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I found an old memoir by someone who had worked with Richard Feynman way back in the 80's.
Those days seem to presage a lot of things that have become commercial hot topics these days -- highly parallel computers and neural nets.
One day in the spring of 1983, when I was having lunch with Richard Feynman, I mentioned to him that I was planning to start a company to build a parallel computer with a million processors. (I was at the time a graduate student at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab). His reaction was unequivocal: "That is positively the dopiest idea I ever heard." For Richard a crazy idea was an opportunity to prove it wrong—or prove it right. Either way, he was interested. By the end of lunch he had agreed to spend the summer working at the company.
In his last years, Feynman helped build an innovative computer. He had great fun with computers. Half the fun was explaining things to anyone who would listen.
I was alive those days; might I be as old as aristarchus?
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 17 2018, @09:25AM (2 children)
No. Do you feel that way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 17 2018, @12:41PM (1 child)
Aristarchus is older than dirt. I happen to know that dirt existed before the 1980's.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday December 17 2018, @02:15PM
That establishes the maximum moment of aristarchus' birth. Or, if you like, the inferior limit of his age. So, true, aristarchus was born before 1980 [wikipedia.org].
But, even considering the "I was alive those days" (i.e. 1980) context, the above says nothing about the truth value of "might hendrikboom be as old as aristarchus?"
Very likely the answer is in the negative [sahistory.org.za]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford