[COFF] Smokin' In the Terminal Room

[COFF] Smokin' In the Terminal Room

[segaloco via COFF]

Subject doesn't roll off the tongue like the song, but hey, I got a random thought today and I'd be interested in experiences.  I get where this could be a little...controversial, so no pressure to reply publicly or at all.

Was it firmly held lore from the earliest days to keep the air as clean as possible in computer rooms in the earlier decades of computing?  What has me asking is I've seen before photos from years past in R&D and laboratory settings where whoever is being photographed is happy dragging away on a cigarette (or...) whilst surrounded by all sorts of tools, maybe chemicals, who knows.  It was a simpler time, and rightfully so those sorts of lax attitudes have diminished for the sake of safety.  Still I wonder, was the situation the same in computing as photographic evidence has suggested it is in other such technical settings?  Did you ever have to deal with a smoked out server room that *wasn't* because of thermal issues with the machinery?

I hope this question is fine by the way, it's very not tech focused but I also have a lot of interest in the cultural shifts in our communities over the years.  Thanks as always folks for being a part of one of the greatest stories still being told!

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: Smokin' In the Terminal Room

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Photos of the MIT AI lab PDP-6 has a sign with "NO SMOKING".  Some of
the hackers famously detested smoking, to the point of carrying around a
fan to divert smoke in restaurants.

Here we can see someone smoking, and maybe the sign was put up later.
http://its.pdp10.se/pdp6-timeline/

[COFF] Re: Smokin' In the Terminal Room

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Here is another "NO SMOKING" sign with "DANGER" added for emphasis.
Since it looks like a CADR Lisp machine, it's probably from MIT as well.

https://tumbleweed.nu/lm-3/pictures/1981-01-15-mit-cadr.jpg

[COFF] Re: Smokin' In the Terminal Room

[Rod Bartlett via COFF]

I worked as a field engineer on Honeywell mainframes in the late 1970s and I regularly observed people smoking in terminal rooms.  There wasn't much in those old CRT terminals which could be damaged by smoke.  Some sites also allowed computer operators to smoke at the consoles or while hanging tapes.  The worst instance I saw was at a site which had an old GE 635 mainframe.  The onsite field engineer was a heavy smoker and used the oscilloscope cart tray as an ashtray.  That held many years worth of evidence of indulgence near equipment.

There were heavy duty air conditioners in those computer rooms which kept the air moving and being filtered.  It probably would have been more damaging near minicomputers which often didn't require the constant A/C.  The disk drives also had large air filters which removed particulates from the air while operating but there was always the chance that smoke particles could enter while a disk pack was being mounted.

By the time I left the mainframe environment in the late 1980s, smoke was much less common around equipment with most sites forcing smokers to either go outside or to use designated smoking rooms.

 - Rod

> On Sep 28, 2023, at 11:03 PM, segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Subject doesn't roll off the tongue like the song, but hey, I got a random thought today and I'd be interested in experiences.  I get where this could be a little...controversial, so no pressure to reply publicly or at all.
> 
> Was it firmly held lore from the earliest days to keep the air as clean as possible in computer rooms in the earlier decades of computing?  What has me asking is I've seen before photos from years past in R&D and laboratory settings where whoever is being photographed is happy dragging away on a cigarette (or...) whilst surrounded by all sorts of tools, maybe chemicals, who knows.  It was a simpler time, and rightfully so those sorts of lax attitudes have diminished for the sake of safety.  Still I wonder, was the situation the same in computing as photographic evidence has suggested it is in other such technical settings?  Did you ever have to deal with a smoked out server room that *wasn't* because of thermal issues with the machinery?
> 
> I hope this question is fine by the way, it's very not tech focused but I also have a lot of interest in the cultural shifts in our communities over the years.  Thanks as always folks for being a part of one of the greatest stories still being told!
> 
> - Matt G.