Deadheads and Propeller Heads

Abstract

The year is 1968, and you’ve been invited to watch a demonstration of a new computer system as part of the Fall Joint Computer Conference in the San Francisco Convention Centre. If you are a corporate-type you’re wearing a dark suit, button-down shirt and narrow tie (think Men in Black). If you’re a university-type, you’re wearing flairs and a tie-dye shirt or a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. There aren’t many women in the audience and, shock-horror, people are smoking…inside! If you use a computer at work you enter your program and data via a noisy teletype or onto punch cards, then wait a few hours, or even over night, for a printout of your results.