endangered species - as well as being a beautiful, relaxing corner of the city,
beloved of J R R Tolkien and Philip Pullman, among many other writers, artists and scholars.

 

[windar]

Today is the 95th birthday of a living legend, Tony Bennett. Not only a great singer, but an accomplished painter.

This is his Sunday in Central Park

A selection of his works is found here https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tony-bennett-painter-art-party-495254

How is this old man with Alzheimer's celebrating his birthday? By performing with Lady Gaga at Radio City Music Hall tonight and Thursday.

I saw them about 5 years ago and he spent longer ion stage than she did (though her costumes were better).

 

[Gibbs505]

On August 5th 1914 the worlds first electric traffic signal is installed in Cleveland Ohio.

 

[phlebas]

30th birthday of the World Wide Web.

The World’s First Web Site

On August 6, 1991, without fanfare, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website while working at CERN, the huge particle physics lab in Switzerland.

www.history.com

I've been on it for about 26 of those years, and there is one website that I still visit that has been around for 23 of them, and no it isn't an erotic site.

 

[Cran]

30th birthday of the World Wide Web.

The World’s First Web Site

On August 6, 1991, without fanfare, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee published the first-ever website while working at CERN, the huge particle physics lab in Switzerland.

www.history.com

I've been on it for about 26 of those years, and there is one website that I still visit that has been around for 23 of them, and no it isn't an erotic site.

I always thought the World Wide Web was 1989. Maybe there is a subjective basis for what is the true 'start', but before the launch of the first web site in 1991, there probably wasn't much of a point.

 

[poem21045]

I always thought the World Wide Web was 1989. Maybe there is a subjective basis for what is the true 'start', but before the launch of the first web site in 1991, there probably wasn't much of a point.

I have a vague memory of communicating in chat rooms sometime in the 1980s. There were no images, of course, and it sometimes took minutes for a message to get through, but I remember how amazing it seemed that I could "talk" to someone in Europe without spending a lot of time (and money) using the phone.
I wish I had kept a record of those conversations!

 

[Gibbs505]

August 6th 1926, American swimmer Gertrude Ederle becomes the first women to swim the English Channel.

 

[Cran]

I have a vague memory of communicating in chat rooms sometime in the 1980s. There were no images, of course, and it sometimes took minutes for a message to get through, but I remember how amazing it seemed that I could "talk" to someone in Europe without spending a lot of time (and money) using the phone.
I wish I had kept a record of those conversations!

I think the World Wide Web specifically has to do with websites and pages, rather than direct communication between individual computers like that. I did have an awareness that computers were connected to phone lines back then, and could communicate to each other in that way, but I never knew much about it or how it worked. I think there may have even been early online games, Multi-User Dungeons? but I think they were run on local servers in colleges and universities, rather than long distance.
If the movie War Games is anything to go by, security would have been quite poor, maybe because not many people were useing computers in that way back then.

 

[Gibbs505]

August 7th, 1420 construction began on the dome of the Florence Cathedral.

 

[Darkprincess69]

If the movie War Games is anything to go by, security would have been quite poor, maybe because not many people were useing computers in that way back then.

Until relatively recently, even military computer systems had very poor security as the threat was seen as non-existent as only governments would have access to computers. At the time these systems were established, computers cost tens of millions and filled rooms the size of warehouses. Nobody could have ever forseen a time when a computer would become a home appliance, let alone something that would fit in the palm of your hand.

 

[Loxuru]

Until relatively recently, even military computer systems had very poor security as the threat was seen as non-existent as only governments would have access to computers. At the time these systems were established, computers cost tens of millions and filled rooms the size of warehouses. Nobody could have ever forseen a time when a computer would become a home appliance, let alone something that would fit in the palm of your hand.

Computers in the 1960's. The housing required a building permit. Assembly of the computer itself almost took a year, testing several months. I knew an engineer who was involved in such a project. He was required to remain 24/7 stand-by, the first months when it was operational. He was not allowed to take one day of holiday during two years (of course he was paid well for his job!).

 

[Eulalia]

Going back even further, the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park got so hot, the female operators worked in their undies - though they weren't ever photographed in that uniform. Carrying the data across to be processed was a popular fatigue for the guys!

 

[Loxuru]

Going back even further, the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park got so hot, the female operators worked in their undies - though they weren't ever photographed in that uniform. Carrying the data across to be processed was a popular fatigue for the guys!

View attachment 1042840

Pity, they don't make computers anymore like in the good old days!

Talking about 'operators' and computer handling. Some 30 years ago, when the home computer had started to conquer home and the workplace, I had an elderly boss, with obsolete, hierarchic views on workplace management. He insisted that manual computer work should be carried out by 'an operator', a clerk, and not by someone with an academic degree. He even got pissed off, when he saw us entering numbers in an Excel worksheet. We had to call 'an operator' for that kind of job, even when it was only some ten or twenty numbers to enter, in order to perform a quick calculation. We could not convince him that it took much longer time to find the operator, order him into our office, and explaining him what he had to do. He did not see the inefficiency of it.
(maybe we would have been more obedient, if the operator would have been a pretty female in her undies).

 

[Darkprincess69]

Going back even further, the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park got so hot, the female operators worked in their undies - though they weren't ever photographed in that uniform

Until now...

 

[Naraku]

On this date, 7 August 1782, George Washington ordered the creation of a Badge of Military Merit to be awarded to Continental Army soldiers:

"The General ever desirous to cherish virtuous ambition in his soldiers, as well as to foster and encourage every species of Military merit, directs that whenever any singularly meritorious action is performed, the author of it shall be permitted to wear on his facings over the left breast, the figure of a heart in purple cloth, or silk, edged with narrow lace or binding. Not only instances of unusual gallantry, but also of extraordinary fidelity and essential service in any way shall meet with a due reward. Before this favour can be conferred on any man, the particular fact, or facts, on which it is to be grounded must be set forth to the Commander in chief accompanied with certificates from the Commanding officers of the regiment and brigade to which the Candadate [sic] for reward belonged, or other incontestable proofs, and upon granting it, the name and regiment of the person with the action so certified are to be enrolled in the book of merit which will be kept at the orderly office. Men who have merited this last distinction to be suffered to pass all guards and sentinals which officers are permitted to do. The road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is thus open to all. This order is also to have retrospect to the earliest stages of the war, and to be considered as a permanent one."



The badge was the only award of merit in the Continental Army and was only awarded three times. After the Revolution, the award fell into disuse and was largely forgotten.

Following WWI, it was realized that there was a serious lack of medals available to US soldiers, so the Army, in 1932, re-instituted the medal “awarded to persons who, while serving in the Army of the United States, perform any singularly meritorious act of extraordinary fidelity or essential service.” Additionally, "A wound, which necessitates treatment by a medical officer, and which is received in action with an enemy of the United States, or as a result of an act of such enemy, may…be construed as resulting from a singularly meritorious act of essential service.”

With the outbreak of WWII, from 1942 onward, the award, commonly known as "The Purple Heart" has been exclusively awarded to those killed or wounded in action.



The new version was metal and included a bust of its creator.

It is estimated that, since 1942, 1.8 million have been awarded.

The Purple Heart – The Story of America’s Oldest Military Decoration and Some Soldier Recipients – The Campaign for the National Museum of the United States Army

armyhistory.org

 

[windar]

Computers in the 1960's. The housing required a building permit. Assembly of the computer itself almost took a year, testing several months. I knew an engineer who was involved in such a project. He was required to remain 24/7 stand-by, the first months when it was operational. He was not allowed to take one day of holiday during two years (of course he was paid well for his job!).

I wrote my thesis on a terminal connected to a mainframe several miles away over the phone lines. Crashes were common, so you had to remember to save every 15 min or so. There were no Greek letter fonts. They had to be entered manually with an IBM selectric typewriter...

 

[Darkprincess69]

I wrote my thesis on a terminal connected to a mainframe several miles away over the phone lines. Crashes were common, so you had to remember to save every 15 min or so. There were no Greek letter fonts. They had to be entered manually with an IBM selectric typewriter...

My first experience of the internet (which wasn't even called that in those days, being simply referred to as "going online") was using bulletin boards back in the late 1980s, using an Atari ST and a 300 baud modem (Anyone who thinks they have slow internet today has NO idea what they're talking about until they suffer a 300 baud connection!)

I remember first using the WWW in around '92 on Compuserve with the Spry Mosaic browser, and that was like something out of a scifi movie compared to the old BBS, but still a grimly primitive experience compared to modern Firefox (But at least you never needed a hardware firewall and a whole suite of ad-blockers back then) but the overall web experience suddenly got a quantum leap in user friendliness when I switched over to Demon Internet using the Turnpike software with Trumpet Winsock (Who in here remembers those?) and the Netscape browser (which is essentially what Firefox was based on)

It occurs to me that I've been online in one form or another for longer than some of the members in here have been alive

 

[Loxuru]

I wrote my thesis on a terminal connected to a mainframe several miles away over the phone lines. Crashes were common, so you had to remember to save every 15 min or so. There were no Greek letter fonts. They had to be entered manually with an IBM selectric typewriter...

My first use of internet was over the phone line, some 20 years ago. Going online meant : dialing a number, and waiting for connection.

Downloading a simple pic took up to 45 minutes!

 

[Hugin&Munin]

That's correct. My first computer, bought at the end of 1989, had an 80386 chip, 286 kB of RAM, a floppy disk drive and a hard drive with an incredible 2.86 MB capacity and the MS-DOS operating system. Plus a 12 '' screen. At that time people tried to program in Basic, which strangely enough mostly succeeded. I only bought a telephone modem later because we didn't even have a telephone connection in the former GDR. There were only 3 telephones in the entire village.

 

[Darkprincess69]

That's correct. My first computer, bought at the end of 1989, had an 80386 chip, 286 kB of RAM, a floppy disk drive and a hard drive with an incredible 2.86 MB capacity and the MS-DOS operating system. Plus a 12 '' screen. At that time people tried to program in Basic, which strangely enough mostly succeeded. I only bought a telephone modem later because we didn't even have a telephone connection in the former GDR. There were only 3 telephones in the entire village.

My computer history goes like this;
Sinclair ZX Spectrum (1983 - 1988)
Atari St (1988 - 1992)
PC (1992...)
386DX 40MHz / 4Mb RAM / DOS6.22& Windows 3.1 (1992 - 1997)
486DX2 66MHz / 8Mb RAM /DOS6.22& Windows 3.1 (1997 - 1999) Windows 95 (1999-2001)
Pentium 120MHz / 8Mb RAM / Windows 98SE (2001-2002) upgraded to 16Mb RAM in early 2002
Pentium 233MMX / 32Mb RAM / Windows 98SE (2002-2003) upgraded to 64Mb in 2003
Pentium II 400MHz / 32Mb RAM / Windows 98SE (2003-2005) upgraded to 64Mb in 2004 then to 128Mb in early 2005
AthlonXP 3500+ / 256Mb / Windows XP (2005-2008) upgrade to 512Mb in 2007
Pentium 4 2.6GHz / 512Mb / Windows XP (2008 - 2013) upgraded to 1Gb and OS switched to Linux Mint in late 2009
AMD FX6300 / 8Gb RAM / Linux Mint (2013 - ) This is my current system

As you can see, nearly all of this stuff was old by the time I was using it, because my mum's bf is a computer hardware tech (among many other things) so pretty much all my PCs have been his hand-me-downs, often got for little or no money

The AthlonXP was only replaced by the Pentium4 (which in many ways is an inferior system) because I was getting into 3D and the software required a CPU with SSE2 which the Athlon didn't have - otherwise I would have stuck with the Athlon as it was faster and more stable (until I ditched Windows for Linux, after which it became rock solid, though slightly slower)

In addition I've had several laptops (the main one being an Acer Aspire V5551) which I don't use all that much (mainly as an emergency backup if the main one goes down) and a offline Windows 7 PC which I use for my Daz3D work, but that one is currently not working (waiting for replacement parts), which is why I haven't been posting 3D renders in here lately