Over New Year’s, I got to visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and I’m finally going to post some photos from my visit.

First, what I really wanted to see was the computer with the first true GUI — the Xerox Alto:

Next up, the classic PDP-1, known to me as the machine on which the very first video game, Spacewar!, was programmed by some folks at MIT in 1962. Today, you can play Spacewar! online. When you do, notice that the spaceships are affected by “gravity” from the black hole in the center of the screen, but that the fired missiles are not. That’s due to the fact that the spaceship calculations were already maxing out the PDP-1’s processor cycles. And yes, that hulking monolith in the background is the CPU. The display and light pen are the interface. And those really are stacks of manila punchcards on the desk.

Two more landmark devices: On the left, an Interface Message Processor. This particular IMP was one of the first nodes on the ARPANET, which of course eventually grew into the Internet that we know today. On the right, one of Doug Engelbart’s first mice.

And now for a computer that nobody except the museum has heard of: the Kitchen Computer. From the museum’s description:

The Kitchen Computer was featured in the 1969 Neiman Marcus catalog as a $10,600 tool for housewives to store and retrieve recipes. Unfortunately, the user interface was only binary lights and switches. There is no evidence that any Kitchen Computer was ever sold.

I guess for some people, filing 3-by-5 cards in a box is easier than learning binary. Actually, just memorizing all your recipes would be easier than learning binary. “If it’s not usable, it doesn’t work.” An early, expensive lesson in the importance of usability.

And finally, some early ASCII art (“in color” even!) — the Mona Lisa represented in ASCII by H. Philip Peterson in 1964:

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yesterday’s 5-years-in-Iraq protest was well-orchestrated, in part thanks to frequent updates delivered to participants via text messages. C.W. Nevius reports:

I was told to simply text message the “DASW [Direct Action to Stop the War] text mob” to get up-to-the-minute messages describing the latest action sent to my cell phone. At 3:08:29 p.m., for example, I received a message that said, “DASW current estimate - 150 arrests - thanks for taking to the streets and joining in.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of a small, local activist group (Bay Area DASW) employing SMS to help keep their participants in the loop. It’s a great idea, and could shift the dynamic of other direct actions in the future. Protests can be intense and a little scary when you see hordes of activists running up against walls of police — “What’s going on down there?” “Is everyone okay?” Panic breaks out when individuals can’t see over the crowd to get the bigger picture. “Are we safe here?” “Should we keep marching, or turn back?” A centralized organizing committee, armed with binoculars and mobiles, can now monitor the protest status among themselves, sending only pertinent information about the big picture to participants, such as number of arrests, or “look out, tear gas deployed, head SW on Market.”

I can cook. I can follow a recipe, and I am comfortable in the kitchen. But I don’t have my Imperial unit conversion values memorized, so I don’t know off the top of my head, for example, that 16 tablespoons equals 1 cup.

When cooking with butter, I usually rely on the stick itself to provide me with the guidance I need. In this case, the recipe called for 3/4 of a cup. Super, no problem. Okay, let’s see what the wrapper can do to help us. It says:

1/4 LB = 8 TBSP

1/4 LB = 1/2 CUP

ONE LB = 2 CUPS

THIS UNIT NOT LABELED FOR RETAIL SALE.

How is any of this useful information? I don’t know about you, but I never measure my ingredients in pounds. But somewhere out there, a butter label designer thinks that’s exactly what I want to know. And maybe if I worked in a mess hall kitchen, he’d be right, but I don’t.

The problem here is that I have to convert my 3/4 cup value into butter-pounds, a very unfamiliar unit. At long last, I see that:

3/4 cups = 3/8 lbs = 12 Tbsp

Finally! Now I count out the Tbsp markers on the label, see that there are 8 Tbsp in each stick. So I need 12/8 or 1 1/2 sticks.

I knew that David Small and others had figured out how to laser-etch text on food, but this egg was the first instance I’d seen of this technology making into my own kitchen.

I’m not sure what to think: useful, creepy, or both?

One of Simon’s earlier posts reminded me to pick up the latest issue of Technology Review. In it, there’s a piece on two new image-handling technologies — Photosynth and Seadragon — both of which now fall under the Microsoft umbrella. Photosynth enables smooth, seamless visual navigation of high-resolution imagery, and Seadragon generates 3-D composites out of ordinary two-dimensional photographs. Yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense, but it’s true. You should just watch the 7-minute demo.