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getting to MIT...
author Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
date Thu, 31 Oct 2024 10:46:58 -0400
parents 491d1952263d
children 2b61f4d08893
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15:491d1952263d 16:2a14525c412e
1 Born December 1949.
2
1 After starting a degree at Oberlin in 1967, dropped out without 3 After starting a degree at Oberlin in 1967, dropped out without
2 completing 3rd year. Applied to Graduate School at MIT in 4 completing 3rd year.
3 ??, as a student in the under the supervision of Peter Solivitz.
4 The Media Lab was located in MIT's Building 20, just underneath the
5 Artificial Intelligence Lab, then under the direction of ??.
6 5
6 Out to BC with Katy in the fall of 1969, back to Cambridge and
7 Philadelphia to see respective families.
8
9 Had to get out of the US (draft), so that winter took over the old job
10 of his brother Arnold in an NRC high-energy Physics lab, living with
11 Katy and Arnold in an old farmhouse in a posh neighbourhood in Ottawa.
12 Very snowy winter, record-breaking, 18 feet?, long driveway and a lot
13 of shovelling, piled up to the 2nd floor. Involve with Ottawa QUaker
14 Meeting, a youth group, and a Mennonite youth group. Stayed through
15 the several years. March 1971, employer partnering with the Univ. of
16 Chicago Physics dept and LRL in Berkeley, went there, installed a
17 PDP-9 / 15, in a 40-ft Fruehof trailer, moved from Ottawa to Fermi
18 Lab, where Brian's office was. Programmed in machine language (see
19 below). He could 'program like crazy' in the air-conditioned trailer,
20 high-volume music in head-phones, but couldn't write English. Lived
21 in a hotel in Hyde ? park. They owned an Austin Mini bought for $100
22 in summer of 1970, working at a Quaker peace conference on Rhinestone
23 island in lake near Ottawa.
24
25 Katy went out to Berkeley that spring, where the experiment was to
26 take place. Married in June of 1971 at Pendle Hill / Swarthmore, then
27 back to Berkeley. Lived in a back yard house at Telegraph and Shannon
28 (?). Legally a Canadian resident notionally in US on a business trip.
29 Experiment ran, wrapped and went back to Ottawa. He wanted to stay in
30 US, they ended up (autumn 1971? 1972?) living with his parents in
31 Cambridge, where WCS was by then head of the new Center for the Study
32 of World Religions at Harvard.
33
34 Applied to Graduate School at MIT in EECS, started taking some
35 courses, but eventually MIT admin said be couldn't be admitted w/o a
36 UG degree.
37
38 "Course on compilers, I had written a compiler, I'd written a tiny OS
39 for a PDP-9 running a physics experiment". Pat Winston sat me down
40 and took me through the requirements for a CSEE degree, and decided
41 he'd satisfied them all. But he needed a Batchelor's thesis, so they
42 took a paper from a course he'd taken in the autumn, called "Comments
43 on Comments", and added some stuff, it got marked and accepted as his
44 thesis, so awarded the degree and could actually be enrolled as a
45 student under the supervision of Peter Szolovits. The Media Lab was
46 located in MIT's Building 20, just underneath the Artificial
47 Intelligence Lab, then under the direction of ??.
48