A reminder, perhaps, that my mother existed before I did, had her own noncanonical life that stretched back beyond the one that had instantiated me. She was surprised to see us sitting together when she came out afterward to say hello.Ī shadow relationship. One time, when I was in my mid-twenties, I unknowingly sat next to him in the audience at a health food talk my mother was giving. His family came to our place once, and I have a memory of chasing one of his three sons up the stairs. I remember visiting his parents’ house in Compton, California, when I was very young. Ray has always been in the margins of my life, ghosting around the edges of my consciousness. Maybe they were uncomfortable with history being revised. Later, when he was able to talk about the device, people were skeptical. He couldn’t tell anyone about what they had built, and the project was kept quiet by the Navy and by Garrett for decades as other engineers were awarded credit for inventing firsts. He is probably not someone you have heard of-how could you have? He worked on the project, one of two people doing what’s called the logic design, for two years, between 19, with a team that included his younger brother, Bill. Ray Holt was one of the engineers for the Central Air Data Computer.
It was called the Central Air Data Computer, and it calculated things like altitude and Mach number it figured out the angle of attack, key to landing and missile targeting and it controlled the wing sweep, allowing the craft to be both maneuverable when the wings were at about 50 degrees and very, very fast when they were swept all the way back.
It was larger, it was a combination of six chips, and it performed crucial functions for the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of its first flight this week. The device was designed by a team at a company called Garrett AiResearch on a subcontract for Grumman, the aircraft manufacturer. This is the story, then, of how another first microprocessor, a secret one, came to be-and of my own entwinement with it. Their stories can often be told a different way, from a different perspective, or a what could have been. But objects, events, people-they have alternate histories. Flexible and inexpensive, the 4004 propelled an entire industry forward it was the conceptual forefather of the machine upon which you are probably reading this very article.
It was a combination of four chips, and it could be programmed to do other things too, like run a cash register or a pinball game. The story of the first microprocessor, one you may have heard, goes something like this: The Intel 4004 was introduced in late 1971, for use in a calculator.
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