WINTER/SPRING 1992 Volume 4 No. 2-3

"Any society that is alive is a society with a

history."

Vaclav Havel

WELCOME TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD

OF COMPUTERS vs

PLANT CLOSURES GM STYLE

4 Years of Amateur Computerist

(Editor's Note: With this issue the Amateur Computerist

begins its 5th year of publication. Also, we are includ-

ing in this issue, a complete index of back issues.)

February 11, 1988 was the first issue of the Amateur

Computerist. The issue was "dedicated to the Flint Sit

Down pioneers on the victory of their battle to win

industrial unionism 51 years ago." ("Dedication", vol I,

no 1)

In our first issue, we wrote: "There was an effort by

administrators of the UAW-Ford program at the Dear-

born Engine Plant to kill interest in computers and

computer programming. We want to keep interest alive

because computers are the future." ("Introduction", vol

I, no 1)

One UAW pioneer, Jack Palmer, in summing up the

heritage the sitdowners were passing on, wrote: "Each

generation has to solve its own problems. The sit-down

generation solved the problem of organization. The

postwar (W.W.II-ed) generation solved the problem of

pensions and inflation. Not entirely, but a good start was

begun. The present generation is faced with the

Table of Contents

Computers Vs Plant Closures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Amateur Computerist Index (5 year). . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Problem Corner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Union Forever. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Letter To The Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Letters to Amateur Computerist.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Letter to Editor of Utne Reader. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Review from the ìPERIPHERAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Tribute: Modern Computer Pioneer.. . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Interview with Staff Member.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

One Line Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Computers For The People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Pascal Program.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

greatest problems of all. They are Automation, Peace

and Politics." (from the Searchlight, newspaper of

UAW Local 659, Flint, MI, April 21, 1960, p.2, quoted

in "Dedication", vol. I, no. 1). The Amateur

Computerist is an effort to carry forward the torch

passed on by the sitdowners - the need to solve the

problem of automation.

The welcoming of this newsletter by Floyd

Hoke-Miller, a pioneer of the Flint Sitdown Strike,

demonstrated that there was a continuum between the

Sitdown generation and the current generation. In his

article, "Dawn of A New Era," Floyd wrote, "From the

Great Wall to the Great Pyramid, from the hieroglyph-

ics to the screen of the computer, mankind is still

progressing. So make the new born science, that has

given us the computer for the amateur and not as a

prerogative of the professional to be shrouded in

secrecy from humanity, the choice of the individual, not

an election of a minority. (vol I, No. 1)

But what has happened in the past 4 years? Has

automation in the auto industry made any headway?

Has the use of computers and computer education gone

forward?

In February, 1992, GM announced plans for massive

layoffs and plant closings in North America. The high

price of automobiles in the U.S. shows that the problem

of automation in the auto industry has not been solved.

Instead there have been disincentives to the introduc-

tion of new technology in the U. S. auto industry

similar to those that led to the unraveling of the Soviet

Union's so called "command economy." A recent article

in Fortune Magazine (vol. 125, no. 1 January 13, 1992

"Can GM Remodel Itself?" by Alex Taylor III) de-

scribes GM's inability to utilize new technology. "For

example," Taylor writes, "GM put $77 billion into new

plants and equipment to reduce labor costs....Some

robots it acquired in the mid-1980s stand unused today.

The highly automated equipment never delivered the

promised savings because GM did not train workers

properly to use it, and... failed to design new models for

easy robot assembly."(pg 34)

As articles in previous issues of the Amateur

Computerist have shown, investment in the U.S. auto

industry in the 1980's was not in automation that would

result in less labor being needed to produce an automo-

bile. No effort was made to reduce the price of a car so

1

more people could afford to buy cars.

Instead, U.S. autos were downsized and redesigned,

and some of auto company profits were used to set up

so called "joint" labor-management labor relations

programs or to invest in other companies or abroad.

(See for example, "Labor Relations Hoax", vol 2, no. 4)

U.S. auto companies instituted a plethora of cost cutting

initiatives which removed the incentive for investment

in new technology. For a company to invest in modern

technology, labor saving devices must cost less than the

labor they are replacing. (See "Shorter Hours Are

Needed....", vol 2, no. 3)

Record profits had been reported in the industry in the

1980s. Yet Wall Street analysts like Maryann Keller

sharply criticized new technology being introduced into

companies like GM. Instead GM adopted the model of

Japanese labor relations introduced into Toyota in the

1950s. This model had been developed based on re-

search that GM conducted during a 1947 labor relations

experiment which they called the "My Jobs Contest."

(See "When Will Their Walls Come Tumbling Down,"

vol 3 no. 1) Once again in the 1980s and now in the

1990s such labor relations schemes are being heralded

as the savior of a "failing General Motors" and as a

model for the rest of U.S. industry. For example, the

design for GM's new Saturn plant was premised on

GM's commitment to making labor more intense rather

than introducing labor saving technology. A spokesper-

son explains Saturn's philosophy:

"In Saturn, we believe that to automate... does not

make good business sense. When you consider the

capital investment required for robots or other auto-

mated systems, you have to look at the variable labor

cost as an alternative. Automated equipment is limited!

On the other hand, people, if properly trained, can and

have taken costs out of an operation when given the

opportunity." (Joseph F. Malotke, Labor Law Journal,

Aug. 1985,p. 568)

GM's Saturn model is a reversal of lessons learned

over the past 50 years about the social benefits of new

machinery. As Howard Foster, a UAW pioneer in Flint,

describing the benefits of modern machinery, explained:

"When mass production methods were introduced in the

automobile industry, the price of cars went down. This

was because the labor time on each car was greatly

reduced. Yet we auto workers got higher wages through

our union." (See "Technology: To Develop or Stagnate,"

vol 1, no 2)

In opposition to similar labor relations experiments,

G.M. auto workers in Flint, MI, in 1947-48, success-

fully campaigned for wage increases that would match

inflation. Their battle against GM management and the

UAW International Union officialdom who opposed

such wage increases, was victorious. Thus pattern

setting wage increases known as C.O.L.A. (Cost of

Living Adjustment) and A.I.F. (Annual Improvement

Factor) were introduced into the UAW-GM contract in

1948. These wage increases made it profitable for GM

to introduce new machinery and update production

methods in GM plants.(See "Technology, to Develop or

Stagnate" vol I, no 2)

By 1950, contract language describing the A.I.F.

affirmed the social desirability of using new technology

to decrease the labor needed to produce an auto. The

1950 GM-UAW contract granted workers a wage

increase based "on technological progress, better tools,

methods, processes and equipment and a cooperative

attitude on the part of all parties in such progress. It

further recognizes the principle that to produce more

with the same amount of human effort is a sound and

economic and social objective." (See "Upcoming

Elections and Computers," vol. I, no.3)

Union-management jointness experiments of the

1980s are a violation of the principle "that to produce

more is a sound and economical objective." The UAW-

Ford National Development and Training Center

founded in 1982, and similar experiments at GM and

Chrysler, are labor relations experiments. Their aim is

to "promote training, retraining and development

activities," instead of "technological progress, better

tools, processes and equipment," (See "Labor Relations

Hoax," vol. 2, no. 4)

Because their aim is not education in high technology,

there was a battle at the Dearborn Engine Plant over the

cancellation of computer programming classes. UAW

members wrote: "How can UAW members be trained

in high technology by cutting computer classes out... we

sent letters everywhere. We are tired of being denied

benefits we're entitled to. We are tired of being shuffled

from one person to another to cover up who we're

fighting...we can't sit back and let happen at the Rouge

what has happened at GM - the wholesale closing of

plants...WE NEED AN INVESTIGATION INTO

WHAT IS GOING ON IN THE UAW FORD PRO-

GRAM at the Dearborn Engine Plant. (See "When Will

Their Walls Come Down, vol. 3, no. 1)

In a subsequent issue of the Amateur Computerist,

Floyd Hoke-Miller contributed articles explaining why

there is more thinking needed among those who do the

work of the society. "We, as the working class," he

wrote, "are the `low men on the totem pole' or like

Atlas `bearing the world on our shoulders'." (See "Pass

the Profits, Please," vol. 1, no. 2) He championed the

need for fewer hours of work to have any benefit from

new technology and reminded workers that they are still

working at least the same 8 hour day "gained by a hard

struggle of the transportation unions prior to WWI."

(Ibid., See also "Shorter Hours are Needed for Comput-

ers to Benefit Labor", vol 2, no. 3)

The problem of the 1990s is similar to the problem of

the early post W.W.II years - how to utilize significant

new technological developments to make life better for

the people of the society. Large scale industry needs to

be under some form of social control and strict regula-

tion for technological progress to serve the society.

The birth of the personal computer in 1974 and its

development and evolution into the 1990s has put the

promise of a better world on the horizon for people in

2

the U.S. and around the world. At the computer classes

at the Ford Rouge Plant, before the programming

classes were cancelled to make way for the labor

relations experiments that replaced them, one auto

worker wrote: "Welcome to the Wonderful World of the

Computer." The cancelling of those classes in 1987 has

made clear that that wonderful world cannot be gained

by going backward to ever more labor intensive produc-

tion, (i.e. speed up), less and less manufacturing capac-

ity (shortages), and ever increasing prices. This is the

economic program that U.S. corporations and the U.S.

government are promoting in Eastern Europe and the

result is massive human hardship and economic disloca-

tion. This economic program will result in the same

economic dislocations in the U.S. economy as are

currently plaguing Eastern Europe.

Thus once again, as in the immediate post WWII

period, there are serious economic problems in the U.S.

and the world. There is a need to have auto workers and

others, particularly those who work in large scale

industry, consider and debate the economic problems of

our times. History has shown that this is the only way

that solutions which lead the society forward can be

found. Prohibitions against workers writing in their

local union newspapers to prevent public criticisms of

trade union officials or policies, as exist in the UAW,

need to be overturned. (See for example Convention

Proceedings of 1951 UAW Convention and UAW

Public Review decisions like No. 888, Bier vs Local

Union 2500 Executive Board, UAW, and No. 238, Plyer

vs Local 599 (1961))

As Carl Johnson, a UAW pioneer explained, auto

workers are capable of solving the problems facing

them if they have access to organs of free discussion.

Johnson wrote: "If local union publications...provide the

ranks with a freer discussion which alone can prepare

the ranks for the fight which is sure to be plenty tough,

then we need not worry too much, for American labor

proved in '36 and '37 that it can move fast and furiously

when it knows where to go."(Carl Johnson, "Only More

Democracy Can Save Democracy," Feb. 1, 1945, The

Searchlight, UAW Local 659, Flint)

Describing the important role to be filled by an

uncensored labor press, he wrote,"If the Labor press

does not try to give Labor the whole truth, where will

Labor get it? This, of course, raises the question: Who

is right about Labor's destiny? Certainly we can't rely on

the capitalist press to tell us, for it is obvious that their

interest is the opposite of Labor's interest. But who,

from the ranks of Labor? Let them all speak -- that's

what Free Speech was intended for! Let them all present

their view in a forum. From that the reader will have a

fair chance to decide." (Ibid., Oct. 29, 1949)

Once again, in 1992, there is the need for access to the

uncensored local union newspaper. This tradition was

pioneered by auto workers in Flint in the 1940's to carry

on the militant Spirit of the Sit Down Strike, the "Spirit

of '37." This press made it possible for those who do the

work of the society to be able to analyze the current

problems and debate the way forward. This uncensored

labor press no longer exists, but computer bulletin

boards across the U.S. and the world are providing

access to uncensored discussion so the momentous

problems of our times can be debated and analyzed. On

computer bulletin boards like Usenet News, MNET

(Ann Arbor, MI), etc., such discussion is now taking

place. (We plan to include articles describing this

important development in future issues.) Also, there is

a need for education, independent of large corporate

employers like GM or Ford, and for a press to express

a working class voice, independent, as well, of any

censorship from union officials. To this end the Ama-

teur Computerist is dedicated and we need and wel-

come your participation in helping to create this inde-

pendent voice so as to be able to gain the fruits of the

computer revolution for those who do the work of this

society.

Floyd Hoke-Miller, a pioneer of the Flint Sitdown

Strike wrote the following poem as part of his commit-

ment to the need for an uncensored press:

Voice of the Chevrolet Worker

by Floyd Hoke-Miller

It matters not what bossman say,

How much they rant and rave

Their Sunday suit and higher pay,

Do not exclude the grave.

***

The wage-slaves toil at their behest,

Producing only by their word

There's no denying one request,

Their voices must be heard.

***

They know quite well that banker men,

And owners of the tools

Connive with pie cards when they can,

To treat the laborers as fools.

***

Their language may not stand all

tests,

But let them have their say

For on their backs the burden rests,

They MAKE the Chevrolet.

AMATEUR COMPUTERIST INDEX

(5 Year)

Volume 1 No 1 Feb. 1988

INTRODUCTION

DAWN OF A NEW ERA

DEDICATION

THE WORLD OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS

TRY THIS (GRAPHICS)

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO PROGRAMMERS

THE FIRST PROGRAMMER (PICTURE)

3

WHY LEARN PROGRAMMING

COVER OF PERSONAL COMPUTING (PICTURE)

COMMODORE TIPS & TRICKS

Volume 1 No 2 Jun. 1988

THE BIG MACHINE

PASS THE PROFITS, PLEASE

TECHNOLOGY: TO DEVELOP OR STAGNATE?

CARTOON BY "DOC" WILSON

SAMPLE BASIC GRAPHIC PROGRAM

TRY THIS (IBM)

THE WORLD OF TELECOM... CORRECTIONS

GERMAN VOCABULARY HELPER

PROGRAMMING IN BASIC OR C?

CONFIGURING YOUR SYSTEM

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Volume 1 No 3 Oct 1988

LETTER PUBLISHED IN RADIO-ELECTRONICS

RESPONSES FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

EDITORIAL

SAVIOR IN WAITING

HOW TO USE THE MERIT NETWORK?

VIRTUAL DRIVES & BATCH FILES

TRY THIS (EQUATION OF A STRAIGHT LINE)

AS I WAS SAYING... (WHY COMPUTERISM?)

COMPUTERS AND FREE SPEECH

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

PLANT LIFE (PICTURE)

Volume 2 No 1 Jan. 1989

RETURN TO SANITY WITH THE AMATEUR & THE PRO

LETTERS FROM READERS

PROBLEM CORNER

TRY THIS FOR IBM (INPUT NUMBER FROM 20-150)

SYSTEM DIAGRAM FOR QUADRAPHONIC SOUND SYS.)

RESPONSE TO OCTOBER EDITORIAL

CARTOONS (COMMODORE COUNTY)

WELCOME TO COMMODORE COUNTY USA

COMPUTER HACKING, A CRIME?

IBM KEY ASSIGNMENTS USING THE "PROMPT"...

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS... PART I

Volume 2 No 2 Apr. 1989

WHY LEARN TO PROGRAM? (DISCUSSION)

LETTERS

TRY THIS (MESSAGE)

"SE Q" FOR IBM

AS I WAS SAYING (JOBS: HOURS AND SENSE...)

OVERTIME AND UNDER PAY

MAY DAY

SAMPLE BATCH FILE

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS PART II

Volume 2 No 3 Summer 1989

IMPACT OF COMPUTERS ON SOCIETY: A DEBATE

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

COCO CORNER (GRAIL QUEST-PIP)

COMMODORE COUNTY USA (CURSOR COLOR CHANGE)

OUT OF THE HEART OF THE ABACUS...

HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER PART III

Volume 2 No 4 Fall 1989

LETTER FROM PROSECUTOR

OPPOSING VIEWPOINT...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

WANTED ALIVE (AD)

COCO CORNER (EQUATION GRAPHING PRG.)

TRUE HEROES

TRIGONOMETRY LESSON FOR IBM

HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER PART IV

Volume 3 No 1 Winter 1989

LETTER FROM EDITOR OF DETROIT NEWS

DON'T REPLICATE UAW-FORD SCHOOL

LETTERS TO EDITOR

COMMODORE COUNTY USA (CARTOON)

THE SPIRIT OF BABBAGE

COCO CORNER (POKE & PEAK)

CAD/CAM/CIM

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS PART V

Volume 3 No 2 Spring 1990

THE LABORER, YES

FLOYD HOKE-MILLER (1898-1990)

THE PICKET

IN HONOR OF LABOR'S POET LAUREATE

COMPUTER EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT REG.

LETTER FROM SUPERINTENDENT

OPEN LETTER TO SUPERINTENDENT BEMIS

LETTER TO GOVERNOR

COMMODORE COUNTY U.S.A. (SHIMMERING TEXT)

C64 MUSIC DIGITIZER

IBM LABEL PROGRAM

COCO CORNER (CALORIE COUNTER)

BULLETIN BOARD NUMBERS

Volume 3 No 3 Fall 1990

WHAT CRITICISMS HAVE YOU OF THE A.C.?

TIPS AND TRICKS (IBM BOOT PROBLEM)

LETTER TO EDITOR

EDITORIAL

A COMMON MAN OF GREATNESS

COCO CORNER (CORRECTION)

EXCERPTS FORM BBS (DISCUSSION-TRADE UNIONS)

COMMODORE C64 RESET SWITCH

DIAGRAM #1 (FOR RESET SWITCH)

Volume 3 No 4 Winter 1990

HATS OFF TO PATRIOT

AMATEURS ARE NEEDED MORE THAN EVER

COCO CORNER (MORE POKE & PEAK)

BRINGING AUTOMATION HOME

COMPUTER BBS DISCUSSION ON THE WAR

COMPUTERS FOR THE PEOPLE: PART I

Volume 4 No 1 Fall 1991

COMPUTERS FOR THE PEOPLE - A HISTORY PART II

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOOD NETWORKING

TRY THIS PROGRAM (GRAPHIC "HI")

THE USSR AND THE COMPUTER

COMMAND LINE CALCULATOR

THE QUESTION OF CENSORSHIP

PROBLEM CORNER

I have a problem and I'm hoping that somebody can

help. I upgraded my XT compatible by installing high

density floppy drives and they work just fine, but when

I put a 360K or a 720K diskette in, it will not read it

unless I reboot. After using the low density diskettes I

must reboot again before I can use high density dis-

kettes. Is there something I can do to make the com-

puter read the floppy whatever the diskette is?

PUZZLED

4

UNION FOREVER

by Floyd Hoke-Miller

Tho' politicians come and politicians go

Let Unionism go on forever.

But vote for him whose records show

He kept the workers' cause his first endeavor.

Now has he fought for higher wages

And the thirty-hour week;

The dream through the ages

Of the lowly and the weak.

Because machines are taking powers

That were our jobs of yesterday

But it's the same old tedious hours

With the same old lousy pay.

Letter To The Editor

(Editor's Note: The following letter by a staff member

of this newsletter was recently published in the Colum-

bia Daily Spectator in N.Y.C.)

To the Editor,

Probably unbeknownst to many students, the rally and

entering of Low Memorial Library on Tuesday, Febru-

ary 11, 1992, was in the tradition of a glorious victory

that took place 55 years ago. On February 11, 1937,

General Motors auto workers in Flint, Michigan

emerged from the factories they had occupied, victori-

ous. As part of a long series of strikes nationwide, this

forty-four day long Sit-Down Strike won GM auto

workers the right to have the United Auto Workers

(UAW) represent them as their bargaining agent to

GM. This was the beginning of the official recognition

of the UAW by auto manufacturers.

The sit-in at Columbia to achieve more of a student

voice in University decision making is a poignant

reminder of the similar fight that occurred 55 years ago

in Flint, Michigan. Just as those workers fought the

auto industry for a voice, the students of Columbia are

likewise fighting to have their voice heard. By learning

more of the tradition behind the battle for democratic

rights, we shall be stronger.

Michael Hauben

Letters to Amateur Computerist

Dear Editor:

Along with your history of computers, there is one bit

of government action your readers might find interest-

ing. In the late '50s the U.S. government had at least

three competitors in the running for a contract to design

a computer utility. The phone, the electric, the gas, and

the computer were all to be durable and available for

Americans.

The names that took part in the design competition

were Dartmouth with its DTSS time-sharing system,

Bell Labs with the forerunner of the now popular Unix,

and MIT with Multics.

Unix, you are all familiar with now. Dartmouth time-

sharing, last I knew, was still a basic entry level operat-

ing system running at least at GM Tech Center on a

dual big box Honeywell system.

MIT won the contract with its Multics operating

system. General Electric won the contract to build the

iron to fit the then existing software. The GE645

computer hit the field in 1962 with absolutely no

fanfare whatever. (The government's support evapo-

rated somewhere around this time.) Multics languished

around the military and institutions for the next twenty

years. Honeywell entered the picture when the govern-

ment refused to allow GE to buy out Honeywell's

computer department. So instead they sold out to

Honeywell. Honeywell Info Systems was a poor com-

pany. The development money was non-existent. With

the financial crisis of the '70s many attempts were made

to terminate Multics. The necessary iron to run the

system was more complicated than Honeywell was

willing to spend the money to speed up, so the genera-

tion of vlsi was never developed. Honeywell Info

Systems was in big trouble in the '80s, the French

5

bought the company and it is now _Bull.

As to software, Multics is still the undisputed king of

security, flexibility, purity of design, and ease of use

(after learning). Near what appeared to me to be the end

of its troubled history, Multics had earned the B2 level

of security from the National Security Administration.

If anyone listened to them, Multics is the only machine

any government entity is allowed to use. The main

problem with selling or describing Multics is that no

outsider has any frame of reference to it. Ford Research

Center is the largest user of Multics. Management made

a determined effort to stop development and get off

Multics when the product was scraped by Honeywell in

1985. To this day no replacement has been found to

even approximate the most basic functionality inherent

in Multics from its early days.

The system is fully paged and segmented, gated, ring

bracketed protected and written 99.96% in PL/1. Even

most of the PL/1 compiler is written in an escalating

style of PL/1. Most big box operating systems have a

known errors file a foot thick. Multics had no known

errors. Ford did run into an upper limit in that no single

array could be larger than 1 megabyte and you could

have no more than 256K segments (programs, objects)

open at one time to a single process (the program in

control of the job flow). Locally they moved those

limits up a ways.

When I left, two systems were in use by Ford world

wide and were as large as the iron would allow. Six

processors, 64 megabytes of memory, a sea of disk

drives and every known style of communications device

and protocol. A system, new in 1985, had cast the

ultimate computer for the world, that of, Multics hooked

at 50 megabaud to a Cray XMP.

Rick Strome

Dearborn

Multics hardware repair till 1986

Dear Sir,

I have read in Hacktic that you make the magazine

THE AMATEUR COMPUTERIST. I don't know the

price of your magazine or what the magazine contains

therefore I have a question. What is the price of your

magazine and how can I be a member? I hope you

would answer my questions and I would appreciate it

when you send me a sample issue. I am looking forward

to receiving your reply, meanwhile hearty thanks.

Yours Truly

R.H. SMIT

THE NETHERLANDS

Open Letter to Editor of Utne Reader

(Editor's Note: This letter was sent to the editor of the

Utne Reader. It was not published.)

Dear Editor,

Instead of pointing to important articles in the 'zine

press in "Notes from Underground" (Nov/Dec issue),

your article mis-characterizes this section of the alterna-

tive press as `unconventional' and `obscure'. For exam-

ple, you write:

"There are few 'zines coming from minority or

working-class communities... proportionally fewer

women publish 'zines than men, and when they do, they

tend to be feminist or Pagan-oriented."

I am one of the editors of a 'zine that comes from a

working class community and this 'zine is neither

`feminist' nor `Pagan-oriented'. A recently published

book, Technoculture, by Andrew Ross and Constance

Pawley, (University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. 125)

describes our newsletter:

"When worker education classes in computer pro-

gramming were discontinued by management at the

Ford Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, United Auto

Workers members began to publish a newsletter called

the Amateur Computerist to fill the gap. Among the

columnists and correspondents in the magazine have

been veterans of the Flint sit-down strikes who see a

clear historical continuity between the problem of labor

organization in the thirties and the problem of automa-

tion and deskilling today. Workers' computer literacy is

seen as essential not only to the demystification of the

computer and the reskilling of workers, but also to

labor's capacity to intervene in decisions about new

technologies that might result in shorter hours and thus

in `work efficiency' rather than worker efficiency."

It would be good to have Utne Reader include worthy

reprints from 'zines like the Amateur Computerist as

this is a part of the alternative press which provides a

rarely heard voice in American society.

Sincerely, Ronda Hauben

Review from the ìPERIPHERAL

ISSUE 20 FEBRUARY 1992

(Editor's Note: This review of the Amateur Computerist

appeared in an Australian computer newsletter. We are

reprinting it because of the interesting historical coinci-

dence it points out regarding the appearance of the first

Australian kit computer distributed in a popular elec-

tronics magazine.)

THE AMATEUR COMPUTERIST

We received an exchange copy of Vol 4,No 1, for Fall

1991, from Ronda Hauben, P.O. Box 4344, Dearborn,

Mi. 48126 USA. A twelve page double column issue,

featuring how hackers gave birth to the personal com-

puter (second part of a four part series) covering

ENIAC, David Ahl and Creative Computing, the

Dartmouth Basic of Kemeny and Kurtz, Ted Nelson's

wonderful book Computer Lib, and Jonathan Titus'

Mark 8 computer in Radio Electronics. Incidently, Jim

Rowe's all TTL EDUC-8 in Electronics Australia

missed out by one month in being the first kit computer

6

circuit distributed in a popular electronics magazine,

and it was the Mark 8 which appeared first.

OK, other articles include ten commandments on

networking (mostly Novell on PCs), a short on USSR

computers, a command line calculator in Quick C which

does trig, powers and root (about 300 lines) plus letters.

Ronda asked by E-mail whether anyone knows of

other computer magazine editors who can be reached by

e-mail? Her address is:

[email protected]

( ìPeripheral is available from Eric Lindsay, 6 Hillcrest

Avenue, Faulconbridge, NSW, 2776, Australia. Elec-

tronic Mail Address:

[email protected]. )

Tribute to a Modern Computer Pioneer:

Grace Hopper (1906-1992)

A New York Times headline on January 3, 1992 read:

"Rear Adm. Grace M. Hopper Dies; Innovator in

Computers was 85." She had died at home New Year's

Day after a recent illness. Until then, Grace Hopper had

been involved with computers and computer program-

ming since 1944. As one of the pioneers of modern

computing, her life exemplifies the activities and goals

that propelled computing forward.

Hopper joined the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Having a Ph.D. in mathematics, after Midshipman's

school, she was assigned to the Bureau of Ships Com-

putational Project at Harvard University. Her first day

at the Project, she met Howard Aiken and his new

calculating apparatus. The Mark I, as it was called, was

51 feet long, 8 feet high, 2 feet thick, weighing 4 tons.

It had three quarters of a million parts, 500 miles of

wiring and three million wire connectors. In order to

operate this first operational program controlled com-

puter made in America, rotary knob like switches had to

be set manually. Hopper was fascinated by the challenge

of such a gadget having been a tinkerer when she was a

kid. One story is told of how as a girl she dismantled

and reassembled all the family's alarm clocks. Aiken

handed her a code book and asked her to work out the

coefficients for the interpolation of the arc tangent

function to be entered into the Mark I. It was a sudden

but exciting introduction to her first computer. She was

37 years old at the time.

Aiken helped all his colleagues deal with their new

tasks by suggesting that they read portions of Charles

Babbage's writings. Hopper appreciated the importance

of such reading. She recalled that when she was grow-

ing up, "Each summer we had to read 20 books and

write reports on them. You were educated and had some

background when you were through then. It gave us an

interest in reading and in history." Aiken also assigned

Hopper to write the first operation manual for the Mark

I which she did as well as eventually writing over 50

articles, especially on programming.

The Mark I was the first computer to be sequentially

programmed and Hopper was at it from its beginning.

Since at the time programming essentially meant

writing out strings of numbers as switch settings,

coding, operating and plugging instructions, etc., errors

could easily be made. Also many strings of numbers

had to be repeated frequently. So the habit arose of

writing out pieces of code that were already checked

out in notebooks and passing the notebooks around to

be copied from when needed.

During the summer of 1947 there was trouble with

the Mark II computer (successor to Mark I.) The trouble

was traced to a mechanical relay in which a moth had

been trapped and beaten to death. The body of the moth

was removed with tweezers and taped into the log book

as the cause of the problem. Grace Hopper is given

credit for coining the term "bug" for computer problems

and for the explanation to Aiken when he asked what's

holding up the numbers, that she and others were

"debugging" the machine.

Hopper left Harvard in 1949 and joined the

Eckert-Mauchly Corporation which was working on

building its UNIVAC I. Programming for computers

like Mark I, II, III and UNIVAC I was necessarily in

full detail including at times the specification of indi-

vidual bit patterns and number strings. But many

programs contained identical subroutines or sub-pro-

grams even though the total objective of such programs

may have differed. Hopper energetically encouraged the

gathering of such subroutines into permanent subrou-

tine libraries. She also spearheaded an effort to program

computers to utilize such subroutines. The idea was to

create a program that could receive as input a set of

high level spoken language-like commands and produce

as output an integrated program made up of appropriate

subroutines. In order to create such a program, Hopper

had to overcome the prevailing prejudice that comput-

ers could do wonders at arithmetic but could not do

analytic work like programming. She and her team at

Rand Corporation succeeded at creating the A-O and

other compilers that showed the cynics were too limited

in their expectations of what computers would be able

to do.

Also in her quest to show that the new machines were

more than number crunchers, Hopper sought to demon-

strate their analytic capabilities. One such program she

wrote was designed to take as input mathematical

functions and gave as output the derivative of such

functions. Upon seeing the program perform, one

researcher who had spent months finding the first 15

derivatives of a complicated function, insisted that

Hopper must have had some hidden person feeding the

derivatives into the computer. He felt no machine could

do in eighteen minutes what it had taken him 6 months

to do. (from Robert Slater, Portraits in Silicon, Cam-

bridge Mass, 1987)

Hopper had succeeded in demonstrating that the

computer was basically a symbol manipulator: whether

7

the symbols were numbers, letters, words or other data

structures, was a detail for the programmer, not a

complication for the computer. She drove this home by

writing a compiler that could receive high level code

written in English, French or German. Again, someone

who saw this program in operation could not believe a

computer made in the U.S. could understand European

languages and wondered what the trick was. Based on

this work, by 1957, Hopper and her staff had created

"Flow-matic," the first computer language employing

words. (Ibid., p. 225)

Hopper's work on "Flow-matic" was seminal and was

followed by other achievements such as Commercial

Translator by IBM. But Hopper and others saw a danger

in the prospect of having many different languages. She

was, therefore, part of the process of creating COBOL,

an easy to read machine-independent language not

identified with any specific computer manufacturer.

There were those who denounced COBOL because of

its flaws and a rumor spread that it was dead. But

COBOL has in fact, like BASIC, opened the door to a

significantly large universe of users and it is still in use

today 30 years after its introduction. Her work in

support of COBOL was part of Hopper's campaign for

standards for languages, architectures, data structures

and networks, standards set for the use of all and not by

any dominant firm.

From 1944 until her death New Year's Day 1992,

Grace Hopper spent her life pushing the use of comput-

ers forward and also spreading that use. She especially

enjoyed the opportunity to challenge young people to

explore and develop the most infinite possibilities she

saw inherent in computer technology. Her understand-

ing was that we are today just "at the very beginning of

the mass use of the computer. We haven't even begun to

exploit its potential." (Marguerite Zientara, The History

of Computing, A Biographical Portrait of the Visionar-

ies Who Shaped the Destiny of the Computer Industry,

Framingham, 1981, p. 53)

Interview with Staff Member Michael Hauben on

the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Personal

Computer

Part I

(Editor's Note: This interview was conducted on August

11, 1991. It has been edited.)

Ronda: Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the

introduction of the IBM personal computer on August

12, 1981. Also, one of our staff members, Michael

Hauben, is leaving Michigan to go to college in N.Y.

Therefore, it seemed an appropriate time to look back

on the past 10 years and to review how the introduction

of the personal computer has affected our lives. Michael

is now 18. In 1981 he was 8 years old and already

involved with computers. Michael is not only one of the

beneficiaries of the computer revolution. The computer

revolution was carried out, not so much by companies

like IBM, but more importantly, by computer hobbyists

like Michael Hauben. Thus in honor of the computer

hobbyists, who gave birth to and developed the per-

sonal computer, we would like to review some of your

experiences, Michael, with the computer.

Bill: How did you get started with computers?

Michael: The first place I really saw computers was

at an exhibit in Toronto over 10 years ago. There was a

robot that was like the 4 axes machine that auto work-

ers use. They also had a computer exhibit. I don't

remember what kind of computer was on display but

they were just a bunch of computers running different

kinds of programs set up there at the Canadian National

Exhibit. That really peaked my interest somehow.

When I was 8 (in 1981), I took a computer class at

Schoolcraft Community College, in what was called the

Kids College. It was part of what they called the TAG

(Talented and Gifted) Program. The teacher's name was

Mrs. Brown. We learned on the Apple II+'s. The first

day of class, Mrs. Brown lifted the top of the APPLE

and said, "There, that's all there is to it, There's nothing

to be afraid of." That was a very good introduction to

the computer because it showed there was nothing to be

afraid of. That we could completely control it. I learned

BASIC there. I took several other classes in that pro-

gram. I think I took three. I didn't take all the BASIC

language classes offered. But I took a test that they had

for their normal BASIC college level classes and I

wound up getting three college credits for the BASIC

language class. And I didn't do so good because I ended

up only getting a B on the test. But the experience was

interesting and from then on whenever there was a

computer available I tried to use it.

After the trip to Toronto, I always wanted to buy a

computer. There was the Texas Instruments 99/4a (TI

99/4a) and I don't remember how much it cost, but it

was expensive. There was the Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS

1000) and that was much cheaper. My family and I had

seen Sinclair computers in England when we visited.

These computers could be hooked up to a normal TV

set. I saved up my money and bought a TS-1000. Using

it I more thoroughly learned BASIC. My father and I

programmed a lot in BASIC with only 2K memory. We

never seemed to run out of memory. We just played

around and tried to do lots of different things, tried

writing little games, graphics and we dabbled a little in

machine language, not a lot however. Whenever I had

the chance, whether it was summer camp or in a com-

puter store, I'd try to do something with the computer.

I learned BASIC, I learned LOGO on the TI-99/4a in

Camp, and I played around with APPLES and with

Commodore PETS. In my elementary school, there was

a terminal hooked in with the mainframe of the Dear-

born Schools. At that time there were many programs

on the mainframe. They had BASIC. They had games

like the OREGON TRAIL, etc. I subscribed to two or

three magazines for the TS-1000. I bought books, did

all the TRY THIS type of small programs. Those were

8

always fun because there would always be problems

with the programs. There would always be bugs. The

books and sample programs were exciting somehow. I

haven't found many books similar for programming on

the IBM PCs today, books that I have found exciting for

a hobbyist. And this is sad.

Soon after I bought the TS-1000, it couldn't have been

more than a couple of years, I was trying to choose

between the TS-2068 and the Commodore 64. I think

the Commodore was more expensive. The TS-2068 had

better color, and a more developed version of BASIC.

The Commodore 64 was better in that it had a disk drive

and the TS-1000 only had a tape drive you could use.

The Commodore also had a real keyboard, while the

Timex utilized raised chicklets. I bought the TS-2068.

Then I had my first real lesson in the computer world.

Three months after I bought the TS-2068, Timex

stopped selling it and supporting it. Timex made a deal

with Commodore. There was an agreement to sell the

Sinclair in England and Europe and Commodore in the

United States. That was a shock because I thought I

made a better choice, but it turned out the better deal is

not always the best choice.

And my father and I did programming on that, but not

really as much as we did on the TS-1000. It was a lot

less, even though there was the added attraction of the

color and the sound and the joystick port. And so I still

did things and I tried to pick up on things whenever I

could.

Christmas of 1984, we bought a Sanyo MBC-550-2

which was a MS-DOS compatible, but not an IBM

compatible, machine. The operating system was IBM

compatible, but the graphics were different, the sound

was different, and the BASIC was different. The Sanyo

was a better machine for graphics, I think 640 x 400

with 4 colors if not 16. And WordStar worked. That's

why my family got it – as a wordprocessor. I learned

MS-DOS. I got more into the PC world. We subscribed

to a Sanyo magazine for a while. We went to the Sanyo

Users' Group for a while. We occasionally went to

SEMCO (Southeast Michigan Computer Organization),

but somehow that was already oriented toward business

and they weren't very interested in helping us. Then in

1985, through INACOMP, my mother won a Compaq

Portable. It was one of the earliest to come out that was

fully IBM compatible. It was a luggable portable, and it

weighed about 20 pounds, if not more. And that's how

I really got into IBM. We had a choice between a

modem and a hard drive. We got a modem. It was a

breakthrough. The hard drive seemed important but the

modem was more important. We wound up getting a

hard drive later on. With the modem, it lets you connect

to the outside world. With your own little system you'd

be like a hermit, but in connecting with the rest of the

world, it's other people's opinions, different discussions

about computers, about current events, debates about

what's going on in the world and just general BS also.

And you came into contact with people, you came into

contact with different files to use with your computer,

with what was going on with the computer scene and so

somehow it was like a replacement for a user group.

And depending upon the time, there was either a lot

going on or a little going on.

Ronda: What do you mean?

Michael: Well right now not many boards I know

have much debate on them. There are two that I am on.

Both of them have debates on-going. I'm sure there are

others, but I just haven't had time to look. But for a

while I was on many of the boards and at one point

many of the boards were silly contests to see who could

post the most numerous messages.

Ronda: Do you have a sense what you were looking

for on the BBS's? You used to spend a lot of time on

them.

Michael: Well at first I wasn't on local BBS's. Origi-

nally, I was on CompuServe.

Bill: Free time?

M: Well, the first two hours were free. I almost

became a Beta Tester for InfoCom through

CompuServe. I sent in the application forms. I then

received a congratulations letter, but InfoCom never

sent me any games to test. The only response was a

Christmas card. That was a soured CompuServe mem-

ory. I found some local BBS numbers listed on

CompuServe and from my father and some friends of

his from work. For a while I was mostly on Commo-

dore BBS's and not many IBM boards. But then I

started calling the IBM boards. It was new for me when

I started. Modeming was a connection to the outside

world to other people with similar interests. It was

interesting – the debates about current events. Some-

how there was the possibility for intellectual discussion

which I couldn't find elsewhere besides my parents and

a few friends like Floyd Hoke-Miller. But among my

friends at school or neighbors, there wasn't much of a

possibility.

When we lived in East Dearborn, our next door

neighbor, Tom, had an Atari and a Commodore 64. He

shared an interest in computers with me. He was my

friend, even though there was a large age gap, because

we were both interested in computers. He let me come

over and try some things on his computer and I'd go

with him to computer stores.

Bill: Another thing about modems you can't tell the

age. Treats you more like an equal.

Michael: There's an anonymity. You don't know

anything about the other users. So you are more willing

to accept them. There are still first impressions. If you

act like a real idiot, people won't like you. But the full

element of first impressions is left out. And people tend

to rank you or be friends with you on how you act

online, what you speak about. It does help. You tend to

get to know the people and there isn't as much blocking.

And my first handle was Wizkid. I changed my handle

2 or 3 years ago to Sentinel. And there was one person

who signed on and said it was great knowing you. He

was one of the people who knew me as Wizkid. There

was a "Remembering the OLD Days" theme area on

9

one of the BBS's and someone said, "remember that

Wizkid." And I said, "that was me." And he said he

didn't know that. When people change their handles, it's

public but somehow people don't always realize it.

When I changed my handle, I decreased my activity.

When I decreased my activity it was because there were

just silly messages that didn't mean anything, or they

just seemed juvenile, and I don't know if that's because

the people calling were younger or they were more

juvenile. The way people accept you is based on your

maturity online and your maturity showed through more

than your age. And there was one debate where some-

one said you are just a kid. And I used to have the

handle Wizkid. But it didn't matter what your age was,

it was more how mature you were. He was trying to say

"Well you're just a kid, you can't know anything." But

he was wrong. So there is less age discrimination on the

boards.

Ronda: Why did you decrease the time you spent on

the boards?

Michael: I had to spend more time with school, with

friends, with my job. Whenever I used to come home

from school, I used to spend 2 or 3 hours, but then my

mom said, "We need the phone." So I didn't spend my

free time before homework on the modem. And then

with work, I wasn't even home on certain days to use the

modem.

Ronda: But it seemed you were also a little disap-

pointed. There were user parties, but it seemed the

computer world didn't extend outside of the modem.

Michael: It did to a certain extent, but it didn't include

everyone. Like some people were friends before. There

were modem parties where people from the boards got

together, whether it was a software swap or a party.

Ronda: There weren't many, were there?

Michael: Well, what happened was the main person

who had the parties was from a TAG board in Taylor.

He had his computer stolen after the 2nd or 3rd party.

So he stopped holding them. Then there were multi-user

boards. There was MNET which was a multi-user. The

general age of the users on MNet was older than on the

other single-user BBS's. And it was more serious. It was

more a UNIX board. It was a different bunch. It was not

the home but the people in school, in Ann Arbor. It

seemed like the multi-user boards made it easier to hold

parties because users could chat live one-on-one. And

when AMUSERS (a multi-user board) closed down, I

didn't get on other multi-users that were like AMUS-

ERS. Some people already were friends but you didn't

end up doing much so it was a little disappointing.

Cause it didn't seem like there was any – it didn't get

anywhere – it was just online so that was a little discon-

certing. It was disappointing because that was where I

had found more intellectual people but it didn't go

anywhere. And things like CompuServe cost a lot of

money. There's CompuServe, there's Delphi, there's

Geni, there's PC Link, there's Q-link, there's a couple of

services but they all cost money, so that's hard to deal

with. And then there are bigger boards that exist. But

they all cost money. There's the WELL. That's in

California. You also pay per hour like CompuServe. So

it's harder to be on. It's like MNet. It's the same soft-

ware as MNet. And maybe I did find it disappointing.

It used to be there would be lots of new BBS's popping

up. But they were interesting. And now there still are

lots of new BBS's popping up. But they're silly. So it's

gone downhill a little bit. And also BBS's are similar to

the CB or the Ham radio in that people voice their

opinions, or have discussions or chat or there used to be

DDial's – all they were were multi-user, people chat-

ting, but they were 300 baud so they were super slow.

Some of those you had to acquire membership. But they

were linked up across the country. There were things

called LINKS that would connect you to other DDials

around the country. So that way you could talk to

people.

Somehow the thing about BBS's was it was the

ultimate vehicle of Free Speech, uncensored speech.

For the most part things were not censored. What you

posted was left alone. It was like everyone's Letter to

the Editor was allowed to be printed. There would be

letters debating other previous letters. Different Sys-

Ops had different rules and some would delete mes-

sages that contained profanity or were only personal

attacks or something. BBS's are the greatest form of

free speech. The problem was you needed a modem and

a computer to get into it. So it's not as free as it might

be, but compared to the newspapers, the newspapers

print what they choose, whereas on BBS's everything is

printed, everything is published. It's more of a dynamic

medium than a static medium because depending on the

board there's different forms of dealing with messages.

For example, some boards after the first 50 messages go

by, the first message is deleted, so it's a dynamic thing.

Unless somebody prints out a copy or saves it to disk,

it doesn't stay static. Like on MNet, things aren't

deleted. They are deleted when the message sys-op of

the area decides no one is interested anymore. That's

more of a choice method of deletion, than where it

deletes messages or the new one pops in, the old one

pops out and it's deleted. And even depending on what

happens, it's still an important medium.

There was, for example, just a debate about the war

against IRAQ on BBS's. Usually you didn't see where

there was dissent. Whereas on the computer, if people

wanted to, they could debate it and there was debate

about it. A free medium. It's open access. Not closed.

It's also a field where the hobbyist still exists. There are

people who develop ways of using the modem, whether

it's different compression techniques where you can

send more and larger files quicker, or whether it's

different file protocols that send them faster over phone

lines. Those are constantly developing. That is a hobby-

ist frontier now. Maybe there are less people than when

the computer started out. But it still exists. It's a frontier

that's not closed up yet. It's not definite yet. New things

are continuing to come out. For example, higher speed

chips for the serial ports in the computer so that the

10

computer can talk to the modem at a higher speed and

everything.

To be continued in next issue

One Line Program In BASIC

10 FOR I=38 TO 255:PRINT"CHR$(";I;") =

";CHR$(I);" ";:NEXT

(Editor's Note: We welcome other one line programs

from readers.)

Computers For The People A History

Part III

And it was indeed. "In January, 1975, six months after

the introduction of [Titus' computer-ed] the Mark-8,

Popular Electronics published the first installment of a

two-part article on a much more sophisticated computer,

the Altair 8800," writes Stan Augarten (in Bit by Bit,

NY, 1984). "The Altair was the first... full fledged

personal computer on the market." And it was available

in kit form for $395,or in assembled form for $650.

"Thousands of orders poured into MITS", the manufac-

turer of the Altair, after the article was published. The

article was featured on the front cover of the magazine:

"Project Breakthrough: World's First Minicomputer Kit

to Rival Commercial Models Altair 8800. Save over

$1000." ( p 270-273)

The firm was overwhelmed with orders. Augarten

explains, "If you wanted to get the Altair to do some-

thing...you had to write a program in machine code and

enter it, bit by bit, via the toggle switches on the front

panel." It only had a 256-byte memory, too small to do

much with. "As a result," writes Augarten, "all you

could really do with the Altair was play with it, and one

of its first programs was a game that generated increas-

ingly complicated patterns of lights on the front panel to

be duplicated by the players." (p 274)

What the Altair needed was an interpreter – a program

that would allow the machine's users to write programs

in a simple computer language like BASIC. Paul Allen,

was a programmer working in the Boston area. He had

been a computer hacker during his teen years. He was

strolling through Harvard Square one day when he

noticed the January, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics

on the newsstand. He bought the magazine and went to

visit his friend and fellow hacker, William Gates, who

was a freshman at Harvard. Allen is reported to have

greeted Gates waving the article in front of Gates' face

and saying "Look, it's going to happen! I told you this

was going to happen! And we're going to miss it.!" (

Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, Fire in the Valley,

Berkeley, 1984, p 141) Freiberger and Swaine, describe

what followed:

"Gates had to admit that his friend was right; it sure

looked as though the `something' they had been looking

for had found them. He immediately phoned MITS

[producer of the Altair-ed ], and claimed that he and his

partner had a BASIC language usable on the Altair.

When Ed Roberts [owner of MITS - ed] who had heard

a lot of such promises asked Gates when he could come

to Albuquerque to demonstrate it, Gates looked at his

childhood friend, took a deep breath, and said, `Oh, in

two or three weeks.' Gates put down the receiver,

turned to Allen and said: `I guess we should go buy a

manual.' They went straight to an electronics shop and

purchased Adam Osborne's manual on the 8080." (Ibid.,

p. 141)

Allen and Gates had committed themselves to pro-

ducing a BASIC language for a machine they had not

yet even seen. But they were both computer hackers

from their junior high school days when they had

worked for companies looking for bugs in commercial

programs. Freiberger and Swine describe what hap-

pened next:

"For the next few weeks, Gates and Allen worked day

and night on the BASIC. As they wrote the program,

they tried to determine the minimal features of an

acceptable BASIC.... There was no established industry

standard for BASIC or for any other software. There

was no industry. By deciding themselves what BASIC

required, Gates and Allen set a pattern for future

software development that lasted for about six years.

Instead of researching the market, the programmers

simply decided, at the outset, what to put in." (p 141 -

142)

Freiberger and Swaine continue their description of

those significant days:

"Both men threw themselves completely into the

project, staying up late every night programming....

They were programming half-asleep sometimes. Once

when Gates nodded off, head on the keys, he woke up

suddenly, glanced at the screen, and immediately began

typing. Paul Allen decided Bill must have been pro-

gramming in his sleep and kept right on when he

awoke." (p. 142)

Six weeks later, Allen flew to Albuquerque with their

BASIC interpreter. On the plane, he realized they hadn't

written a program to load the language into the com-

puter. He quickly made up a program on some scrap

paper. Roberts met him at the airport and drove him to

his workplace. He loaded the program into the Altair

and it worked. Allen became MITS's software director.

Gates soon dropped out of Harvard and became a

freelance software writer. Gates and Allen later set up

the Microsoft Corporation in Bellevue, Washington,

now one of the largest software companies in the world.

"The Altair inspired many hobbyists to design their

own computers," writes Augarten, p 276. One of these

was Stephen Wozniak. The ferment from the introduc-

tion of the Altair had led to the formation of computer

clubs all over the country, including one in California's

Silicon Valley. The atmosphere generated by the clubs

11

inspired hobbyists and hackers like Stephen Wozniak

and Steve Jobs to create and then market computers like

the Apple. Woz, as Steve Wozniak is known, explains

how the Apple was created. He bought an 8-bit micro-

processor, the 6502 from MOS technology (now part of

Commodore), and he wrote a BASIC interpreter for it.

The device wasn't as powerful as the Altair, but it was

cheaper and less complicated. Then he built a circuit

board and he and Steve Jobs set out to market it as the

Apple Computer. Later in 1977 they introduced the

Apple II with 16K of Ram for $1,195. Woz who loved

to play games had designed the computer with that

purpose in mind. The Apple II provided a commercial

personal computer that people and schools could begin

to afford. But crucial to the development of the Apple

computer and to all the other advances made during this

fruitful period in the development of the personal

computer was the role played by the Homebrew Com-

puter Club. Woz went to the first meeting, in March,

1975. About 30 people showed up. But fueled by the

excitement generated by the Altair, the club expanded

rapidly. Soon the Club had 500 members. Meetings

divided into a "random-access" period during which the

floor was thrown open to anyone who had anything to

say, and a "mapping" period when the audience broke

up into small groups devoted to common concerns.

Lee Felsenstein is the person credited with making the

club the important gathering it became. Felsenstein had

been active in the Free Speech Movement at the Univer-

sity of California at Berkeley. He had been arrested in

1964 along with 755 other students for sitting in at the

University. He had worked on the Berkeley Barb and

the Berkeley Tribe, two newspapers of the student anti--

war movement of the 1960's.

Lee Felsenstein, like Ted Nelson whose book Com-

puter Lib became known as the Common Sense (a la

Tom Paine) of the Technological Revolution, was one

of a group of technological revolutionaries who were

products of the radical 1960s. "A surprising number of

them," write the authors of Fire in the Valley, "held

political views that would have shocked the local

Rotary Club and almost all had no love for IBM and the

computer establishment." (Frieberger and Swaine, p

108)

Keith Britton, another early member of the

Homebrew Club, recalls the atmosphere prevalent

during the early days of the personal computer move-

ment. "There was a strong feeling, " he writes, "that we

were subversives. We were subverting the way the giant

corporations had run things. We were upsetting the

establishment forcing our mores into the industry. I was

amazed that we could continue to meet without people

arriving with bayonets to arrest the lot of us." (Ibid. p

104)

Britton saw himself and the other members of the

Homebrew Club as "pivotal in an equivalent of the

industrial revolution but more profoundly important to

the human race."(ibid.,p 108)

To be continued

12

Pascal Program

Bridge_opening_bid_simulator

Uses Printer

(******************************************)

(* Author : Ian Carsten *)

(* *)

(* Last Modified : 11-18-90 *)

(* *)

(* Input: menu choices 1-8 (integer), *)

(* number or letter of card (char) and *)

(* first letter of suit (char) *)

(* *)

(* Output: menu of options, 13-card hand, *)

(* total points of hand, and opening bid *)

(* based on points and distribution of *)

(* cards in hand *)

(* *)

(* Purpose: To simulate the opening bid in*)

(* the card game of bridge as an aid in *)

(* learning the strategy of assigning *)

(* points and giving the opening bid *)

(* *)

(* Features: In the change card option, if*)

(* the user tries to remove a card which *)

(* is not in the hand or tries to add a *)

(* card which is already in the hand, then*)

(* an appropriate error message is printed*)

(* and the particular add or delete rou- *)

(* tine is repeated until a valid card *)

(* change is input. Further, at start-up, *)

(* since the handarray is empty, if the *)

(* user selects menu options 2,4,5,6, or 7*)

(* an empty hand message is printed and *)

(* the menu is presented to prevent mean- *)

(* ingless execution and/or output. *)

(* Although this program prevents copying *)

(* an empty hand (52 ' 0 '--string3) to a *)

(* file, nonetheless, an empty hand has *)

(* been stored under 'hand0.dat' to demon-*)

(* strate what would happen if an empty *)

(* were stored using DOS commands and some*)

(* one then tried to read the empty hand *)

(* into the handarray. In bidding the case*)

(* 13 <= points <= 18 and at least 5 cards*)

(* in 1 or two suits, the bid is: 1 of the*)

(* 5-card suit with the greatest number of*)

(* points. If each of 2 5-card suits have *)

(* the same number of points, then the bid*)

(* is 1 of the first 5-card suit in the *)

(* order Spade, Heart, Diamond, Club. *)

(* Since Givopeningbid calls Showpointsof-*)

(* hand, the bid can be used without first*)

(* getting the points *)

(******************************************)

{Declaration of global variables} type

string3 = string[3];

stringarray = array[1..4, 1..13] of

string3;

var

choice : integer; {user's choice from

menu}

emptyhand : boolean; {emptyhand = true

prevents meaningless output}

card : string3; {representation of card

in handarray}

handarray : stringarray; {4 x 13 array

representation of card hand}

points : integer; {points of hand, used

to determine bid}

cardsinsuit : array [1..4] of integer;

{number of cards in suit}

pointsinsuit : array [1..4] of integer;

{number of points in suit}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Initializearray *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : Initialize all elements of *)

(* handarray to the placeholder ' 0 ' *)

(* (string3) *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : none *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : all 52 elements of *)

(* handarray are ' 0 ' (string3) *)

(******************************************)

procedure Initializearray(var

handarray{input/output} :

stringarray);

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

begin {Initializearray}

for row := 1 to 4 do {set

each element of handarray to

0 (string3)}

begin {row-loop}

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

handarray[row, col]

:= ' 0 ';

end; {col-loop}

end; {row-loop}

end; {Initializearray}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Testforemptyhand *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : Determines if hand- *)

(* array is empty *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray is either *)

(* empty (all elements are ' 0 ' ) or it *)

(* contains 13 cards and 39 placeholding *)

(* ' 0 ' *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : emptyhand (boolean) is*)

(* true if hand empty otherwise emptyhand *)

(* is false *)

13

(******************************************)

procedure Testforemptyhand(hand-

array{input} : stringarray;

var emptyhand{output} :boolean);

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

begin

emptyhand := true; {initial-

ize}

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

if handarray[row,

col] <> ' 0 ' then

emptyhand := false

end; {col-loop}

end; {row-loop}

end; {Testforemptyhand}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Readcardandsuit *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : reads the two characters of *)

(* user-input card and suit which user *)

(* wishes to delete/add *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : user has input card (1 *)

(* or, in the case of a '10', 2 characters*)

(* ), a space, and the first letter of the*)

(* suit, each of type char *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : charcard and *)

(* charsuit have been assigned the *)

(* upper case of user-input card *)

(* and suit respectively *)

(******************************************)

procedure Readcardandsuit(var

charcard{input/output} : char;

var charsuit{input/output} :

char);

var

space : char;

charzero : char;

begin

read(charcard);

if charcard <> '1' then

readln(space, charsuit);

if charcard = '1' then {user-

input card is a '10'}

readln(charzero, space,

charsuit);

charcard := upcase(charcard);

charsuit := upcase(charsuit);

end;

(******************************************)

(* Name : Displayhand *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : To print the hand cur- *)

(* rently stored in handarray, with *)

(* rows right-justified, lowest *)

(* card to highest from left to *)

(* right (reverse order of array), *)

(* row 1 = Spades, row 2 = Hearts, *)

(* row 3 = Diamonds, and row 4 = *)

(* Clubs *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray has a *)

(* nonempty hand of 13 unique cards *)

(* and 39 placeholders (' 0 ') each *)

(* of type string3 *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : the hand has *)

(* been printed *)

(******************************************)

procedure Displayhand(handarray

{input} : stringarray);

type

string10 = string[10];

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

suit : string10;

begin {Displayhand}

Testforemptyhand(handarray

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (not emptyhand) then

begin {execute Displayhand--

nonempty hand}

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

case row of {assign suit

based on its row number}

1 : suit := 'Spades ';

2 : suit := 'Hearts ';

3 : suit := 'Diamonds ';

4 : suit := 'Clubs ';

end; {case}

write(suit);

write(Lst, suit);

for col := 13 downto 1 do

begin

if handarray[row, col]

<> ' 0 ' then

begin {if}

write(handarray

[row, col]);

write(Lst, hand

array[row, col]);

end; {if}

end; {col-loop}

writeln;

writeln(Lst);

end; {row-loop}

writeln;

writeln(Lst);

end {execute Displayhand--non-

empty hand}

14

else

begin {else}

writeln('Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln('get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'Current hand

is empty. Choose 1) or 3)

from menu to ');

writeln(Lst, 'get a non-

empty hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end; {else}

end; {Displayhand}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Convertcard *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : Converts card and suit (char)*)

(* input by user into their string equi- *)

(* valents. Also, it assigns the row and *)

(* col (integer) of the card (string3) in *)

(* handarray *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : charcard and charsuit *)

(* have been assigned values (char) *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : row, col (integer), *)

(* and card (string3) have been assigned *)

(* values *)

(******************************************)

procedure Convertcard( charcard

{input} : char;

charsuit{input} : char;

var row{output} : integer;

var col{output} : integer;

var card{output} : string3);

begin {Convertcard}

if upcase(charsuit) = 'S'

then {assign row number based

on suit input }

row := 1; {by user}

if upcase(charsuit) = 'H' then

row := 2;

if upcase(charsuit) = 'D' then

row := 3;

if upcase(charsuit) = 'C' then

row := 4;

if charcard = 'A' then {assign

col number and card based on

charcard}

begin {input by user}

card := ' A ';

col := 1;

end;

if charcard ='K' then

begin

card := ' K ';

col := 2;

end;

if charcard = 'Q'then

begin

card := ' Q ';

col := 3;

end;

if charcard = 'J' then

begin

card := ' J ';

col := 4;

end;

if charcard = '1' then

begin

card := '10 ';

col := 5;

end;

if charcard = '9' then

begin

card := ' 9 ';

col := 6;

end;

if charcard = '8' then

begin

card := ' 8 ';

col := 7;

end;

if charcard = '7' then

begin

card := ' 7 ';

col := 8;

end;

if charcard = '6' then

begin

card := ' 6 ';

col := 9;

end;

if charcard = '5' then

begin

card := ' 5 ';

col := 10;

end;

if charcard = '4' then

begin

card := ' 4 ';

col := 11;

end;

if charcard = '3' then

begin

card := ' 3 ';

col := 12;

end;

if charcard = '2' then

begin

card := ' 2 ';

col := 13;

end;

end; {Convertcard}

(******************************************)

15

(* Name : Translate *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : Translates cardnum (integer) *)

(* into its equivalent card (string3) and *)

(* assigns row (integer) and col (integer)*)

(* which determines its appropriate *)

(* location in handarray *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : cardnum has been *)

(* assigned an integer value from 1-52 *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : row has been assigned *)

(* an integer value from 1-4 and col has *)

(* been assigned an integer value from 1- *)

(* 13 and card (string3) has been assigned*)

(* a value *)

(******************************************)

procedure Translate(cardnum :

integer;

var row : integer;

var col : integer);

begin {Translate}

case cardnum of {assign row

based on cardnum}

1..13 : row := 1;

14..26 : row := 2;

27..39 : row := 3;

40..52 : row := 4;

end; {case-assign row}

case cardnum of {assign col and

card based on cardnum}

1,14,27,40 : begin

col := 1;

card := ' A '

end;

2,15,28,41 : begin

col := 2;

card := ' K '

end;

3,16,29,42 : begin

col := 3;

card := ' Q '

end;

4,17,30,43 : begin

col := 4;

card := ' J '

end;

5,18,31,44 : begin

col := 5;

card := '10 '

end;

6,19,32,45 : begin

col := 6;

card := ' 9 '

end;

7,20,33,46 : begin

col := 7;

card := ' 8 '

end;

8,21,34,47 : begin

col := 8;

card := ' 7 '

end;

9,22,35,48 : begin

col := 9;

card := ' 6 '

end;

10,23,36,49 : begin

col := 10;

card := ' 5 '

end;

11,24,37,50 : begin

col := 11;

card := ' 4 '

end;

12,25,38,51 : begin

col := 12;

card := ' 3 '

end;

13,26,39,52 : begin

col := 13;

card := ' 2 '

end;

end; {case-assign col and

card}

end; {Translate}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Showmenu *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : To print a menu of options *)

(* and prompt the user for his choice *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : none *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : menu and prompt *)

(* have been printed *)

(******************************************)

procedure Showmenu;

begin {Showmenu}

writeln('1) Generate a random

hand');

writeln('2) Save the current

hand (to a text file)');

writeln('3) Read a hand (from a

text file)');

writeln('4) Change a card in

the current hand');

writeln('5) Display the current

hand');

writeln('6) Show total points

of the hand');

writeln('7) Give the opening

bid with the current hand');

writeln('8) Quit');

writeln;

write('Enter your choice ');

writeln(Lst,'1) Generate a

random hand');

16

writeln(Lst,'2) Save the cur-

rent hand (to a text file)');

writeln(Lst,'3) Read a hand

(from a text file)');

writeln(Lst,'4) Change a card

in the current hand');

writeln(Lst,'5) Display the

current hand');

writeln(Lst,'6) Show total

points of the hand');

writeln(Lst,'7) Give the open-

ing bid with the current

hand');

writeln(Lst,'8) Quit');

writeln(Lst);

write(Lst,'Enter your choice

');

end; {Showmenu}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Generatehand *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : To generate 13 unique random *)

(* integers from 1 to 52, translate them *)

(* into string3 representing a hand of *)

(* cards in the game of bridge and store *)

(* the strings in in a 4 x 13 array *)

(* representing the card hand according to*)

(* the following scheme: *)

(* top to bottom: row 1 = Spades, row 2 = *)

(* Hearts, row 3 = Diamonds, row 4 = Clubs*)

(* left to right: col 1 = ' A ', col 2 = *)

(* ' K ',..., col 13 = ' 2 '. Also, all *)

(* positions not holding card will have *)

(* the string ' 0 ' (string3) as a *)

(* placeholder *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray either holds *)

(* 52 ' 0 ' placeholders or it holds 13 *)

(* cards and 39 ' 0 ' placeholders, each *)

(* of type string3 *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : handarray has 13 *)

(* unique cards(string3) and 39 ' 0 ' *)

(* placeholders, each of type string3 *)

(******************************************)

procedure Generatehand(var hand-

array : stringarray);

type

string10 = string[10];

var

colindex : integer;

cardsinhand : integer; {number

of cards in hand}

inhand : boolean; {true if card

being checked is already in

hand}

cardnum : integer; {random

number of card}

row : integer;

col : integer;

suit : string10;

begin {Generatehand}

Initializearray(handarray);

{to ' 0 '}

cardsinhand := 0; {initialize

number of cards in hand}

while cardsinhand < 13 do

begin {while}

inhand := false; {reset to

test next cardnum}

cardnum := random(52) + 1;

Translate(cardnum, row,

col); {determines row, col}

for colindex := 1 to 13 do

begin {colindex-loop}

if handarray[row, col-

index] = card then

inhand := true;

end; {colindex-loop}

if (not inhand) then

begin {if-then}

handarray[row,col] :=

card; {add card to

handarray}

cardsinhand := cards

inhand + 1;

end; {if-then}

end; {while}

end; {Generatehand}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Savehandtofile *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : saves cardhand to filename *)

(* which user specifies just prior to save*)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : card hand exists and *)

(* may be empty or nonempty *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : nonempty card hand in *)

(* handarray has been saved to user-input *)

(* filename *)

(******************************************)

procedure Savehandtofile(handarray

: stringarray);

type

string20 = string[20];

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

outfile : text;

cardfile : string20;

begin {Savehandtofile}

Testforemptyhand(handarray

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (not emptyhand) then

begin {execute Savehandtofile-

-nonempty hand}

write('What is the name of

17

the card file? ');

write(Lst, 'What is the name

of the card file? ');

readln(cardfile);

writeln(Lst, ' ', cardfile);

assign(outfile, cardfile);

rewrite(outfile);

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

write(outfile, hand-

array[row, col]);

end; {col-loop}

writeln(outfile);

end; {row-loop}

close(outfile);

end {execute Savehandtofile--

nonempty hand}

else

begin

writeln('Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln('get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln(Lst, 'get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end;

end; {Savehandtofile}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Readhandfromfile *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : reads hand from user-input *)

(* filename to handarray *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : user-input filename *)

(* exists and holds a card hand *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : cardhand in filename *)

(* has been copied to handarray *)

(******************************************)

procedure Readhandfromfile(var

handarray : stringarray);

type

string20 = string[20];

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

outfile : text;

cardfile : string20;

begin {Readhandfromfile}

write('What is the name of

the file? ');

write(Lst, 'What is the name

of the file? ');

readln(cardfile);

write(Lst, ' ', cardfile);

assign(outfile, cardfile);

reset(outfile);

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

read(outfile, hand-

array[row, col]);

end; {col-loop}

readln(outfile);

end; {row-loop}

writeln(Lst);

close(outfile);

Testforemptyhand(handarray

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (emptyhand) then

begin {if-emptyhand}

writeln('File ',cardfile,

' is empty. Choose 1) or

3) (with');

writeln('a nonempty file)

from menu to get a non-

empty hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'File ',

cardfile, ' is empty.

Choose 1) or 3) (with');

writeln(Lst, 'a nonempty

file) from menu to get a

nonempty hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end; {if-emptyhand}

end; {Readhandfromfile}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Changecard *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : first deletes a userspeci- *)

(* fied card from handarray, then adds one*)

(* to the array *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray exists and *)

(* may be empty or nonempty (but Change- *)

(* card will not execute if handarray *)

(* empty) *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : handarray has a *)

(* unique nonempty hand (if Change- *)

(* card executed) *)

(******************************************)

procedure Changecard(var handarray

: stringarray);

type

string8 = string[8];

var

charcard : char;

space : char;

charzero : char;

charsuit : char;

row : integer;

col : integer;

inhand : boolean;

suit : string8;

begin {Changecard}

Testforemptyhand(handarray

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (not emptyhand) then

begin {execute Changecard--

nonempty hand}

{delete chosen card provided it is in hand}

18

inhand := false;

while (not inhand) do

begin {while-not inhand}

inhand := false;

write('What card do you

want to remove(card-

<space>suit) ? ');

write(Lst, 'What card do

you want to remove(card-

<space>suit) ? ');

Readcardandsuit(charcard,

charsuit);

Convertcard(charcard,

charsuit, row, col,

card);

case row of

1 : suit := 'Spades';

2 : suit := 'Hearts';

3 : suit := 'Diamonds';

4 : suit := 'Clubs';

end; {case}

writeln(Lst, card, ' ',

charsuit);

if (handarray[row, col] =

card) then

inhand := true;

if (inhand) then

begin {if-inhand}

handarray[row, col]

:= ' 0 '; {delete

card from hand}

end {if-inhand}

else

begin {else}

writeln(card, 'of ', suit,

' is not in hand');

writeln(Lst, card, 'of ',

suit, ' is not in hand');

end; {else}

end; {while-not inhand}

{add chosen card if not already in hand}

inhand := true;

while inhand do

begin {while-inhand}

inhand := true;

write('What card do you want

to add(card<space>suit) ? ');

write(Lst, 'What card do you

want to add(card<space>suit)

? ');

Readcardandsuit(charcard,

charsuit);

Convertcard(charcard, char-

suit, row, col, card);

case row of

1 : suit := 'Spades';

2 : suit := 'Hearts';

3 : suit := 'Diamonds';

4 : suit := 'Clubs';

end; {case}

writeln(Lst, card, ' ', char-

suit);

if (handarray[row, col] <>

card) then

inhand := false;

if (not inhand) then

begin {if}

handarray[row, col] :=

card; {add card to hand}

end {if}

else

begin {else}

writeln(card, 'of ', suit,

' is already in hand');

writeln(Lst, card, 'of ',

suit, ' is already in

hand');

end; {else}

end; {while-inhand}

end {execute Changecard--non-

empty hand}

else

begin {else}

writeln('Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln('get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln(Lst, 'get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end; {else}

end; {Changecard}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Showpointsofhand *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : calculates and prints the *)

(* points of the hand *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray has a unique *)

(* nonempty hand of card (this procedure *)

(* will not execute with an empty hand) *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : points (integer) have *)

(* been assigned *)

(******************************************)

procedure Showpointsofhand(handarray

{input} : stringarray; var points-

{output} : integer );

var

row : integer;

col : integer;

prevpoints : integer;

begin {Showpointsofhand}

Testforemptyhand(handarray-

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (not emptyhand) then

begin {execute Showpoints-

ofhand--nonempty hand}

points := 0;

prevpoints := 0;

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

cardsinsuit[row] := 0;

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

if handarray[row,

col] = ' A ' then

19

points := points

+ 4;

if handarray[row,

col] = ' K ' then

points := points

+ 3;

if handarray[row,

col] = ' Q ' then

points := points

+ 2;

if handarray[row,

col] = ' J ' then

points := points

+1;

if handarray[row,

col] <> ' 0 ' then

cardsinsuit[row]

:= cardsinsuit-

[row] + 1;

end; {col-loop}

case cardsinsuit[row]

of

0 : points := points

+ 2;

1 : points := points

+ 1;

end; {case}

pointsinsuit[row] :=

points - prevpoints;

prevpoints := points;

end; {row-loop}

if choice <> 7 then {choice

= 7, points passed to

Giveopeningbid}

begin {if-choice <> 7}

if points = 1 then

begin {if-points = 1}

writeln(points, '

point');

writeln(Lst,

points, ' point');

end {if-points = 1}

else

begin {else}

writeln(points, '

points');

writeln(Lst, points,

' points');

end; {else}

end; {if--choice <> 7}

end {execute Showpointsof-

hand--nonempty hand}

else

begin {else}

writeln('Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln('get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'Current hand

is empty. Choose 1) or 3)

from menu to ');

writeln(Lst, 'get a

nonempty hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end; {else}

end; {Showpointsofhand}

(******************************************)

(* Name : Giveopeningbid *)

(* *)

(* Purpose : computes and prints the *)

(* opening bid *)

(* *)

(* Preconditions : handarray has a unique *)

(* nonempty hand (will not execute with an*)

(* empty hand *)

(* *)

(* Postconditions : opening bid has *)

(* been computed and printed *)

(******************************************)

procedure Giveopeningbid(var

points : integer);

type

string10 = string[10];

var

bid : string10;

suit : string10;

row : integer;

col : integer;

rowindex : integer;

cardsinrow : integer;

mostcardsinsuit : integer;

max : integer;

begin {Giveopeningbid}

Testforemptyhand(handarray-

{input}, emptyhand{output});

if (not emptyhand) then

begin {execute Giveopening-

bid--nonempty hand}

Showpointsofhand(hand-

array{input}, points-

{output});

mostcardsinsuit := 0;

cardsinrow := 0;

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

for col := 1 to 13 do

begin {col-loop}

if handarray[row,

col] <> ' 0 '

then

cardsinrow :=

cardsinrow + 1

end; {col-loop}

if cardsinrow > most-

cardsinsuit then

begin

mostcardsinsuit :=

cardsinrow;

rowindex := row

end; {if}

cardsinrow := 0

end; {row-loop}

{case: causes bid to be 1 of which- }

{ever 5-card suit has highest number}

{of points. If 2 5-card suits have }

{same number of points, then suit of}

{lowest number rowindex will be bid }

case rowindex of

1 : suit := 'Spade';

20

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William Rohler

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Michael Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites contribution of

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Email address:

[email protected] Articles can be

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granted to reprint any article herein, provided credit

is given.

2 : suit := 'Heart';

3 : suit := 'Diamond';

4 : suit := 'Club';

end; {case}

if points < 13 then

begin {bid-case 1}

writeln('pass');

writeln(Lst, 'pass');

end; {bid-case 1}

if (13 <= points) and

(points <= 18) and (most-

cardsinsuit >= 5) then

begin {bid-case 2}

max := 0;

for row := 1 to 4 do

begin {row-loop}

if (cardsinsuit[row] >= 5)

then

begin {if}

if pointsinsuit[row] >

max then

begin {if}

max := pointsin-

suit[row];

rowindex := row;

end; {if}

case rowindex of

1 : suit := ' Spade ';

2 : suit := ' Heart ';

3 : suit := ' Diamond ';

4 : suit := ' Club ';

end; {case}

end; {if}

end; {row-loop}

writeln('1 ', suit);

writeln(Lst, '1 ', suit);

end; {bid-case 2}

if (13 <= points) and

(points <= 15) and (most-

cardsinsuit < 5) then

begin {bid-case 3}

writeln('1 club');

writeln(Lst, '1 club');

end; {bid-case 3}

if (16 <= points) and (points

<= 18) and (most cardsinsuit < 5)

then begin

{bid-case4}

writeln('1 no trump');

writeln(Lst, '1 no trump');

end; {bid-case 4}

if 18 < points then

begin {bid-case 5}

writeln('2 clubs');

writeln(Lst, '2 clubs ');

end; {bid-case 5}

end {execute Giveopeningbid--

nonempty hand}

else

begin {else}

writeln('Current hand is empty.

Choose 1) or 3) from menu to ');

writeln('get a nonempty hand.');

writeln;

writeln(Lst, 'Current hand is

empty. Choose 1) or 3) from

menu to ');

writeln(Lst, 'get a nonempty

hand.');

writeln(Lst);

end; {else}

end; {Giveopeningbid}

(******************************************)

begin {main}

randomize;

choice := 0; {initialize to insure entry

into while loop}

Initializearray(handarray); while choice

<> 8 do

begin {while}

Showmenu;

readln(choice);

writeln(Lst,choice);

case choice of

1 : Generatehand(handarray);

2 : Savehandtofile(handarray);

3 : Readhandfromfile(handarray);

4 : Changecard(handarray);

5 : Displayhand(handarray);

6 : Showpointsofhand(handarray{in-

put}, points{output});

7 : Giveopeningbid(points);

else {quit if choice is 8}

end; {case}

end; {while}

end. {main}

Special Thanks to Tim Henderson for scanning the

graphics and helping to produce this newsletter. (the

Editors)

21