Photo Gallery
Early APL developers, from left to right: Dick Lathwell, Ken Iverson, Roger Moore, Adin Falkoff, Phil Abrams, Larry Breed. Taken in the I.P. Sharp Associates hospitality suite during the 1978 APL User Meeting in Toronto, Canada.
image courtesy of the Computer History Museum in California
IBM Selectric APL golfball
image courtesy of Jashank Jeremy
Jigsaw from APL85 conference in Seattle
IBM 5100 portable computer.
This sophisticated personal computer was released six years before the more famous "IBM PC." It ran some IBM mainframe software, including the elegant APL programming language. Weighing 55 pounds, it was marginally portable.
image and text courtesy of the Computer History Museum in California
Ken Iverson
images courtesy of the Computer History Museum in California
CPU, computer operator's console and peripherals of an IBM System/360 Model 50 in use at Volkswagen in the 1970s
Minnowbrook, 1980
"Ken and several nested array developers still sorting out the fundamentals"
image courtesy of Gregory Jaxon
"Sales page from my first cassette tape APL-80"
image courtesy of David Ayre
"Nostalgic greatness! A 'clicky' spring beam IBM 3278 keyboard of the 70s" – image courtesy of David Ayre
Bob Bernecky, 1987
"The site was the I.P. Sharp Associates data centre at The Exchange Tower at King St. W. and York St. in Toronto, in the bowels of the financial district. The hulking piece of equipment is the I/O channel interface cabinet for an IBM 3084 mainframe, and the large cables on the floor, with connectors larger than a Raspberry Pi, are "bus and tag" cables, used to connect I/O-device controllers to the mainframe. The lab coat is nearly mandatory for this sort of work, because the area under the raised floor serves as the cooling air conduit for the cabinets, and working there was like trying to work in a very cold hurricane.
The 3084 cost about $8,700,000 back then. Other IBM 3084 stats:
It was fast: 38MHz machine cycle time (only 30 times slower than a $50 Raspberry Pi).
It had huge amounts of main memory: Up to 32MB (compared to the 32GB flash card on my Raspberry Pi).
It was somewhat larger than a Raspberry Pi, and used a wee bit more power: probably around 50KW, compared to the Pi's 10W.
In terms of I/O bandwidth, the 3084 could theoretically handle something like 144MB/sec (48 channels × 3MB/sec each). The 3084, like most other pieces of IBM big iron, was a serious performer on the I/O front, which is one reason why it worked so well. Today, my several-year-old desktop machine can read from an SSD at over 500MB/sec, though, so you probably can save some money on hardware..."
image and text courtesy of Bob Bernecky
"Scientific Time Sharing Corporation's Management Committee circa 1975, from left to right: Al Rose, Larry Breed, Phil Abrams (front), Martin Gardner (rear), Roy Sykes, Dan Dyer, Bob Smith, Ed Garner, Bob Fick (missing: Pat Gehl)"
image courtesy of Roy Sykes
"Scientific Time Sharing Corporation's co-founder (with Dan Dyer) was Pat Gehl, V.P. of Marketing (and Sales – they were not distinguished at the time). Pat was missing from the previous photograph (MCP), but here is pictured in California with his wife Patsy and a few other STSCers"
image and text courtesy of Roy Sykes
"Poster made to celebrate the release of STSC's APL*Plus product that supported Nested Arrays"
image and text courtesy of Bob Smith
"Bill Lewis (seated) and Bill Rutiser (standing) taken at STSC in November 1983"
image courtesy of Bill Lewis
"STSC APL*PLUS 80 for the Radio Shack TRS-80, floppy disk and reference card. Circa 1982."
image and text courtesy of Bill Lewis
"Original sheet of the APL font keyboard stickers shipped with the APL*PLUS/PC system. Circa 1984."
image and text courtesy of Bill Lewis
"Two of my favourites from the STSC fold-out brochure circa 1971 (see http://www.rexswain.com/aplinfo.html) and an APL Typeball
images and text courtesy of Rex Swain
Ken Iverson and Arthur Witney
image courtesy of Rob Hodgkinson, taken at APL89 New York Conference