Apropos of Nothing -- Inspiration and the Blit Terminal

[Thomas.Dennehy]

The friendly folks at Engadget posted archival video from AT&T showcasing an early 1980s Bell Labs invention initially called the Blit Terminal. (It was later marketed at the Teletype 5620 and even later as the AT&T 630.) The was the first programmable graphics terminal that could run multiple overlapping asynchronous active windows, and accomplished the feat without hardware acceleration. (The norm for graphics boxes at the time was an active top program/window and dormant windows underneath. And most needed a dedicated graphics chip to do it.)

I started my career at Bell Labs Whippany right about the time the first Blit prototypes (with the motherboard bolted to the top of the CRT) were being made available outside Murray Hill. I got one, and it changed my life.

First of all, I was a self-taught C programmer; the lab where I worked in grad school at the University of Michigan was the first on campus to get a Unix machine. Studying Rob Pike's C source for his brilliant window management system really opened my eyes to what was possible in code. Second, the C compiler for the Blit allowed you to see the size of the code block in the object file produced. Over a fairly short time, I was able to identify programming patterns that could be proven to produce more compact code than other methods. (I equated "smaller" with "faster.") The Blit started me on the path to the designer I became.

Coincidentally, a few months ago I wrote my own ode to the Blit.

But my real question to the group is this. What was the idea or invention that you feel most strongly influenced your career?

Cheers!

 

[jazdoc]

The CT scanner!

One of my partners attended the historic presentation when Geoffrey Hounsefield showed the first body CT images. The scans had 2cm thick slices and literally took hours to obtain and reconstruct. (We now routinely obtain sub-millimeter thick slices in seconds!) As audience members sat in stunned silence; realizing that for the first time physicians would be able to explore patients in vivo without surgery, there was a spontaneous, prolonged standing ovation. Sir Geoffrey was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

 

[Steve Williams]

In my field it was minimally invasive surgery influenced strongly by endoscopic surgery. Key hole surgery with minimal down time and rapid return to full function is where it's at.

This BTW has blossomed to involve most fields of surgery

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

The invention of the Telephone and the extraordinary inventions from AT & T Bell Labs led me to Electrical Engineering.

My career dream job , never fulfilled, was to work at AT & T Bell labs.

I still work in Information Technology so I am living the dream