[Keith G]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
"Keith G" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote


In 1972 I was an EE undergraduate student, working on a
hybrid computer, which was composed of an analog
computer, a pair of A/D & D/A converters, and a small
digital computer. The A/D - D/A pair was speced to
have true 16 bits monotonicity and accuracy, and a max
200 KHz conversion rate. Price was said to be around
$500,000. The digital computer had 32k bytes of RAM and
an approx 1 Megabyte hard drive. The price was in the
same range.

Hard drive?

Sure. By then hard drives had been around for like 15 years. This one
had a single 14" ferrite-covered aluminum disk in a plastic cartridge.


OK.


At exactly that time, my (late) father-in-law was a
Systems Engineer on what was then Europe's largest
'hybrid' digital/analog computer at BAC, Stevenage. It
had 8K of Ram and the only storage medium I ever go to
hear about was tapes...??

We had tapes on larger computers, but this one was about cards,
printing and mountable hard drives.

For a long time the UK has tended to trail the US, particularly in
computer technology. When I was in the biz, we figured 2-3 years, and
twice the price. I'm sure you will take umbridge, but that's how
things were in the late 1980s with our UK subsidiary.


I take no umbrage, it's how it was - I remember it. Having bankrupted
itself pulling various Europeans' arse out of the fire, the UK was still
paying for WW2 back in those days.

There was no money to develop computers despite (I gather) a
considerable contribution to technology in the early stages. Similarly,
what aerospace technology innovation/development there had been, had
gone 'West' with various Brit designs being stifled in favour of other
designs by our 'NATO allies' - all under threat of *fund withdrawal*,
which this country simply couldn't afford back then. (Or now, if the
truth be told...)

I don't think the UK trails the US by much more than 6 months in things
of a less 'serious' nature these days, but that's only because the Japs
ship to the US first. I do think we are unrecoverable *years* behind the
affluent Far East in the areas of 'lifestyle' products, engineering and
'automotive', in particular...