Schneemanns web page

Der Mangel an mathematischer Bildung

gibt sich durch nichts so zu erkennen, wie 

durch maßlose Schärfe im Zahlenrechnen

Friederich Gauß

Welcome on my webpage :-)

I had the privilege in the last 50 years to watch and participate in the development of important technologies. In some cases the importance was immediately clear, in other cases it took time to separate "hype" from the real stuff.

Having learned at school how to work with logarithm and slide rulers, I had to switch to an electro-mechanical Olivetti for all my statistics work. This was replaced in the late 60ties with a Friden calculator, all single transistors, we even tried to program it, using micro-switches and a stepping motor. In the early 70ties a programmable (learn-mode) Wang came, with true core memory (I still have it). And then, around 1975, the first pocket calculator, a HP 35. The kids today can't appreciate, what we thought was a big step for manhood :-).

In parallel, the "real" computers came into the picture. Having learned and used ALGOL on an (old) Zuse Z23, I had to switch in 1969 to my companies mainframe, an IBM 360/40, using Fortran to do my work. Anybody remembers the famous SSP (scientific subroutine package) collection of math and statistic functions ? Later came PDP-8, PDP-11 and VAX’s, all from Digital Equipment, used for real-time applications.

well, then came mySAP and Bill's PC :-), things were more easy to do, but the requirements and the environment added complexity. despite this,  we always had fun to accomplish what ever it was, we wanted to do.

Herbert Schneemann

Stade

Germany

to contact me, send an e-mail to herbert@schneemann.de

last updated: 11.01.11