June 28, 2004

"This has been a day of solid achievement."

Does anyone know the significance of this sentence in the history of computing?

(You’re on your honor not to Google for it.)

Posted by mgk at June 28, 2004 02:17 PM
Comments

Anyone?

Hint: "Mary had a little lamb."

Posted by: MGK at June 29, 2004 08:35 AM | Link to Comment

Matt,

I did do a search. Therefore on the honour system abstained from the exercise. However I am intringed as to how the nursery rhyme connects with the history of the technological development. Will continue to monitor this spot for updates.

Posted by: Francois Lachance at June 29, 2004 10:14 AM | Link to Comment

Okay, "Mary had a little lamb" is Thomas Edison making a recording of his own voice. The quote you give is much more humanistic than "What hath God wrought," so it's most likely more recent. I recall that the first e-mail message was something meaningless like "QWERTYUIOP". But without Google, that's as far as I can get.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at June 29, 2004 10:29 AM | Link to Comment

Thanks for playing, Francois, Dennis ;-)

This was the first sentence successfully written to, and read back from, magnetic disk storage, at IBM's San Jose facility, February 10, 1954.

Posted by: MGK at June 29, 2004 10:09 PM | Link to Comment

Now that the secret's been broken (I also looked it up because I didn't know it and like trivia), I can mention how much this reminds me of the famous "it has not escaped our attention" line from Watson and Crick's 1953 paper.

Okay, I just went and googled that too, so I could have it accurate:
"It has not escaped our attention that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material." Same mix of smugness and understatement.

Posted by: Jess at June 29, 2004 10:57 PM | Link to Comment
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