☮ ♥ ♬ 🧑💻“Meet the COMPUTER ADDICTS”
Chris was living his #RetroComputer life back in 1983. It was foretold 😂🤣☺️
#BBC / #computing #work / #hardware / #VideoGames / #Commodore / #PET 1983 <https://youtube.com/watch?v=jbu0kmCeLSI
Oh shite, I was wrong.
Chris has a #CommodorePET at home and a thumping big hard drive. Wait for it, Chris is writing #software in Commodore #BASIC, an “expert system” for ‘House Planning’. Expected time to completion?
Three months to write the code; Three months to populate the (database) system to make it useful.
Hack Chris, Hack
“It’s a bright and sunny day, just right for a stroll in the fresh air. But businessman Graham has got a problem that’s keeping him indoors.
He’s tying to locate the Princess of Serenia (The Wizard and the Princess and Adventure in Serenia) …”
See the pattern? 🤣☺️
#RetroGames / #Apple2 / #KingsQuest <https://hiresadventure.fandom.com/wiki/Serenia>
Shop keeper Phyllis used her computer system to automate book keeping, taking the time to prepare from five hours to five minutes.
Having learned the system down to hardware level, Phyllis is now building an electronics kit. Her aim? Build a computer herself; Or as we called it an “electronic gadget”.
What Phyllis doesn’t say is she was a maths graduate from University and “#Cypher Clerk” in “Hut 5” at #BletchleyPark during the war.
The”Official Secrets Act” was in force in 1983 😂🤣☺️
#UK / WW2 / #computing / #bombe / #SigInt / #accounts / #hardware #kits / #Commodore / #PET / #RetroComputing
Young’uns forget after WW2 a fair percentage of the male population in the UK were trained to kill. The rest including women served in many public and military jobs including code breaking.
This is of course, conjecture but Phyllis seems quite adept at putting the machine to work crunching numbers and knows discrete electronics. The difference between single and dual potentiometers, capacitors.
A tell is “electronic gadget.”
According to the YT comments, Phyllis passed away in 2020. It’s conceivable Phyllis was almost 60 here. Easily old enough to have lived through WW2.
Approximately 8000 women worked at #BletchleyPark during WW2.
One codebreaker I can quickly look up is #JaneFawcett MBE.
“In 1940, at the age of 18, she was interviewed by senior #codebreaker #StuartMilnerBarry, and joined the secret codebreaking project at Bletchley Park. She joined a group of women known as the "#Debs of Bletchley Park",
… “Hughes was assigned to Hut 6 a "Decoding Room" of women only”.
“On 25 May 1941, Hughes and several other women were briefed on the search for the German battleship #Bismarck. Shortly thereafter, she decoded a message referring to the Bismarck that detailed its current position and destination in France.“
“Her work did not come to light until decades later, during the 1990s, as it had been classified under Britain's Official Secrets Act”.
Jane passed away in 2016.
#OSA / #WW2 / #CodeBreaker / #personal <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Fawcett>
Chewie@peterrenshaw my mum was into gardening and was part of several groups that gave talks on the subject.
Once, someone came to stay at our house as she was giving a gardening talk locally, and lived quite far away.
Several years later, we were watching Station X on #Channel4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_X_%28British_TV_series%29?wprov=sfla1) and saw her on telly!
She was Mavis Batey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Batey?wprov=sfla1)! We had no idea!
Respect 🙏
@chewie "When Cunningham won at Matapan, By the grace of God and Mavis,
"Nigro simillima cygno est, praise Heaven, A very rara avis"
Garden historian. What strikes me is the seemingly ordinariness of these #CodeBreakers; The depth of UKs education in language, classics and science; The ability to also read the minds of OPPO operators.
Station X: <https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y3gRQ7NmbrU>
#MI6 / #cryptography / #rodding / #cribbing / #PERX
kianryan ☑️🐙🏳️🌈@peterrenshaw Be more Phyllis.
rhempel@peterrenshaw @shanselman - Check out the Commodore PET in the photos :-)
Jeff Bronks@peterrenshaw
Google Phyllis Arandale and you'll find her in at least two BBC programmes from the 1980s.
Google Phyllis Arandale and you'll find her in at least two BBC programmes from the 1980s.
Stumpy The Mutt@peterrenshaw My grandmother was a cryptanalyst for the U.S. Navy during WW2. From what I could gather she worked on Russian stuff, but never told me much about any of it.
BashStKid@peterrenshaw To be a bit pedantic, everyone at Bletchley had been so greatly terrorised after the war that they must never, never speak about their work to anyone, they all complied.
Partially lifting the classification in the late 70s and early 80s made no difference to most people, they kept quiet no matter what.
Partially lifting the classification in the late 70s and early 80s made no difference to most people, they kept quiet no matter what.