"In the beginning"

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views of the blog management, (on the other hand, they are not necessarily not the views of the blog management).

No effort has been made to stay within the bounds of the truth in this blog as it has always been the view of the management that the truth should never be allowed to stand in the way of a good story.

Monday, February 19, 2007

The Creation

What a shame that God gave up his franchise and let this crew in
but who in all honesty would have bought shares in the infant
Microsoft on the strength of the original staff group?


The Creation.

In the beginning, all was void, with the spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors.

Then God said, "Let there be Byte," and there was Byte. God saw the Byte, and was pleased with it, and divided the Byte into Bits. He created a multitude of zeros, for zeros were all there were.

On the Second day God toyed with the Bytes, and organized some of them into groups, to which He said, "You shall be called Words, for from Bytes you came, and of Bytes are you composed."

On the Third day God said (to whom God was talking has never been ascertained or even questioned), "I have Words, made up of Bytes, made up of Bits. But something is missing."

So God scraped up a lump of clay, squeezed it tightly in His mighty hands, and flung it against the sky, where it solidified into a smoky mass. God saw the steaming heap, that it was good, and was pleased, and said to it, "You shall be called Hardware, a home for My Words and Bytes and Bits, and as you are the very first of your kind I shall call you CPU."

And God turned, and with a flick of His wrist spewed forth tape drives ("For you shall serve as a temporary home for My words..."), discs, paper tape, terminals, on- line printers, entire remote stations, and whole teleprocessing installations.

And God saw all this sparkling in the heavens, that it was good, and He was pleased.

Having done all this, God rested.

On the Fourth day, God reviewed all that He had done. He saw His Bits and His Bytes residing statically on an infinite variety of media. But He was not pleased. "Something is missing," said He. "I need to animate My treasured Bytes, to give them Life."

So God leaned back, touched a soiled hand to His mighty brow, and with one single, all- powerful thought, set His hardware in motion.

"You," said He to the intangible breath now coursing through His hardware, "I shall call software, for..." and so on, and so forth.

And He continued, "You are the first, the best, the most perfect and omnipotent software." And divided the software into many parts; into utilities, compilers, system libraries and His favorite, most privileged and beloved operating system.

God was pleased, so He rested.

On the Fifth day, God again surveyed all that He had done, and was filled with joy. He found that with His creation he could determine the value of Pi to ten thousand digits. He found that He could produce flowcharts of His beloved operating system, and these He posted by His throne. He discovered that He could run off Snoopy calendars, pictures of the Mona Lisa, and witty little computer accounts of The Creation. And with a terminal at His throne, He didn't have to travel halfway to Hell to access His system.

He called His creation "Imperatatum Byte Magnamus" (or "IBM" for short).

But all was not well. God's beloved system was so large, so complex, that even the mighty God - maker of heavens and earth (but that's another story), the Builder of the CPU and virtual memory, the Author of Fortran - was hard-pressed to keep up on how everything worked.

So God said, "I'll make Me a Man."

And He did, and to the man He said, "You shall be called (logically enough) "Man," and to you shall fall the responsibility of maintaining all that I have done."

And to keep man happy after-hours, God gave him Woman, saying to man, "For I know that even Bytes get lonely for a little Bit."

And God rested, chuckling at His own little play on words.

On the Sixth day, God mounted His throne, logged onto His terminal, and engaged in a full day of uninterrupted 1-second turnaround. He saw all that He had done, that it was good. He was pleased that from His first Byte He had created such a wonderful and extensive toy. He created file after file, He performed advanced and impressive on-line data base updates, He wrote a faster and more extensive Fortran compiler, and in general rejoiced in the perfection of His I.B.M.

After a hard day's work on a hot terminal - during which man was quietly familiarizing himself with the system documentation –

God called it a day ("You I shall call day..." and so forth) and went to sleep.

On the Seventh day - so tired was He from the week's labors - God slept all day. What transpired on that crucial seventh day is recounted in the "Fall of Man..."

Keep watching the proverbial Blog near you for the "Fall Of Man".






10 comments:

Jay said...

The hiring process must have been a lot easier back then....these people just scream computer nerd.

Jeanette said...

Hi Peter thats a mottley looking lot. Take Care, Jan

Raggedy said...

I agree with Jen on that picture.
To byte or not to byte that is the question.
Have a wonderful day!
I checked me blog and if you didn't read it on May 27 or the very long post on August 20 you would not have know that I was a vet.
Toodles,
Raggedy

Cliff said...

Many moons ago I recall taking a computer class and being taught some basics. At the end of the class the instructor showed a few of us a brand new program he was really excited about and how it looked like the wave of the future. He was showing us the first edition of Windows. He marveled how you could open another program without putting the first one away. I guess I should have purchased about a 1000 shares back then.

Vickie said...

What a nerdy---or geeky group. Of course I'm glad they did what they did. I might have to do a little post and include a history lesson On Ed Roberts "The Father of the Personal Computer" the Altai. Gates actually worked for Roberts. Today Roberts is family physician living not far from me. Few know his background for to most he is simply Dr. Ed.

Thanks for this post as it reminded me of something I don't think about very often---just who is Dr. Ed and all he did before.

Hope you have a nice week.

OldHorsetailSnake said...

I know how it turns out: Man gets told by Woman to take over from God, and so Man rested. Right?

Val said...

Loved the photo, had lots of friends in California who looked like that, including my husband to be. And isn't Bill Gates SO recognisable! Yeah, a few shares bought back then would have been good.

Pamela said...

I'm trying to figure out how the angels guarded the Gates...

Dave said...

Hey, I'd have never bought stock in that motley crew! *chuckling*

Karen said...

Wow, man, quite a happenin' group there ;-) I bet they're still kicking themselves for not going along with Gates. Perhaps they were all too stoned to really get it?

Have a great day!