ACS Reunion, July 24, 1999
IBM T. J. Watson
Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY
Notes by Lynn Conway, 1999:
On July 24, 1999, IBM-ACS vets
Herb Schorr,
Lynn
Conway and
Fran Allen
met with with
John Cocke at the
IBM T. J. Watson
Research Center, along with
Mark Smotherman of Clemson University and
Peter Capek of IBM.
ACS vet Ed Sussenguth participated
by conference call from North Carolina.
Mark discussed his ACS historical
reconstruction effort and overviewed the materials on
his ACS website. I had
brought along a copy of
my
ACS archives. I showed it to John and discussed how it might be used
to reconstruct the hardware architecture. Fran Allen went through a number of
key ACS documents that she had located, including a critical missing link:
the ACS Instruction Set Manual. Herb Schorr contributed a lot of
reminiscences regarding key events in ACS history; I've never seen Herb so
animated in conversation before (I sent Herb a copy of my archive after the
meeting). We enjoyed a wonderful dinner and conversation at the
Kittle House that evening, being joined by
Peter's wife.
Some background on how the reunion
was arranged:
I'd recently learned from Mark
Smotherman and Peter Capek that although John Cocke had heard about 'Lynn
Conway' in her new career and was quite familiar with the impact of my research,
he'd had no idea over the years that I was formerly the boy at ACS who had
worked on the timing simulator and invented DIS. Peter quoted John as saying
"Holy shit! That's amazing!", upon learning several months ago about how that
boy had gone on to become Lynn Conway.
I then mentioned to Peter that it
might be nice if some of the ACS vets could get together and visit with John
sometime, and Peter then arranged for this informal 'ACS mini-reunion'. We also
used it as an occasion for introducing Mark to John and the other vets, and for
discussing Mark's ACS reconstruction effort.
This meeting tied up a lot of loose
ends regarding the ACS project, and triggered further team-efforts at historical
reconstruction. This seemed to mean a lot to John, because ACS was perhaps his
favorite project. ACS was a indeed a phenomenal project; hopefully the
accomplishments made there will gradually be recognized as being fundamental to
much of modern computing.
John Cocke,
Fran Allen,
Herb Schorr and
Lynn
Conway
IBM T.
J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, July 24, 1999
Photo
by Mark
Smotherman