[ih] Early IoT: anyone remember The Internet Toaster and Crane? :D

Thu Jul 9 15:37:30 PDT 2020

Vint, The Prancing Pony was stocked with Potstickers from Hsi Nan (Louie's)
in the Town and Country Shopping Center at El Camino and Embarcadero.   It
was also stocked with Empanada's.

yours truly was a frequent visitor/hanger out there on the weekend and one
of the features of The Prancing Pony billing/accounting sw system was that
it allowed non-employee SAIL members to establish a "prepaid"/"debt"
account -- so as be able to be a Pony customer (which i did).

btw, in the nearby lounge area you may recall there was a TV with a
"phaser" gun remote control that Hans Moravec made.  there was a "TV Guide"
process on the PDP-10 that updated a screen that the TV could tune to with
the phaser gun remote control.

Recall being there one late Saturday night when the PDP-10 crashed
during *Saturday
Night Live* and it was left down/unattended to until there was a commercial
break... :D

On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 12:15 PM vinton cerf <vgcerf at gmail.com> wrote:

> thanks for that lovely historical summary, Geoff.
>
> The Elvish script was the Tengwar.
>
> The Prancing Pony was also stocked with fresh Chinese food. I can't
> remember whether it was from Chef Chu's or one of the restaurants in the
> Town and Country Shopping Center. I think it was the latter because one of
> the students did part time work at the restaurant and kept the Prancing
> Pony stocked.
>
> v
>
>
> v
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 4:46 PM the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via
> Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> vis-a-vis "Stanford AI Lab had a vending machine for food and other stuff
>> and it knew
>> whether you were old enough for alcoholic beverages..."
>>
>> yours truly recalls the SAIL vending machine was connected to the labs
>> PDP-10 via an RS-232 line.  The vending machine customers used a model 33
>> Teletype next to it that was later replaced by a Lear Siegler ADM CRT
>> display terminal... more details from Les Earnest in this EXCERPT at
>> https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/spin/sagas.htm:
>>
>> *Prancing Pony vending machine*
>>
>> The Prancing Pony Vending Machine was evidently the first computer
>> controlled vending machine anywhere in the world. It was created to fill
>> an
>> unmet need.
>>
>>
>>
>> Given that SAIL was about five miles off-campus and the nearest food
>> source
>> was a beer garden (Zotts) about a mile away, I initially set up a coffee
>> and food room near the center of our facility and it subsequently got
>> named
>> after a pub in Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". In fact all rooms in our
>> facility were named after places in Middle Earth and had signs posted on
>> the doors showing their names in both Latin and Elvish alphabets. At some
>> point the Stanford Buildings folks asked me to number our rooms and give
>> them a map. Instead we gave them a map showing room names in both
>> alphabets. Their response was to send out a carpenter with numbered tags,
>> which he nailed on each door.
>>
>> Meanwhile we took turns buying coffee and food, which was offered for sale
>> on an honor system basis. That worked well for awhile but it suddenly
>> started losing money big time. We then negotiated with Canteen, which had
>> an exclusive contract with Stanford, to put in a couple of vending
>> machines. However we found that they were not restocked often enough and
>> broke rather frequently.
>>
>> I finally negotiated to rent a machine from Canteen that we could restock.
>> They seemed to like this idea since it would relieve them of making
>> frequent trips out to our distant facility. In fact they never billed us
>> for the rental even though I repeatedly called it to their attention.
>> Meanwhile I got Ted Panofsky to make a connection to our computer so that
>> it could release the doors on the vending machine, thus making it possible
>> to buy either for cash or, though a computer terminal, on credit. I then
>> wrote a program that let people buy under password control and that billed
>> them on a monthly basis via email. It was set up to randomly give away
>> whatever was purchased on 1/128th of the purchases and offered a "double
>> or
>> nothing" option, which had an honest 50:50 outcome. I noticed a cultural
>> difference in that almost none of the computer science students gambled,
>> knowing that they would win 1/128th of the time if they didn't, whereas
>> many of the music students did gamble. In both cases the Prancing Pony
>> vending machine, having taken on the name of the room, seemed quite
>> popular
>> and we organized a team of volunteers to acquire the needed supplies and
>> restock the machine at least twice a day.
>>
>>
>>
>> The Prancing Pony also sold beer but only on credit and only to people
>> over
>> 21, since it knew everyone’s age. If a youngster attempted to buy beer it
>> responded “Sorry, kid.”
>>
>> Some years later I found out why the honor system had failed in the Pony.
>> I
>> was the founding President of Imagen Corp., which made the first desktop
>> publishing systems using laser printers, and after awhile there a young
>> woman employee felt obligated to confess that when she was a teenybopper,
>> she and her girlfriends used to ride their horses up to SAIL, then went in
>> and stole candy from the Prancing Pony. Thus, her misconduct contributed
>> to
>> a technological advancement.
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 3:05 AM *Vint Cerf via Internet-history
>> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>>
>> wrote:*
>>
>> > Stanford AI Lab had a vending machine for food and other stuff and it
>> knew
>> > whether you were old enough for alcoholic beverages...
>> >
>> > v
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 8:18 AM Jorge Amodio via Internet-history <
>> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > > As far as I remember there was a wired coke machine at MIT
>> > >
>> > > Jorge
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 3:05 AM Lars Brinkhoff via Internet-history <
>> > > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > How about Arpanet of Things?
>> > > >
>> > > > Danny Hillis connected elevator buttons to MIT's Chaosnet, and by
>> > > > extension Arpanet.  Users could type a special key combination on
>> their
>> > > > keyboards to call the elevator to Tech Square floors 8 or 9.
>> Another
>> > > > key would buzz open the door to the machine room on the 9th floor.
>> > > > Source code for this is available.
>> > > > --
>> > > > Internet-history mailing list
>> > > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> > > >
>> > > --
>> > > Internet-history mailing list
>> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> > >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > current postal address:
>> > Google, LLC
>> > 1875 Explorer Street, 10th Floor
>> > Reston, VA 20190
>> >
>> > After July 1, 2020:
>> > Google, LLC
>> > 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, Suite 1400
>> > Reston, VA 20190
>> > --
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>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
>> living as The Truth is True
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True