From: pasky@spdcc.com (Robert Pasky)
Subject: Re: seeking info on Imlac Composer
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 10:23:51 GMT


In article <don't-know-the-number-'cause-i'm-including-this-manually>
anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug20.123227.20050@cs.cornell.edu>
>davis@cs.cornell.edu (Jim Davis) gets my vote for the
>nuttiest cross-posting list of the year.  He or she writes:
	Last I saw of him, Jim was a he, ponytail and all.

>>Newsgroups: rec.sport.volleyball,soc.motss,comp.periphs.printers,comp.fonts
>
>Now is that way cool or what?  Since this comes from a
>Computer Science department (Cornell), I wonder if it's a
>newsgroup cross-posting AI gone awry.
	The r.s.v I don't know about, but it turns out there are two
	Imlac alumni who are soc.motss & comp.fonts readers/posters.
	(comp.fonts seems to have more than its share of motsseurs.
	It's all those line-layout queens :-) )

>>I post on behalf of a firm trying to defeat an attempt to
>>patent software horizontal scrolling!  I seek information on
>>a late 70's system called the Imlac Composer.
>
>I mean, spike that gay scroller sideways over the net in
>tuneful boldface, honey!  Queerest thing I ever heard of.
>
>(Note well, Nelson, only software can be queer without being
> gay, lesbian, or bi. :-)
>
>>(Imlac, a company in Newton, made a strange minicomputer
>>whose archicture resembled the PDP-8 plus a vector graphics
>>display.
>
>I got it, I got it!  Composer was a spin-off from sideways
>scrolling infant formula, the company's main business.
	You're not the first to make that connection. "Imlac" was *not*
	an acronym, so the company literature pointed out, but the
	name of a character in a work by, er, Camus?. Can't remember.

>>The main product, the Composer, was an early electronic
>>typesetting machine
	More accurately a front-end system. It had *BIG* *HARD* *DISKS*
	that held all of 10Mbytes (double density!) and the program took
	up the better part of 24k (words) of core -- you know, those
	little ferrite donuts strung on wire mesh.

>Or plastic pouches for baby bottles.
	Well, I cut my programming teeth there, does that count?

>-- 
>Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin

ObMotss: 

A few months after I got my first "real" software eng. job at Imlac,
I met Ken (the two aren't particularly related except by proximity
in time). For the first few years -- the dating years -- each of us
was living at home.

Since Ken and I started going to all the company functions,
Christmas parties, etc., it must have been fairly obvious that
the two of us were a couple. Though the 'g' word was never
spoken, it was always "You and Ken are coming to the <whatever>,
aren't you?"

M., the department secretary was a 60ish woman who saw herself as
social director/mother to "her children," the mostly
just-out-of-college programmers. (How many secretaries go
around dusting and wiping the terminal screens every morning?)

This particular get together, I think it was a Christmas party,
was being given by M. at her apartment -- gold tableware, crystal
glasses, et al. Sometime during the usual mix of food and idle
chatter, M. comes over and, just between the three of us, says
that Ken and I were welcome to use her apartment anytime for our
rendez-vousing! [yes, it's a word. I looked it up.]

After gagging and turning three shades of red, I politely thanked
her and told her (which she must have already known) that we had
already moved into an apartment together. Where was she three
years ago when we had only the back seat of the car?

-- Bob
P.S. Sorry for dragging this thread on longer than it deserves.
     I've been on vacation and just got around to reading motss.
Newsgroups: soc.motss