Re: [TUHS] Peter Adams photos

Re: [TUHS] Peter Adams photos

[Doug McIlroy]

> My favorite anecdote that I've read regarding Belle was when Ken
> Thompson took it out of the country for a competition. Someone,
> I'm assuming with customs, asked him if Belle could be
> classified as munitions in any way. He replied, "Only if you
> drop it out the window."

That's not the half of it. Ken had been invited by Botvinnik,
a past world champion, to demonstrate Belle in Russia. Customs
spotted it in baggage and impounded it without Ken's knowledge.
When he arrived empty-handed in Moscow, his hosts abandoned
him to his own devices.

Late that fateful Friday afteroon, customs called Bell Labs
security, which in turn called Ken's department head--me. That
evening I called Bill Baker, the Labs' presi7, at home,
hoping he might use his high-level Washington connections
to spring Belle. No luck. Ken was in the dark about the whole
affair until Joe Condon managed to reach him at his hotel.
Customs kept the machine a month and released it only after the
Labs agreed to pay a modest fine. I believe Ken's remark about
the military potential of Belle was made in reply to a reporter.

Doug

Re: [TUHS] Peter Adams photos

[A. P. Garcia]

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On Fri, Nov 9, 2018, 10:19 AM Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu wrote:

> > My favorite anecdote that I've read regarding Belle was when Ken
> > Thompson took it out of the country for a competition. Someone,
> > I'm assuming with customs, asked him if Belle could be
> > classified as munitions in any way. He replied, "Only if you
> > drop it out the window."
>
> That's not the half of it. Ken had been invited by Botvinnik,
> a past world champion, to demonstrate Belle in Russia. Customs
> spotted it in baggage and impounded it without Ken's knowledge.
> When he arrived empty-handed in Moscow, his hosts abandoned
> him to his own devices.
>
> Late that fateful Friday afteroon, customs called Bell Labs
> security, which in turn called Ken's department head--me. That
> evening I called Bill Baker, the Labs' presi7, at home,
> hoping he might use his high-level Washington connections
> to spring Belle. No luck. Ken was in the dark about the whole
> affair until Joe Condon managed to reach him at his hotel.
> Customs kept the machine a month and released it only after the
> Labs agreed to pay a modest fine. I believe Ken's remark about
> the military potential of Belle was made in reply to a reporter.
>
> Doug
>

That certainly puts a damper on the punchline of the joke, but thank you
for sharing this story!

>

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Re: [TUHS] Peter Adams photos

[A. P. Garcia]

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On Thu, Nov 8, 2018, 1:23 PM Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu wrote:

> Peter Adams, who photographed many Unix folks for his
> "Faces of open source" series (http://facesofopensource.com/),
> found trinkets from the Unix lab in the Bell Labs archives:
> http://www.peteradamsphoto.com/unix-folklore/.
>
> One item is more than a trinket. Belle, built by
> Ken Thompson and Joe Condon, won the world computer
> chess championship in 1980 and became the first
> machine to gain a chess master rating. Physically,
> it's about a two-foot cube.
>
> Doug
>

Furthermore, Feng-hsiung Hsu at CMU essentially put Belle on a chip and
parallelized it, resulting in the chess computer Deep Thought -- which
became the first machine to defeat a human Grandmaster. It lost a historic
match against the world champion Garry Kasparov, but its successor, Deep
Blue, went on to defeat him.

My favorite anecdote that I've read regarding Belle was when Ken Thompson
took it out of the country for a competition. Someone, I'm assuming with
customs, asked him if Belle could be classified as munitions in any way. He
replied, "Only if you drop it out the window."

>

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[TUHS] Peter Adams photos

[Doug McIlroy]

Peter Adams, who photographed many Unix folks for his
"Faces of open source" series (http://facesofopensource.com/),
found trinkets from the Unix lab in the Bell Labs archives:
http://www.peteradamsphoto.com/unix-folklore/.

One item is more than a trinket. Belle, built by
Ken Thompson and Joe Condon, won the world computer
chess championship in 1980 and became the first
machine to gain a chess master rating. Physically,
it's about a two-foot cube.

Doug