OL and FORTRAN coders in dull but lucrative employment). Now hardware manufacturers, with some prodding from the Calvin Klein crowd, are about to bring back the green screen.
To use the correct termino
logy, as described in the glow-in-the-dark-phosphorescent-paint-encrusted press packet that is clogging up one of our desks: Get ready for "the GreenScreen!"
The manufacturer, the imaginatively named GreenScreen! Company, is insistent on that exclamation point. The GreenScreen! terminals retail for $4.95 (that's right -- four dollars and 95 cents). The low price is possible because these are literally old terminals, salvaged in bulk from crumbling warehouses and dumpsters across America. Most of them don't work, but, as you'll see in a moment, that's beside the point.
The terminals are described as "fashion accessories for the home, office, or salon." What is GreenScreen! Company
really
selling? GreenScreen! software tools, that's what. The theory is that people crave, absolutely crave, the feel of the '50s and '60s. And '70s. And '80s. "Eagle" rock stations play songs we didn't like too much the first time around but that we listen to now because they remind us of better songs that were
played at the time. Bell-bottoms are back, and supposedly Elvis keeps coming back -- so why not, the thinking goes, bring back green screens?
GreenScreen!'s new Web Access GreenProgram! lets you return to the '70s (and beyond) with what the manufacturer calls "lovably horrible green-screen terminal access." You can have the quietly utter thrill of viewing anything on the Web as if it were really an old-fashioned clunky green screen. It's a subtle delight, perhaps, but for some people, presumably, a very real one.
GreenScreen! plans to release other '70s, '60s, and '50s throwback products, too -- everything from hand-soldered circuit boards to magnetic cores. Yes, truly, old memory can be yours forever.
A Contest With Holes In It
We, too, are developing a catalog's worth of retro-computing KitschWare™, beginning with a line of tradable punchcard products. If you are under the age of 40 and have never seen a genuine computer punchcard, you are in for a treat.
To kick off the enterprise: a contest. Whose signature would
you
like to see on a collectible punchcard? Johnny Von Neumann? An Wang? Grace Hopper? Alan Turing? Ken Olsen? Guglielmo Marconi? And what kinds of statistics should be printed on the back? Send your nominations to
marca@improb.com
. The winners, if any, will receive a 360K floppy autographed (right on the working surface) by the editors of BYTE.
We are also creating a line of autographed punchcard chaff.
Marc Abrahams is director of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which will be telecast live on
http://www.improb.com
on Oct.9, 7:30 p.m. EST. He can be reached via email at
marca@improb.com
.
Advanc
es and Retreats in Computing
