Prof. Boerner's Explorations

by Gerald Boerner

“Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America. I wanted to photograph.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“A woman said to me when she first sat down, You’re photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?”
— Imogen Cunningham

“Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There’s always someone who doesn’t like it.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I don’t talk about success. I don’t know what it is. Wait until I’m dead.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I told the students that whatever they did in class was for the wastebasket.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I was poor. When you’re poor you work, and when you’re rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn’t have a darkroom, but that didn’t stop me from photographing.” 
— Imogen Cunningham

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.”
— Imogen Cunningham

Imogen Cunningham (1883 – 1976)

Imogen Cunningham was an American photographer known for her photography of botanicals, nudes and industry.

Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon. In 1901, at the age of 18, Cunningham bought her first camera, a 4×5 inch view camera, from the American School of Art in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She soon lost interest and sold the camera to a friend. It wasn’t until 1906, while studying at the University of Washington in Seattle, that she was inspired by an encounter with the work of Gertrude Käsebier to take up photography again. With the help of her chemistry professor, Dr. Horace Byers, she began to study the chemistry behind photography; she subsidized her tuition by photographing plants for the botany department.

After graduating in 1907 she went to work with Edward S. Curtis in his Seattle studio. This gave Cunningham the valuable opportunity to learn about the portrait business and the practical side of photography.

In 1909, Cunningham won a scholarship from her sorority (Pi Beta Phi) for foreign study and, on advice from her chemistry professor, applied to study with Professor Robert Luther at the Technische Hochshule in Dresden, Germany.

In Dresden she concentrated on her studies and didn’t take many photos. In May 1910 she finished her paper, “About the Direct Development of Platinum Paper for Brown Tones”, describing her process to increase printing speed, improve clarity of highlights tones and produce sepia tones. On her way back to Seattle she met Alvin Langdon Coburn in London, and Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Kasebier in New York.

Once back in Seattle she opened her own studio and won acclaim for portraiture and pictorial work. Most of her studio work of this time consisted of sitters in their own homes, in her living room, or in the woods surrounding Cunningham’s cottage. She became a sought after photographer and exhibited at the Brooklyn Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1913.

In 1914 Cunningham’s portraits were shown at “An International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography” in New York and a portfolio of her work was published in Wilson’s Photographic Magazine.

Then in 1920 they left Seattle for San Francisco where Roi taught at Mills College.

In San Francisco, Cunningham refined her style, taking a greater interest in pattern and detail as seen in her works of bark textures, trees, and zebras. Cunningham became increasingly interested in botanical photography, especially flowers, and between 1923 and 1925 carried out an in-depth study of the magnolia flower. Later in the decade she turned her attention towards industry, creating several series of industrial landscapes throughout Los Angeles and Oakland.

In 1929, Edward Weston nominated 10 of Cunningham’s photos (8 botanical, 1 industrial and 1 nude) for inclusion in the "Film und Foto" exhibition in Stuttgart. Cunningham once again changed direction to become more interested in the human form, particularly hands (and a further fascination with the hands of artists and musicians). This interest led to her employment by Vanity Fair, photographing stars without make-up or false glamour. In 1932, with this unsentimental, straightforward approach in mind, Cunningham became one of the co-founders of the Group f/64, which aimed to “define photography as an art form by a simple and direct presentation through purely photographic methods”.

In 1934 Cunningham was invited to do some work in New York for Vanity Fair. Her husband wanted her to wait until he could travel with her but she refused and they later divorced. She continued her work with Vanity Fair until it stopped publication in 1936.

In the 1940s Cunningham turned to documentary street photography which she did as a side project while supporting herself with her commercial and studio photography. In 1945, Cunningham was invited by Ansel Adams to accept a position as faculty at the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Dorothea Lange and Minor White joined as well.

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Imogen Cunningham that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_Cunningham

by Gerald Boerner

“[The CADET] could be left unattended for long periods; I think the record was over one Christmas-New Year holiday when it was all by itself, with miles of input data on punched tape to keep it happy, for at least ten days and was still ticking away when we came back.”
— Dr Jack Howlett

“CADET as being ‘probably the second fully transistorized computer in the world to put to use.’ ”
— E.H. Cooke-Yarborough

“[IBM 608 transistor calculator which they claim was] ‘the first all solid-state computing machine commercially marketed the first completely transistorized computer available for commercial installation’ ”
— IBM Announcement

The Harwell CADET Computer

The Harwell CADET was the first fully transistorized computer in Europe, and may have been the first fully transistorized computer in the world.

The electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, UK built the Harwell Dekatron Computer in 1951, which was an automatic calculator where the decimal arithmetic and memory were electronic, although other functions were performed by relays. By 1953 it was evident that this did not meet AERE’s computing needs, and AERE director Sir John Cockcroft encouraged them to design and build a computer using transistors throughout.

You can see that CADET stood for "computer automatic digital electronic transistor" which should be read backwards! The cylindrical object in the perspex box on the bench top on the left is the magnetic drum memory, which was the subject of a separate IEE paper in February 1956 by J.H.Stephen and Cooke-Yarborough because of its innovative circuitry. The main circuit boards were laid out in flat planes, unlike later machines which used card cages. This was probably because of the experimental nature of the machine.

CADET was one of the few computers that used point-contact transistors, the very earliest type available. Most of the devices used were made by the UK company Standard Telephones and Cables, which is described elsewhere on my site. The machine was obsolete within a few years, due to the rapid evolution of both transistor and computer technology at that time.

The Predecessor: The WITCH Computer

The computer was originally built and used at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire. Construction started in 1949, it was first operational in April 1951, it was handed over to the computing group in May 1952 and it remained in use until 1957.

It used dekatrons for volatile memory (similar to RAM in a modern computer) and paper tape for both input and program storage. Output was to either a Friden teleprinter or to a paper tape punch. The machine was decimal and initially had 20 8-digit dekatron registers for internal storage which was increased to 40 which appeared to be enough for nearly all calculations. It was assembled from components more commonly found in a British telephone exchange. Although it could on occasions act as a true stored-program computer, this was not its normal mode of operation. It had a multiplication time of between 5 and 10 seconds which was evidently very slow for an electronic computer.

The CADET Computer’s Development…

As Cooke-Yarborough wrote of his design in 1953 "a slow computer can only justify its existence if it is capable of running for long periods unattended and the time spent performing useful computations is a large proportion of the total time available." The design was noted for its reliability because in the period from May 1952 until February 1953 it averaged 80 hours per week running time. Dr Jack Howlett, Directory of the Computer Laboratory at AERE 1948-1961, said it "could be left unattended for long periods; I think the record was over one Christmas-New Year holiday when it was all by itself, with miles of input data on punched tape to keep it happy, for at least ten days and was still ticking away when we came back." It was the machine’s untiring durability, rather than its speed, that was its main feature. Human mathematicians (a job role called a "hand-computer") could make calculations at a similar speed, but not continuously for the same lengths of time.

Dr Howlett commented:

"One day E. B. Fossey, an excellent hand-computer (still with what used to be called the Atlas Computer Laboratory), settled down beside the machine with his desk machine and attempted a race. He kept level for about half an hour working flat out, but had to retire, exhausted; the machine just ploughed on."

E.H. Cooke-Yarborough based the design around a 64 kilobyte magnetic drum memory store with multiple moving heads that had been designed at the National Physical Laboratory, UK. By 1953 his team had transistor circuits operating to read and write on a smaller magnetic drum from the Royal Radar Establishment. The machine used a low clock speed of only 58kHz to avoid having to use any valves to generate the clock waveforms. This slow speed was partially offset by the ability to add together eight numbers concurrently.

The resulting machine was called CADET (Transistor Electronic Digital Automatic Computer – backwards). It first ran a simple test program in February 1955. CADET used 324 point-contact transistors provided by the UK company Standard Telephones and Cables which were the only ones available in sufficient quantity when the project started. Although 76 junction transistors were used for the first stage amplifiers for data read from the drum, since point-contact transistors were too noisy. CADET was built from a few standardized designs of circuit boards which never got mounted into the planned desktop unit, so it was left in its breadboard form. From August 1956 CADET was offering a regular computing service, during which it often executed continuous computing runs of 80 hours or more.

Cooke-Yarborough described CADET as being "probably the second fully transistorized computer in the world to put to use", second to an unnamed IBM machine. Both the Manchester University Transistor Computer and the Bell Laboratories TRADIC were demonstrated incorporating transistors before CADET was operational, although both required some vacuum tubes to supply their faster clock power, so they were not fully transistorized. In April 1955 IBM announced the IBM 608 transistor calculator, which they claim was "the first all solid-state computing machine commercially marketed" and "the first completely transistorized computer available for commercial installation", and which may have been demonstrated in October 1954, before the CADET.

The Successor…

By 1956 Brian Flowers, head of the theoretical physics division at AERE, was convinced that the CADET provided insufficient computing power for the needs of his numerical analysts and ordered a Ferranti Mercury computer. In 1958 Mercury number 4 became operational at AERE to accompany the CADET for another two years before the CADET was retired after four years operation.

Background and biographical information is from the Wikipedia articles on:

Harwell CADET Computer that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_CADET

Harwell CADET Computer that can be found at…
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~wylie/trancomp/cadet.htm

by Gerald Boerner

“As soon as the president steps aboard one of these planes, it becomes Air Force One.”
William Bennett

“Every time the President’s ready to go, we’re ready to go. That’s a result of the best of the best in the United States Air Force and the best of the best maintainers.”
— CBS News

“I’ll have tremendous memories of growing up as a lieutenant and working my way to be President Bush’s pilot…”
— Col. Mark Tillman

“It’ll end the president’s term in office and it’ll also end my tenure at Air Force One,” 
— Col. Mark Tillman

"I want to make sure you know I wish the Gophers luck, but they are playing Air Force and I have to fly back home on one of their planes, so I’ve got to be careful about what I say."
— President Obama

“Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”
— Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office

Air Force One

Air Force One is the official air traffic control call sign of any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the President of the United States. Since 1990, the presidential fleet has consisted of two specifically configured, highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft – tail codes Special Air Mission (SAM) "28000" and SAM "29000" – with Air Force designation "VC-25A". While these aircraft have the call sign "Air Force One" only while the president is on board, the term is colloquially used to describe either of the two aircraft normally used and maintained by the U.S. Air Force solely for the president, as well as any additional Air Force aircraft used by the president, including a C-37A Gulfstream.

Air Force One is a prominent symbol of the American presidency and its power. The aircraft are among the most famous and most photographed in the world.

History…

On October 11, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to fly in an aircraft, although at the time of the flight in an early Wright Flyer from Kinloch Field (near St. Louis, Missouri), he was no longer in office, having been succeeded by William Howard Taft. The record-making occasion was a brief overflight of the crowd at a country fair but was nonetheless, the beginning of presidential air travel.

Prior to World War II, overseas and cross-country presidential travel was rare. Lack of wireless telecommunication and quick transportation made long-distance travel impractical, as it took much time and isolated the president from events in Washington, D.C. By the late 1930s, with the arrival of aircraft such as the Douglas DC-3, increasing numbers of the U.S. public saw passenger air travel as a reasonable mode of transportation. All-metal aircraft, more reliable engines, and new radio aids to navigation had made commercial airline travel safer and more convenient. Life insurance companies even began to offer airline pilots insurance policies, albeit at extravagant rates, and many commercial travelers and government officials began using the airlines in preference to rail travel, especially for longer trips.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an aircraft while in office. During World War II, Roosevelt traveled on the Dixie Clipper, a Pan Am-crewed Boeing 314 flying boat to the 1943 Casablanca Conference, in Morocco, a flight that covered 5,500 miles (in three "legs"). The threat from the German submarines throughout the Battle of the Atlantic made transatlantic air travel the preferred method of transportation.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s C-54 Skymaster aircraft, nicknamed "the Sacred Cow".

The first dedicated aircraft proposed for presidential use was a C-87A VIP transport aircraft. This aircraft, number 41-24159, was re-modified in 1943 for use as a presidential VIP transport, the Guess Where II, intended to carry President Franklin D. Roosevelt on international trips. Had it been accepted, it would have been the first aircraft to be used in presidential service, in effect the first Air Force One. However, after a review of the C-87′s highly controversial safety record in service, the Secret Service flatly refused to approve the Guess Where II for presidential carriage. The aircraft was then used to transport senior members of the Roosevelt administration on various trips. In March 1944, the Guess Where II transported Eleanor Roosevelt on a goodwill tour of several Latin American countries. The C-87 was scrapped in 1945.

The Secret Service subsequently reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster for duty as a presidential transport. This aircraft, nicknamed the Sacred Cow, included a sleeping area, radio telephone, and retractable elevator for Roosevelt’s wheelchair. As modified, the presidential C-54 carried the president on several important trips.

The Independence used primarily by President Truman

After Roosevelt died in spring 1945, Vice President Harry S. Truman became President. He replaced the C-54 in 1947 with a modified C-118 Liftmaster, calling it the Independence. This was the first aircraft acting as Air Force One that had a distinctive exterior–a bald eagle head painted on its nose.

The presidential call sign was established for security purposes during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. The change stemmed from a 1953 incident where an Eastern Airlines commercial flight (8610) had the same call sign as a flight the president was on (Air Force 8610). The aircraft accidentally entered the same airspace, and after the incident the unique call sign "Air Force One" was introduced for the presidential aircraft.

The Columbine III used by President Eisenhower

Eisenhower also introduced four other propeller aircraft, the Lockheed C-121 Constellations (VC-121E) to presidential service. These aircraft were named Columbine II and Columbine III by Mamie Eisenhower after the columbine, the official state flower of Colorado, her adopted home state. Two Aero Commanders were also added to the fleet and earned the distinction of being the smallest planes ever to serve as Air Force One. President Eisenhower also upgraded Air Force One’s technology by adding an air-to-ground telephone and an air-to-ground teletype machine. Towards the end of Eisenhower’s term in 1958, the Air Force added three Boeing 707 jets (as VC-137s designated SAM 970, 971, and 972), into the fleet. Eisenhower became the first president to use the VC-137 during his "Flight to Peace" Goodwill tour, from 3 December through 22 December 1959. He visited 11 Asian nations, flying 22,000 miles (35,000 km) in 19 days, about twice as fast as he would have on Columbine.

The Legacy of Air Force One…

One of the most dramatic episodes aboard Air Force One happened during the September 11 attacks. President George W. Bush was interrupted at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida after the attack on the World Trade Center South Tower in New York City. He flew on a VC-25 from Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and then to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska before returning to Washington. The next day, officials at the White House and the Justice Department explained that President Bush did this because there was "specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets." The White House later could not confirm evidence of a threat made against Air Force One, and subsequent investigation found the original claim to be a result of miscommunication.

President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush walk on the tarmac as Air Force One sits at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, March 1, 2006.

The presidential air fleet is maintained by the 89th Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. Air Force One usually does not have fighter aircraft to escort the presidential aircraft over the United States, but this has occurred. In June 1974, while President Nixon was on his way to a scheduled stop in Syria, Syrian fighter jets intercepted Air Force One to act as escorts. However, the Air Force One crew was not informed in advance and, as a result, took evasive action including a dive.

Other Events on this Day

• In 1845…
  The U.S. Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland, with 56 students.

• In 1850…
  The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal is completed and opened along its entire 185-mile length from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland Maryland.

• In 1935…
  George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess” opens on Broadway.

• In 1962…
  The first aircraft commonly called Air Force One goes into service.

• In 1973…
  Vice President Spiro T. Agnew pleads no contest to a charge of federal income tax evasion and resigns his office.

Dates and events based on:

William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)

Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Air Force One that can be found at…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One

A good object lesson in cloud computing… T-Mobile has announce that the server that holds all the data stored on its customers’ ‘Sidekick’ cell phones has been lost when the server that holds such data failed. One of the lessons that we tend to ignore when using Internet server-based storage is that it is out of your control. It’s bad enough when your own server goes down, but when a ‘cloud’ server goes down, you no longer have any control over what happens… A word to the wise…

T-Mobile: All Your Sidekick Data Has Been Lost Forever 
Source: mashable.com

There’s bad news for Sidekick users today: T-Mobile has announced that it was unable to recover Sidekick data after a server failure at Microsoft subsidiary Danger. This means any data not stored on your Sidekick but residing in the “cloud” has been lost.

Sidekick users are advised to keep their devices powered up and not conduct a reset or remove the battery: a power-down would mean any data still on the phone is lost. T-Mobile will provide an update on the situation on Monday, but things are looking very bleak indeed.

In T-Mobile’s words: “based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.” … [MORE]

I say again: Say it isn’t so, Joe… This article seems to be saying that even if a new health care bill is passed by congress and signed by the president, the taxes would start now but the full benefits for lower/middle class taxpayers would not be available until 2013… This is disturbing, at best. Let our representatives get their heads on straight and give us the benefits NOW… Later is not acceptable. What do you think?

Wait for benefits is 3 years if health care passes – Yahoo! News 
Source: news.yahoo.com

Sixty years is how long Democrats say they’ve been pushing for legislation that provides health care access for all Americans. They’ll have to wait another three if President Barack Obama gets a bill to sign this year.

Under the Democratic bills, federal tax credits to help make health insurance affordable for millions of low- and middle-income households won’t start flowing until 2013 — after the next presidential election. But Medicare cuts and a sizable chunk of the tax increases to pay for the overhaul kick in immediately.

The eat-your-vegetables-first approach is causing heartburn for some Democrats. Three years is a long time to wait for dessert, and opponents could capitalize on misgivings about the complex legislation to undo what would be a signature achievement for Obama. … [MORE]

Teaching Kids the BIG Money Lessons… This article might be helpful to parents in avoiding some big mistakes that are commonly made regarding the value of money. These five lessons seems like good ideas. Take a look and let me know what you think…

Top 5 Mistakes We Make Teaching Kids About Money – Parenting on Shine 
Source: shine.yahoo.com

By Laura Rowley

We all make stupid money mistakes. Find out if you’re making bad money decisions with this advice from Kodak spokesperson and money expert Laura Rowley.

1. Becoming a Human ATM Machine

Give children an allowance and let them know what they have to pay for out of their own stash—whether it’s the ice cream truck, the goodies in the $1 aisle at the discount store

or that Scholastic book order form that comes home from school. This reduces nagging, allows them to develop math skills and learn from their mistakes. It’s amazing to see how much more they value the things they paid for themselves.

The downside of girls being interested in runway models… Basically, these models present an unrealistic view of the female body. Most women today will never be able to duplicate the body type seen as standard in models. Please pay attention to the message of this article and help our young women reach a realistic view of their body’s…

How to tell if your daughter is too worried about being "perfect" – Parenting on Shine 
Source: shine.yahoo.com

The curse of the good girl can be stressful on teenage girls as the media plays into their desire to be perceived a certain way. A good girl may have tons of friends, but can also be a people pleaser, doing what others want to keep the peace in her friendship. She doesn’t get angry, but she holds everything effortlessly right, so when she inevitably makes a mistake, she reacts poorly. As seen on popular shows like Gossip Girl and 90210, classmates police behavior, punishing any “social violators” with gossip and dirty looks. And due to the ubiquity of cell phones, it can seem like everyone’s watching—bad behavior can easily be captured or texted to friends with the click of a button. … [MORE]

Is the power of positive thinking overrated? Well, you certainly will not get it by reading the national news magazines. This article probes the issue and is worth a bit of attention. Read it and let me know what you think…

Barbara Ehrenreich on The Peril of Positive Thinking – TIME 
Source: www.time.com

If you’re craving a quick hit of optimism, reading a news magazine is probably not the best way to go about finding it. As the life coaches and motivational speakers have been trying to tell us for more than a decade now, a healthy, positive mental outlook requires strict abstinence from current events in all forms. Instead, you should patronize sites like Happynews.com, where the top international stories of the week include "Jobless Man Finds Buried Treasure" and "Adorable ‘Teacup Pigs’ Are Latest Hit with Brits." … [MORE]