Like any 60’s teenager, I liked music. I slowly acquired some half-decent stereo equipment, including am FM tuner, turntable, cassettte player, and a Dolby noise reducer (quite the piece of audio equipment in those days), along with a set of “Smaller” Advent speakers.
Now I wanted something to house them. So one summer I brought materials for a cabinet that I designed, and spent about a month building this cabinet, shown in the photos some years later in my apartment in Montreal while a grad student at Concordia University.
Eventually I added a reel-to-reel tape recorder which sat in the lower opening record-storage section. It was using this set up that I recorded many of Rabbi Motty Berger’s radio shows!
While a student at Carleton University (officially for Geography, but more in computer science), I joined with two friends to see if we could “hack” the university mainframe — a Xerox Sigma 7.
I don’t think the work “hacking” was yet in common use. We were just interested in seeing if we could do it, as a personal challenge.
Long story short, we succeeded in finding an unprotected super account that gave us access to everything. To prove our success, we printed out a list of every user account and password on the system, some 50 pages, at the blinding speed of 15 CHARACTERS per second. The task took about 5 hours. And because we each wanted a copy as our “trophy”, we ran the process simultaneously on three teletype terminals.
Since we didn’t have any sinister motives, we then bound the printout like a booklet, and made an appointment with the computer center director. He was understandably shocked, but we didn’t face any disciplinary action because we explained that our motive was to show the vulnerability.
He then told us that they knew that “something” was happening, because the entire system became very slow for those few hours. (This was in a time when computers were still quite primitive — the multi-million dollar mainframe had only 256MB of memory, and about 1/1000 the power of a typical smartphone of the 2020-era!) He also told us that with what we had accessed, we potentially could have altered student grades, or even run the staff payroll — and no one would have questioned it!
I believe my participation in this venture is one of the factors that led to the job offer a few years later, when I went to work for the computer center.
While I was a Concordia I experienced the frustration of writing papers without the benefit of any sort of typesetting or formatting tools. Word processing didn’t exist yet.
Having only the university’s huge and cumbersome mainframe computer to work on (A CDC Cyber computer), I set out to solve this problem for myself by writing a rudimentary formatting program. On this computer model it was especially difficult because lower-case letters took two storage places (not exactly “bytes” because this was a decimal computer with variable length “words” — see below) while upper-case characters took a single place. So something simple like underlining a word was a huge undertaking. Printers were not able to underline a word without first printing the word (or line) and then backspacing to the beginning and adding the underline characters!
A brief web description of the unique features of the CDC Cyber computers: “The Cybers were interesting systems in that they were even then “throwback” systems. They used 60-bit words, octal arithmetic, one’s-complement arithmetic (which meant there is a negative zero as well as a positive zero, and they were sometimes not equal to each other), non-hierarchical file systems with seven-character file names, and used character coding unique to CDC (not BCD, not ASCII, and not EBCDIC, it was called “display code”). The fact that the Cyber 170 architecture used a word length that was not a power of two caused a few problems when programming at the bit level, and dealing with the 8-bit bytes that everybody else used (e.g. the AMS systems and offline plotters) made for an interesting challenge. “
Anyone who understands the above will recognize that creating a word processor on such a computer was a difficult task. No one would choose to use this computer for word processing, but I had no other choice.
As I worked on this and started using it a bit, some other grad students saw it and asked if they could use it. I realized that I actually had something to offer. So I worked hard at adding all sorts of features, and created what I called TypeSet. Many grad students started using it, and I even took feature requests from students and professors, adding many new features before I left in 1976. I heard it was still in use sometime after I left — until the first simple word processing programs came out on mini and micro-computers a few years later.
I’ve attached my TypeSet user manual — which was created entirely using TypeSet itself! By today’s standards it is laughable, but in 1975 on a mainframe, it was quite revolutionary!
Read a bit of the Typeset manual (below) to see how ridiculously complex a task it was to create a Typeset document. Yet because there was nothing better yet available, it enjoyed some popularity for a few years!
After graduating from Carleton I found out that Concordia University in Montreal was starting a Masters program in Computer Science. Together with a friend from Ottawa, I applied — and we were both offered a full scholarship which even covered out of town living expenses… so we both went.
We were each also offered the opportunity to teach an undergrad course in computer science, which we accepted. I found the experience of teaching a Fortran language programming class to 50 undergrad commerce students very enjoyable even though it required a lot of work.
I was rated by the class as part of the University’s policy of student appraisals, and was happy to receive a pretty positive rating as teacher.
As part of my thesis research I worked under the direction of a bright Polish professor, who had been working for years on using a mathematical construct called a decision table to analyze computer programs.
Without getting all technical (at this point I barely understand it myself!) suffice to say that I embarked on building an actual processor to use decision table techniques to analyze programs while they were still being designed. If done correctly, this could uncover logic bugs and inefficiencies in the design, long before the actual program was coded.
As an aside, I chose to write the processor in a language called APL. This language is no longer in use, and is extremely cryptic and difficult to master, but had incredibly powerful mathematical and matrix handling capabilities that are still unmatched.
At one point, once my automated processor was working, my advisor suggested that I write a paper about it and submit it to an upcoming national computer conference. (Little did I know then that if I published this work it would no longer be able to be used as my theses — something that I was very angry about later!)
So I wrote and submitted the paper, and it was accepted for publication! As part of this, I was invited to do a live presentation of the paper to a bunch of computer scientists at the conference!
I did so, and by and large received a lot of blank stares, as it was a difficult subject to explain, and the concept was, to most, unbelievable. In any case, I’ve attached the actual paper and the cover of the conference proceedings book in which it was published.
In April of 1976 I moved back to Ottawa to take a job at Carleton University’s Computer Center. This was like a dream to me!
The job was primarily to support academic use of the computer systems and software by students and professors. Each of us had responsibility for certain programs, and since my background was in geography, I ended up supporting certain mapping (SYMAP) and mathematical (MATHLAB) programs.
SYMAP was a very rudimentary (but heavily used) program that could produce maps using the computer printer — made up of typewritten characters overprinted to create densities. Like I said, very rudimentary. Graphic plotters were just emerging, and although the university owned one, there was no decent software for them yet.
Some professors expressed a desire to somehow be able to “overlay” two different maps in order to show various relationships — for example, a map of rock-types and a map of vegetation types, when overlaid, could potentially indicate best places to look for precious minerals… So I took on the challenge and created a SYMAP add-on program which I called SUPERMAP (for its ability to super-impose, not because it was superior!) This became quite popular with some social-economic geographers.
There was already a program called SYMVU that took SYMAP data points and produced a small three-dimensional graphic plot — however it was a cumbersome program and could only output the results to the plotter. Plotted output was very slow and expensive. So I undertook creating a very similar program that would run faster and be able to output the plots on CRT screen monitors. I called it PREVU, and it became quite popular within the Carleton geography and social studies departments.
A geology professor was suitably impressed and asked me to give a special lecture to his class. I accepted and showed how such a system could be used for remote sensing mapping — taking map data from early Earth-mapping satellites and using it to help in mineral exploration. [See also my “side note” at the end of this post for more interesting details]
One year Carleton had a visiting scholar from the university of Edinburgh in Scotland. He had developed one of the World’s first mapping programs that used a graphics plotter, and came to Carleton to continue that development. HIs program, GIMMS, could produce what were at the time high-resolution black and white plots of maps. Because of my background I worked quite closely with the GIMMS project and provided technical support to its users.
In my last year at Carleton, 1975-6, micro computers were just emerging. I saw potential in them, whereas the computer center itself had little interest. But as grad students and professors started inquiring about the potential use of such simple computers, I was given the added responsibility of being their Micro Computer Liaison.
My main project (which took come convincing) was to use a micro computer and a digitizing table to replace the aging and problematic digitizer that the geography department had used for mapping creation. Although the original digitizer was worth close to $100,000, I was successful in creating a functional replacement using a North-Star Micro computer and a new large digitizing tablet — which if I remember correctly cost a total of about $2000.
I have attached a couple of Carleton newsletters which showcase some of the projects I worked on…
Just before I left Carleton to move to Toronto, I participated in a software conversion project. Carleton had decided to move to a Honeywell mainframe after Xerox unexpectedly decided to exit the mainframe business. I converted and certified SYMAP and MATHLAB to run on the Honeywell machine, in cooperation with the companies that produced those software programs.
Side note: the geology professor that I mentioned earlier was named Patrick Arthur Hill. I took a class from him when I was an undergraduate student, and the following year — because I enjoyed his class so much — I actually sat in on his lectures for a class I was not enrolled in. He was an amazing teacher, and I’ve mentioned him to many people as my idea of what a university professor should be. His lectures, although on geology, included all sorts of references to countries around the world, cultures, etc. I remember him even describing how a certain geological formation had affected the music compositions of a particular area!
In any case, when I visited Carleton campus 20 years after I graduated, I tried to look him up. The geology department office told me that he was retired but that he still maintained a box and if I wanted to leave a note I could do so. So I wrote an impromptu note telling him how much I had enjoyed his lectures, reminding him that I had taught a guest lecture for him at one point, and just wishing him well. I was astounded when a few weeks later I got in the mail a handwritten note from him which I present below…
Sadly, I found out that he passed away two years after I left that note… And from his obituary learned a lot more about him that I wish I had known…
From 1977 to 1980 I helped participate in whatever programs Rabbi Berger was spearheading. One of those was his weekly radio show (described in detail in a separate post). Another (also another post) was the Carleton university campus group we called “Havurah 613”.
Although I don’t remember much about this, it seems (based on a brief article I found in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin) that I was also a coordinator for a Jewish student free-loan program….
When I moved back to Ottawa in April 1976 to take a job at Carelton University’s Computer Center, I was already fascinated at the prospect of actually owning a computer. There were a very few computer “kits” on the market already, including the Altair and Imsai.
Having no significant expenses, I decided to splurge and purchase the IMSAI 8080 — and have the kit assembled for me at extra cost. Although called the “8080” after the Intel processor, a newer processor called the “Z80” had recently emerged and was not only compatible, but much more powerful. Of course I ordered mine to be built using the Z80.
Initially this was a personal experiment. I was interested to see what these new “personal” computers could amount to. Admittedly, although I saw great potential, I felt that their time had not yet arrived.
My system consisted of the processor, a whopping 40KB of memory, a single floppy disk drive, a CRT monitor (made for security systems) and a keyboard (which was not enclosed in a case, just the raw circuit board on a piece of bubble-wrap.
Programming was done either in machine code by entering steps via the front panel switches, or using a very simple BASIC programming language that was then available.
Although I didn’t do much with it other than experiment, I did write a demo calendar program that displayed a month calendar on the screen for any year… and the demo could be run so that the months progressed automatically. I offered the program to the store that I purchased the computer from, and they actually had it running in their window for a while!
One day I got a call from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper asking if they could send up a team to interview me. Seems they wanted to do a story on this new “home computer” phenomenon, and the store told them that I had one of the most powerful systems in the city!
The photos are not of my actual system which sadly I junked when we moved to Chicago in 1993, but they are of the exact system I had. The original newspaper article is also below.
The photo of the only remaining original memory card from that system IS real. That board measures about 10″ wide and 1/4″ thick and contains 16 KB (16,000 bytes) storage. Contrast that to today’s fingertip-sized micro-SD cards in your phones… As an example I gave to my classes: It would take 1 million of these cards to match the capacity of a 16 GB micro-SD. Placed end-to-end, those cards would stretch about 144 MILES. Stacked, they could make a pile almost 4 MILES high! Not to mention that these 16KB cards cost about $100 each, so 1 million cards would cost $100 million!
And today 16GB is a very small SD card, with capacities approaching the TERABYTE range!
Memory card provided only 16KB Ottawa Citizen article Jan 5, 1978
Once Rabbi Berger was settled in to Ottawa, he wanted to start a Sunday Jewish radio show. He found a small station willing to host it, but it was about a 2 hour drive each way.
For a few weeks he made the trip, but it was taxing. They offered that he could send them the show pre-taped, but he didn’t have a source to get that done.
Well…. I had some half-decent stereo equipment and a pair of stereo mikes… So I volunteered to record the show. He would come to my apartment, where I had a cardboard box set up as a table to position the microphones. I would cue Jewish music on my turntable between his talks, and record the whole thing on a cassette tape. Quite unprofessional, but it worked! We had some good laughs about these sessions.
The tape would be mailed, and aired the following Sunday.
I think we only did a few shows like this… Maybe only ten or so. Then I went looking for another option. I dropped in a few times to talk to the staff at Carleton University’s own FM radio station. They were sympathetic, especially since I worked for Carleton, but had no free Sunday time slots.
Incredibly, a few weeks after I first spoke to them, they called me to say that another “cultural” show (I believe east Indian) had unexpectedly cancelled, and they were eager to fill the slot with a Jewish show! So Motty was now able to do a more professional radio show in a real local studio.
I still have fond memories of those early recording sessions in my apartment. (In an earlier post you can see the stereo equipment that I actually used)
Article in Canadian Jewish News about the show prior to it being hosted by Carleton university radio station CKCU.
I came back to Ottawa in 1976, and had just become frum through Lubavitch. Working on a University Campus made me feel like I should try to do something for the Jewish students, but I had no idea how. Luckily, Rabbi Motty Berger moved to Ottawa about 6 months after I did. In time, we came up with the name Havurah 613 — the 613 playing on Ottawa’s telephone area code and the number of Torah mitzvahs.
Motty made all the speaker and program arrangements, and I made flyers, newspaper ads, campus room arrangements, etc. I also sometimes used my own phone number as a contact for information. [No cell phones yet, but I had a cassette-based answering machine on my home land line]
The very first program on campus faced difficulties. Some people in the “established” Jewish community didn’t like that newcomers were making “unofficial” programs! They tried many ways to block it, including a last-minute lounge cancellation that forced me to book a different room and quickly post signs re-directing people. Amazingly, two students who showed up that first night later became Lubavitchers!
One flyer that I made was — just for fun — designed by me on the University computer, and printed entirely on a graphics plotter. This very crude flyer by today’s standards was likely the very first Chabad ad to be completely drawn by a computer! It required equipment worth hundreds of thousands in those years!
Some of the ads and flyers are attached below. The “Chanukah Dreidel” ad is the one drawn by computer. I was especially proud of my concept of the USSR hammer&sickle design “morphing” into the bais-hay in the flyer for Dr Rabkin’s talk 🙂
Very likely the first Chabad ad drawn entirely by a computer!
