Mercurial > hg > BCS
changeset 16:2a14525c412e
getting to MIT...
author | Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk> |
---|---|
date | Thu, 31 Oct 2024 10:46:58 -0400 |
parents | 491d1952263d |
children | 2b61f4d08893 |
files | CR_preface.txt |
diffstat | 1 files changed, 46 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) [+] |
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--- a/CR_preface.txt Thu Oct 31 09:51:45 2024 -0400 +++ b/CR_preface.txt Thu Oct 31 10:46:58 2024 -0400 @@ -1,6 +1,48 @@ +Born December 1949. + After starting a degree at Oberlin in 1967, dropped out without -completing 3rd year. Applied to Graduate School at MIT in -??, as a student in the under the supervision of Peter Solivitz. -The Media Lab was located in MIT's Building 20, just underneath the -Artificial Intelligence Lab, then under the direction of ??. +completing 3rd year. + +Out to BC with Katy in the fall of 1969, back to Cambridge and +Philadelphia to see respective families. + +Had to get out of the US (draft), so that winter took over the old job +of his brother Arnold in an NRC high-energy Physics lab, living with +Katy and Arnold in an old farmhouse in a posh neighbourhood in Ottawa. +Very snowy winter, record-breaking, 18 feet?, long driveway and a lot +of shovelling, piled up to the 2nd floor. Involve with Ottawa QUaker +Meeting, a youth group, and a Mennonite youth group. Stayed through +the several years. March 1971, employer partnering with the Univ. of +Chicago Physics dept and LRL in Berkeley, went there, installed a +PDP-9 / 15, in a 40-ft Fruehof trailer, moved from Ottawa to Fermi +Lab, where Brian's office was. Programmed in machine language (see +below). He could 'program like crazy' in the air-conditioned trailer, +high-volume music in head-phones, but couldn't write English. Lived +in a hotel in Hyde ? park. They owned an Austin Mini bought for $100 +in summer of 1970, working at a Quaker peace conference on Rhinestone +island in lake near Ottawa. +Katy went out to Berkeley that spring, where the experiment was to +take place. Married in June of 1971 at Pendle Hill / Swarthmore, then +back to Berkeley. Lived in a back yard house at Telegraph and Shannon +(?). Legally a Canadian resident notionally in US on a business trip. +Experiment ran, wrapped and went back to Ottawa. He wanted to stay in +US, they ended up (autumn 1971? 1972?) living with his parents in +Cambridge, where WCS was by then head of the new Center for the Study +of World Religions at Harvard. + +Applied to Graduate School at MIT in EECS, started taking some +courses, but eventually MIT admin said be couldn't be admitted w/o a +UG degree. + +"Course on compilers, I had written a compiler, I'd written a tiny OS +for a PDP-9 running a physics experiment". Pat Winston sat me down +and took me through the requirements for a CSEE degree, and decided +he'd satisfied them all. But he needed a Batchelor's thesis, so they +took a paper from a course he'd taken in the autumn, called "Comments +on Comments", and added some stuff, it got marked and accepted as his +thesis, so awarded the degree and could actually be enrolled as a +student under the supervision of Peter Szolovits. The Media Lab was +located in MIT's Building 20, just underneath the Artificial +Intelligence Lab, then under the direction of ??. +