Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Norman Wilson]

Rob Pike:

  I don't believe the water tower was a one-person job.

====

I agree.  Even if GR Emlin helped, I bet two live people
were involved in painting.

I'm quite sure more than that participated in making the
stencil.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

PS: I have never been on a water tower.

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[William Cheswick]

> I agree.  Even if GR Emlin helped, I bet two live people
> were involved in painting.

It may just be a coincidence, but I have some code from Tom Duff that generates an image with AT&T logo-style stripes.

> 
> PS: I have never been on a water tower.

I have.  Dropped parachutes off it with John Venutolo.

ches

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 06:46:42PM -0400, Brian Walden wrote:
[...]
> Which had no information on Topper, but had had this paragraph in it's Singer
> section on page 28 --
> 
>     Boys earned money "rushing the growler" at lunchtime at the Singer plant.
>     German workers lowered their covered beer pails, called growlers, on ropes
>     to the boys waiting below. They earned a nickel by filling them with beer
>     at Grampp's saloon on Trumbull St. One of these boys was Thomas Dunn who
>     later became a long term Mayor. In the early 1920s Frederick Grampp went
>     into the hardware business at the corner of Elizabeth Ave. and Reid St.

Wow, what a find, really.

I suppose the move from saloon business onto the hardware business was
caused by Prohibition? Interesting side-effect.

    "Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional
    ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of
    alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933."

    [

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

    ]

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com             **

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[William Cheswick]

> On Mar 15, 2021, at 9:12 PM, M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> His father ("Pops") retired to Drayton Island in the St Johns River
> about 60 miles south of Jacksonville.
> Fred often visited him, driving the 19-hour trip in one stint.

Fred was a big fan of opera.  He’d play the Ring going to see his parents.  Said he get there in
2.5 operas.  That’s 400 miles/opera, or maybe 100 MPH.  This is certainly faster than
Doug’s number.  I think Fred said he went 90 MPH, which is totally consistent with his personality.

ches

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[M Douglas McIlroy]

Serendipitous find! I hadn't realized that Fred had been the third
generation in the hardware store.
His father ("Pops") retired to Drayton Island in the St Johns River
about 60 miles south of Jacksonville.
Fred often visited him, driving the 19-hour trip in one stint.

Doug

On Mon, Mar 15, 2021 at 6:47 PM Brian Walden <tuhs@cuzuco.com> wrote:
>
> Amazing coincidences. A week prior I was researching Topper Toys
> looking for their old factory ("largest toy factory in the world")
> As there was litte on it's location and it lead me to find out
> in 1961 it took over the old Singer Factory in Elizabeth, NJ.
> So looking up the Singer factory led me to "Elizabeth,
> New Jersey, Then and Now" by Robert J. Baptista
>
> https://ia801304.us.archive.org/11/items/ElizabethNewJerseyThenAndNowSecondEdition2015/ElizabethNewJerseyThenNowThirdEditionApril102018607Pages.pdf
>
> Which had no information on Topper, but had had this paragraph in it's Singer
> section on page 28 --
>
>     Boys earned money "rushing the growler" at lunchtime at the Singer plant.
>     German workers lowered their covered beer pails, called growlers, on ropes
>     to the boys waiting below. They earned a nickel by filling them with beer
>     at Grampp's saloon on Trumbull St. One of these boys was Thomas Dunn who
>     later became a long term Mayor. In the early 1920s Frederick Grampp went
>     into the hardware business at the corner of Elizabeth Ave. and Reid St.
>
>
> When I read it I thought funny, as I know the name Fred Grampp. But beleived
> just a coincidenental same name. After reading the biography post, I went back
> to the book as it turns out that Fred Grampp is your Fred Grampps's
> grandfather.  You can find more his family and the hardware store and
> Grampp himself on pages 163-164, and 212.
>
> -Brian
>

[TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Brian Walden]

Amazing coincidences. A week prior I was researching Topper Toys
looking for their old factory ("largest toy factory in the world")
As there was litte on it's location and it lead me to find out
in 1961 it took over the old Singer Factory in Elizabeth, NJ.
So looking up the Singer factory led me to "Elizabeth,
New Jersey, Then and Now" by Robert J. Baptista

https://ia801304.us.archive.org/11/items/ElizabethNewJerseyThenAndNowSecondEdition2015/ElizabethNewJerseyThenNowThirdEditionApril102018607Pages.pdf

Which had no information on Topper, but had had this paragraph in it's Singer
section on page 28 --

    Boys earned money "rushing the growler" at lunchtime at the Singer plant.
    German workers lowered their covered beer pails, called growlers, on ropes
    to the boys waiting below. They earned a nickel by filling them with beer
    at Grampp's saloon on Trumbull St. One of these boys was Thomas Dunn who
    later became a long term Mayor. In the early 1920s Frederick Grampp went
    into the hardware business at the corner of Elizabeth Ave. and Reid St.


When I read it I thought funny, as I know the name Fred Grampp. But beleived
just a coincidenental same name. After reading the biography post, I went back
to the book as it turns out that Fred Grampp is your Fred Grampps's
grandfather.  You can find more his family and the hardware store and
Grampp himself on pages 163-164, and 212.

-Brian

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[William Cheswick]

Fred once told me a brief story about the installation of the new raised-floor computer
room for the alice machine.   

He had requested that the floor be wet-mopped before the tiles were installed.  When
the installer informed Fred that they weren’t going to bother, Fred obtained a small
bottle of elemental mercury from his office and showed it to the installer.

The installer had the choice of wet-mapping the floor, or cleaning up a mercury spill
in moon suits. He relented.

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[William Cheswick]

> On Mar 11, 2021, at 6:35 PM, Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:
> 
> please lay off the Peter-face pranking for a while.

The pjw icon at the top of stair 8 (made from round magnets from the stockroom) was still
there when last I checked.

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Clem Cole]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1328 bytes --]

https://starkraving.medium.com/what-is-male-idiot-theory-2efa91d69fd4
ᐧ

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 6:36 PM Norman Wilson <norman@oclsc.org> wrote:

> As I remember it, the Facilities folks were so upset about
> someone painting stuff on Their Water Tower that a complaint
> went to Vic Vyssotsky, then Executive Director of Division
> 112 (one step up from Sandy Fraser, who was Director of 1127).
>
> The story was that Vic and/or Sandy told them that there were
> 60 people in the research centre and no way to tell who did it.
>
> Word was then quietly passed to certain people--Vic and Sandy
> in fact knew exactly who--that things were getting out of hand,
> please lay off the Peter-face pranking for a while.
>
> I tried to start a rumour that Vic did the painting, but it
> never took off.  I hope Vic at least heard it.  He'd have
> enjoyed the rumour, surely laughed at the prank while knowing
> he'd have to calm things down, and 20 years earlier might well
> have been involved in something like that.
>
> It was Vic who, on learning I was a cyclist, urged me to try
> cycling on the newly-constructed but not yet open segment of
> interstate highway that ran behind the Labs.  He apparently
> had done so and found it lots of fun.  Alas, I never did.
>
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON
>

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Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Norman Wilson]

As I remember it, the Facilities folks were so upset about
someone painting stuff on Their Water Tower that a complaint
went to Vic Vyssotsky, then Executive Director of Division
112 (one step up from Sandy Fraser, who was Director of 1127).

The story was that Vic and/or Sandy told them that there were
60 people in the research centre and no way to tell who did it.

Word was then quietly passed to certain people--Vic and Sandy
in fact knew exactly who--that things were getting out of hand,
please lay off the Peter-face pranking for a while.

I tried to start a rumour that Vic did the painting, but it
never took off.  I hope Vic at least heard it.  He'd have
enjoyed the rumour, surely laughed at the prank while knowing
he'd have to calm things down, and 20 years earlier might well
have been involved in something like that.

It was Vic who, on learning I was a cyclist, urged me to try
cycling on the newly-constructed but not yet open segment of
interstate highway that ran behind the Labs.  He apparently
had done so and found it lots of fun.  Alas, I never did.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[M Douglas McIlroy]

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A few days later, GR's receipt for paint arrived on my desk for approval.
That was certainly above my pay grade, so upon weighing personalities,
I decided to pass it two levels up the chain of command to Vic Vyssotsky,
who famously returned it with a formal note that he was not authorized to
approve plant improvements. The fact that Ken was in my department
and GR wasn't (nor was Fred) stoked certain suspicions about the makeup
of the water-tower team.

Doug


On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 3:30 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't believe the water tower was a one-person job.
>
> Fortunately I have a perfect alibi, being on the other side of the country
> that day.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 6:51 AM Ken Thompson <kenbob@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> fred dumpster dove on the way to the labs.
>> his prize, beside the cheese awfuls, was
>> the bowling pins for the 6th floor bowling
>> alley.
>>
>> fred was after a german ww2 enigma. he
>> left requests at two european shops that
>> were known to occasionally have one.
>> when one came to light, fred and i split
>> the price. after years of dwindling hope
>> for another one showing up, fred an i
>> flipped a coin to see who owned it. fred
>> won. before his death he gave  it to me.
>>
>> and lastly, and secret until now, fred
>> painted the peter face on the water tower.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 8:14 AM M Douglas McIlroy <
>> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Ah, yes. Fred would pick things up at the Keebler Baking factory outlet
>>> on his way to work.
>>> We called it the "used cookie store".
>>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:31 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> fred was certainly a character.
>>>>
>>>> perhaps ken or rob might confirm this, but i recall at least one of the
>>>> canoe trips demonstrated
>>>> the effects of dropping flour sacks onto canoes from a small airplane.
>>>> (i was not present on any
>>>> of these trips, but heard this from grampp.)
>>>>
>>>> he was also responsible for occasionally buying bulk bags of barely
>>>> digestible cheese crackers
>>>> (we called them cheese awfuls) and leaving them in the Unix Room to be
>>>> eaten.
>>>>
>>>> > On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <
>>>> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
>>>> > Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
>>>> > I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
>>>> > written soon after his death.
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>

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Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Brantley Coile]

In the "15 minutes" that I worked in Center 1127, I reported
to Fred. When he interviewed me for the job in his office
the conversation wandered around to the German Enigma machine.

"What a great thing to actually see one some day." I said.

"Oh?" asked Fred, reaching down pulling open the bottom drawer of
his metal desk. 

A tug at a fabric covered wooden box, making a sliding, banging noise
on the metal draw as he withdrew it, and plopped it on the disk in
front of me.  Popping open the catches he lifted the lid and there was
the enigmatic enigma in front of me, open for me to touch.

We spent the rest of the interview with him explaining the 
the workings of the device. What a pleasure it was.

Brantley

> On Mar 11, 2021, at 10:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
> Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
> I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
> written soon after his death.
> 
> Doug
> 
> During Fred's long career at Bell Laboratories, his coworkers
> were delighted to work with him, primarily because of his
> innovative and often surprising ways of attacking problems.
> 
> Fred's unique approach was by no means limited to work-related
> matters. Fred arranged an annual canoe-camping trip on the
> Delaware River replete with nearly professional grade fireworks.
> 
> He also arranged a number of trips to New York City (referred
> to as culture nights) which included, among other things,
> trips to the planetarium and visits to various tea rooms.
> 
> To his friends at Bell Labs, Fred Grampp was a true original. He
> knew the urban community of small, scrabbling business
> as well as the pampered life of industrial research in the
> country's greatest industrial research lab. And he brought
> the best of each to his approach to work.
> 
> In his father's hardware store, Fred learned on the front line
> what "customer-oriented" meant--a far cry from the hypothetical
> nonsense on the subject put forth by flacks in a modern PR
> department, or by CEO Bob Allen thinking big thoughts on the
> golf course.
> 
> Fred ran the computing facilities for the Computer Science
> Research Center. He had his finger on the pulse of the machinery
> at all hours of day and night. He and his colleague Ed Sitar
> rose early to pat the hardware and assure that everything was
> in order just as had been done at the hardware store. The rest
> of us, who kept more nerdish hours, could count on everything
> running.
> 
> Packed with equipment, the machine room depended on
> air conditioning. Fred saw this as a threat to dependable
> service. As a backup, he had big galvanized barn fans installed
> in several windows--incongruous, but utterly practical. And
> they saw actual use on at least one occasion.
> 
> Fred cooked up ingenious software to sniff the computers'
> health and sound alarms in his office and even by his bed when
> something was amiss. When a user found something wrong and
> popped into Fred's office to report the trouble, more often
> than not he'd find Fred already working on it.
> 
> With his street smarts, Fred was ahead of the game when
> computer intrusion began to become a problem in the 1970s.
> He was a real white-hat marshall, who could read the the bad
> guys' minds and head them off at the pass. With Bob Morris,
> Fred wrote a paper to alert system administrators to the kinds
> of lapse of vigilance that leave them open to attack; the paper
> is still read as a classic. Other sage advice was put forth
> by Fred in collaboration with G. R. Emlin, who would become an
> important adjunct member of the lab, as several TUHS posts attest.
> 
> Quietly he developed a suite of programs that probed a
> computer's defenses--fortunately before the bad guys really
> got geared up to do the same. That work led to the creation
> of a whole department that used Fred's methods to assess and
> repair the security of thousands of computers around Bell Labs.
> 
> Fred's avocations of flying and lock-picking lent spice to
> life in the Labs. He was a central figure of the "computer
> science airforce" that organized forays to see fall colors,
> or to witness an eclipse. He joined Ken Thompson, who also
> flew in the department air force, on a trip to Russia to fly
> a MIG-29.  Ken tells the story at cs.bell-labs.com/ken/mig.html.
> 
> Fred's passion for opera was communicated to many. It was
> he who put the Met schedule on line for us colleagues long
> before the Met discovered the World Wide Web. He'd press new
> recordings on us to whet our appetites. He'd recount, or take
> us to, rehearsals and backstage visits, and furnish us with
> librettos. When CDs appeared on the scene, Fred undertook to
> build a systematic collection of opera recordings, which grew
> to over two hundred works. They regularly played quietly in the
> background of his office. To Fred the opera was an essential
> part of life, not just an expensive night on the town.
> 
> Fred's down-to-earth approach lightened life at Bell Labs. When
> workmen were boarding up windows to protect them from some major
> construction--and incidentally to prevent us from enjoying the
> spectacle of ironworkers outside. Fred posted a little sign
> in his window to the effect that if the plywood happened to
> get left off, a case of Bud might appear on the sill. For the
> next year, we had a close-up view of the action.
> 
> Fred, a graduate of Stevens Institute, began his career in
> the computer center, under the leadership of George Baldwin,
> perhaps the most affable and civic-minded mathematician I have
> ever met. At the end of one trying day, George wandered into
> Fred's office, leaned back in the visitor chair, and said,
> "I sure could use a cold one about now." Fred opened his window
> and retrieved a Bud that was cooling on the sill.
> 
> Fred lived his whole life in Elizabeth, New Jersey. At one
> point he decided that for exercise he could get to the Labs by
> train to Scotch Plains and bike from there up to Bell Labs--no
> mean feat, for the labs sat atop the second range of the
> Watchung Mountains, two steep climbs away from Scotch Plains.
> He invested in a folding bike for the purpose. Some days
> into the new routine a conductor called him out for bringing
> a bicycle onto the train. Fred had looked forward to this
> moment. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a timetable
> and pointed to the fine print: bicycles were prohibited with
> the exception of folding bikes.
> 
> Originally dated October 25, 2000.  Lightly edited and three
> paragraphs added February 22, 2021.
> 

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Rob Pike]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1957 bytes --]

I don't believe the water tower was a one-person job.

Fortunately I have a perfect alibi, being on the other side of the country
that day.

-rob


On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 6:51 AM Ken Thompson <kenbob@gmail.com> wrote:

> fred dumpster dove on the way to the labs.
> his prize, beside the cheese awfuls, was
> the bowling pins for the 6th floor bowling
> alley.
>
> fred was after a german ww2 enigma. he
> left requests at two european shops that
> were known to occasionally have one.
> when one came to light, fred and i split
> the price. after years of dwindling hope
> for another one showing up, fred an i
> flipped a coin to see who owned it. fred
> won. before his death he gave  it to me.
>
> and lastly, and secret until now, fred
> painted the peter face on the water tower.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 8:14 AM M Douglas McIlroy <
> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>
>> Ah, yes. Fred would pick things up at the Keebler Baking factory outlet
>> on his way to work.
>> We called it the "used cookie store".
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:31 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:
>>
>>> fred was certainly a character.
>>>
>>> perhaps ken or rob might confirm this, but i recall at least one of the
>>> canoe trips demonstrated
>>> the effects of dropping flour sacks onto canoes from a small airplane.
>>> (i was not present on any
>>> of these trips, but heard this from grampp.)
>>>
>>> he was also responsible for occasionally buying bulk bags of barely
>>> digestible cheese crackers
>>> (we called them cheese awfuls) and leaving them in the Unix Room to be
>>> eaten.
>>>
>>> > On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <
>>> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
>>> > Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
>>> > I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
>>> > written soon after his death.
>>> >
>>>
>>>

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Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Anthony Martin]

Ken Thompson <kenbob@gmail.com> once said:
> and lastly, and secret until now, fred
> painted the peter face on the water tower.

At long last!

Earlier hints from research!gerard:

"We do know that the paint itself was vouchered a few days
later as a business expense by Fred Grampp, on behalf of a
pseudo-employee G.R. (Grace) Emlin (login: gremlin), who had
at that time already been entered successfully into most
official databases at Bell Labs, and regularly received mail
at her mailbox at 2C-501 (the Unix room)."

https://spinroot.com/pico/pjw.html

  Anthony

Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Ken Thompson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1670 bytes --]

fred dumpster dove on the way to the labs.
his prize, beside the cheese awfuls, was
the bowling pins for the 6th floor bowling
alley.

fred was after a german ww2 enigma. he
left requests at two european shops that
were known to occasionally have one.
when one came to light, fred and i split
the price. after years of dwindling hope
for another one showing up, fred an i
flipped a coin to see who owned it. fred
won. before his death he gave  it to me.

and lastly, and secret until now, fred
painted the peter face on the water tower.



On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 8:14 AM M Douglas McIlroy <
m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> Ah, yes. Fred would pick things up at the Keebler Baking factory outlet on
> his way to work.
> We called it the "used cookie store".
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:31 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:
>
>> fred was certainly a character.
>>
>> perhaps ken or rob might confirm this, but i recall at least one of the
>> canoe trips demonstrated
>> the effects of dropping flour sacks onto canoes from a small airplane. (i
>> was not present on any
>> of these trips, but heard this from grampp.)
>>
>> he was also responsible for occasionally buying bulk bags of barely
>> digestible cheese crackers
>> (we called them cheese awfuls) and leaving them in the Unix Room to be
>> eaten.
>>
>> > On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <
>> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> > In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
>> > Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
>> > I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
>> > written soon after his death.
>> >
>>
>>

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Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[M Douglas McIlroy]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1004 bytes --]

Ah, yes. Fred would pick things up at the Keebler Baking factory outlet on
his way to work.
We called it the "used cookie store".

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 10:31 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:

> fred was certainly a character.
>
> perhaps ken or rob might confirm this, but i recall at least one of the
> canoe trips demonstrated
> the effects of dropping flour sacks onto canoes from a small airplane. (i
> was not present on any
> of these trips, but heard this from grampp.)
>
> he was also responsible for occasionally buying bulk bags of barely
> digestible cheese crackers
> (we called them cheese awfuls) and leaving them in the Unix Room to be
> eaten.
>
> > On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <
> m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> >
> > In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
> > Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
> > I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
> > written soon after his death.
> >
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] Fred Grampp

[Andrew Hume]

fred was certainly a character.

perhaps ken or rob might confirm this, but i recall at least one of the canoe trips demonstrated
the effects of dropping flour sacks onto canoes from a small airplane. (i was not present on any
of these trips, but heard this from grampp.)

he was also responsible for occasionally buying bulk bags of barely digestible cheese crackers
(we called them cheese awfuls) and leaving them in the Unix Room to be eaten.

> On Mar 11, 2021, at 7:06 AM, M Douglas McIlroy <m.douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
> Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
> I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
> written soon after his death.
> 

[TUHS] Fred Grampp

[M Douglas McIlroy]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5649 bytes --]

In all that's been written about the Research Unix players,
Fred Grampp has gotten far less coverage than he deserves.
I hope to rectify that with this post, most of which was
written soon after his death.

Doug

During Fred's long career at Bell Laboratories, his coworkers
were delighted to work with him, primarily because of his
innovative and often surprising ways of attacking problems.

Fred's unique approach was by no means limited to work-related
matters. Fred arranged an annual canoe-camping trip on the
Delaware River replete with nearly professional grade fireworks.

He also arranged a number of trips to New York City (referred
to as culture nights) which included, among other things,
trips to the planetarium and visits to various tea rooms.

To his friends at Bell Labs, Fred Grampp was a true original. He
knew the urban community of small, scrabbling business
as well as the pampered life of industrial research in the
country's greatest industrial research lab. And he brought
the best of each to his approach to work.

In his father's hardware store, Fred learned on the front line
what "customer-oriented" meant--a far cry from the hypothetical
nonsense on the subject put forth by flacks in a modern PR
department, or by CEO Bob Allen thinking big thoughts on the
golf course.

Fred ran the computing facilities for the Computer Science
Research Center. He had his finger on the pulse of the machinery
at all hours of day and night. He and his colleague Ed Sitar
rose early to pat the hardware and assure that everything was
in order just as had been done at the hardware store. The rest
of us, who kept more nerdish hours, could count on everything
running.

Packed with equipment, the machine room depended on
air conditioning. Fred saw this as a threat to dependable
service. As a backup, he had big galvanized barn fans installed
in several windows--incongruous, but utterly practical. And
they saw actual use on at least one occasion.

Fred cooked up ingenious software to sniff the computers'
health and sound alarms in his office and even by his bed when
something was amiss. When a user found something wrong and
popped into Fred's office to report the trouble, more often
than not he'd find Fred already working on it.

With his street smarts, Fred was ahead of the game when
computer intrusion began to become a problem in the 1970s.
He was a real white-hat marshall, who could read the the bad
guys' minds and head them off at the pass. With Bob Morris,
Fred wrote a paper to alert system administrators to the kinds
of lapse of vigilance that leave them open to attack; the paper
is still read as a classic. Other sage advice was put forth
by Fred in collaboration with G. R. Emlin, who would become an
important adjunct member of the lab, as several TUHS posts attest.

Quietly he developed a suite of programs that probed a
computer's defenses--fortunately before the bad guys really
got geared up to do the same. That work led to the creation
of a whole department that used Fred's methods to assess and
repair the security of thousands of computers around Bell Labs.

Fred's avocations of flying and lock-picking lent spice to
life in the Labs. He was a central figure of the "computer
science airforce" that organized forays to see fall colors,
or to witness an eclipse. He joined Ken Thompson, who also
flew in the department air force, on a trip to Russia to fly
a MIG-29.  Ken tells the story at cs.bell-labs.com/ken/mig.html.

Fred's passion for opera was communicated to many. It was
he who put the Met schedule on line for us colleagues long
before the Met discovered the World Wide Web. He'd press new
recordings on us to whet our appetites. He'd recount, or take
us to, rehearsals and backstage visits, and furnish us with
librettos. When CDs appeared on the scene, Fred undertook to
build a systematic collection of opera recordings, which grew
to over two hundred works. They regularly played quietly in the
background of his office. To Fred the opera was an essential
part of life, not just an expensive night on the town.

Fred's down-to-earth approach lightened life at Bell Labs. When
workmen were boarding up windows to protect them from some major
construction--and incidentally to prevent us from enjoying the
spectacle of ironworkers outside. Fred posted a little sign
in his window to the effect that if the plywood happened to
get left off, a case of Bud might appear on the sill. For the
next year, we had a close-up view of the action.

Fred, a graduate of Stevens Institute, began his career in
the computer center, under the leadership of George Baldwin,
perhaps the most affable and civic-minded mathematician I have
ever met. At the end of one trying day, George wandered into
Fred's office, leaned back in the visitor chair, and said,
"I sure could use a cold one about now." Fred opened his window
and retrieved a Bud that was cooling on the sill.

Fred lived his whole life in Elizabeth, New Jersey. At one
point he decided that for exercise he could get to the Labs by
train to Scotch Plains and bike from there up to Bell Labs--no
mean feat, for the labs sat atop the second range of the
Watchung Mountains, two steep climbs away from Scotch Plains.
He invested in a folding bike for the purpose. Some days
into the new routine a conductor called him out for bringing
a bicycle onto the train. Fred had looked forward to this
moment. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a timetable
and pointed to the fine print: bicycles were prohibited with
the exception of folding bikes.

Originally dated October 25, 2000.  Lightly edited and three
paragraphs added February 22, 2021.

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