The attached photo shows a familiar character decorating the IMLAC computer (which will be on display at the party on December 6). Was this the same character who was popular at the Science Show? And appeared on CS jackets at one time? Do you have any stories or pictures to share?
Mark Christopher [ B.Sc. (Hon) 1983, M.Sc. 1986] shared this photo of the crest from the CS Jacket:
From the web, a reference to a Snoopy Calendar can be found. See http://image.farnik.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SnoopyCalendar:
The following example of a Snoopy Calendar is typical of FORTRAN IV computer programs of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Various Hacker tests (Joke sites) and the classic “Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal, They Use FORTRAN” article refer to a Snoopy Calendar from 1969 being pinned up on the wall of a ‘Real Programmer’. For nostalgic reasons this card deck can be run on the [IBM 1130] emulator on a PC.
The sample output as generated by the IBM 1130 emulator at the bottom of this page shows the arch typical calendar from 1969. Quote from the Real Programmers Don’t Use Pascal article “Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969”. [A copy of the article can be found here]
This particular piece of computer code has great (computer related) historical significance. The Snoopy Calendar was one of the most widely shared and implemented computer artifacts in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
I had rebuilt rhe imlac and decided to paint the cover. Ascii printed art was a cool thing back then so i printed snoopy kicking the ball on the la36 decwriter, cut it out to make a mask and painted to Imlac cover. Am I remembering correctly – PDP 11 purple?
Rob A – comp sci technician 1975-1986(?)
Snoopy was printed in ascii art on an LA36 or LA120 Decwriter, and cut out to make a mask. I then painted him on the front of the Imlac case in PdP 11 Purple if I recall correctly – rob andrews, computer sci dep technician 1975 – 1986(??)
The IMLAC, now that was an interesting beastie to program with two processors where the main processor would write a display list and the display processor would execute the display list. As a newbie, “interesting” == “frustrating”.
I believe the variety of equipment the UofR CS department had gave students tremendous opportunities to develop better program design and programming skills.