Housekeeping 20241208

Corrections, stats, and an update

First, I must apologize to Paul Lindner. I had mistyped his name in The Internet Gopher from Minnesota. He kindly reached out and corrected that issue as well as a mistake in referring to Tim Berners-Lee as just Lee. Thank you for the corrections Mr. Lindner! I take it seriously when I say that all corrections to the record are welcome. While this isn’t a publication striving for the wildest professionalism, I do wish it to be an accurate report of the facts of history as much as is possible.

Second, in Nippon Electric Company, I had originally written that the 2201 was the first fully-operational, transistorized computer to be publicly demonstrated. This is incorrect. TRADIC from Bell was first. It was demonstrated on the 16th of September in 1956 at the Institute of Radio Engineers Convention in New York City. The TRADIC, as far as I can tell, was absolutely the first fully transistorized computer, and it was publicly demonstrated in a fully working state. The sources for my statement about the 2201 made this claim, and I passed it on. I believe that the correct statement here would be that the 2201 was the first commercially available, fully transistorized, fully operational computer to have been demonstrated to the public as opposed to a single customer, governmental organization, or similar body. This is a much narrower achievement, but it is still quite notable. TRADIC was built by Bell for the USAF and was not a generally available commercial product. I wouldn't exactly refer to the 2201 as having been mass produced, but there were several.

Third, we have an interesting addition. Marc Rochkind informed me that the University of Maryland was another early purchaser of the UNIVAC 1108, and that their system ran a rather buggy EXEC 8. He then encountered another 1108 at Bell Labs. I wonder how many people had that experience of an 1108 in college and another on the job?

Now, for the stats. This publication has now achieved a 62% retention rate. I thank you all, and I am flattered. ARF subscribers hail from 49 of the 50 US states. West Virginia is the only one missing. The largest subscriber counts are in California with 21%, New York and Washington each with 8%, Texas with 7%, and Illinois with 4%. Globally, ARF has subscribers in most countries. Mongolia, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan are the hold outs in Asia. The least represented area is Africa, but I can happily report that readership there has grown with Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, and Morocco having the largest subscriber counts. The countries representing the highest subscriber numbers globally are: the USA with 40%, India with 8%, the UK with 7%, Germany with 4%, and Canada with 4%. This publication shares overlap in subscribers with several other publications. The highest is Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky with 29%. The Pragmatic Engineer and ARF share 22%, SemiAnalysis 16%, Goto 10 Retro 16%, Computer Ads from the Past 16%, and The Chip Letter 14%.

Finally, I know there’s been a bit of slowdown in posts. This cost me in the paid subscriber world, and that’s understandable. I had a case of Covid that got fairly bad, and I just had neither the mental clarity nor the energy to do the amount of reading that this publication requires of me. I have recovered, and I am getting back to it. I thank all of you who’ve stuck with me. To all of my readers paid and free, thank you!