Clan Sunbeam Reborn !

[65sunbeam]

April 5,6, and 7th 2013. More info to follow! Eric

 

[Ken Ellis]

If this happens -- and I'm not for a minute sayin' it should -- then I fear the inevitable paparazzi shots of middle-aged kilted men exiting Alpines over the parking brake lever. Oh, the humanity...

 

[puff4]

If this happens -- and I'm not for a minute sayin' it should -- then I fear the inevitable paparazzi shots of middle-aged kilted men exiting Alpines over the parking brake lever. Oh, the humanity...

Ouch!

Kind of reminds me of a story...

Back in high school I dated a gal whose father owned a RHD 1952 Bentley R-Type. The guy was brilliant - he was a computer engineer on Eniac back in the day - but he was horribly prone to flashes of "absent minded professor" syndrome.

The Bentley had a stick shift, and it was on the right side, near the door opening. Whenever the guy got out of the car we'd all watch, because we knew what was coming... he'd invariably put his foot down as he came out, inadvertently sliding the stick shift up his pant leg, and he would immediately go for a major tumble. I don't think he *ever* got out of that car gracefully. It was particularly embarrassing at shows... sigh...

 

[George Coleman]

How about Clan Buchanan/ Coleman colors, look up the colors there is old and a new tartan!

 

[Series6]

Ouch!

Kind of reminds me of a story...

Back in high school I dated a gal whose father owned a RHD 1952 Bentley R-Type. The guy was brilliant - he was a computer engineer on Eniac back in the day - but he was horribly prone to flashes of "absent minded professor" syndrome.

Kevin,

Remember his name? My mother was a secretary for Eniac at the University of Pennsylvania and Princton. She's mentioned in the book "Turing's Cathedral".

 

[Green67Alpine]

This was the sign at last years SOS in Columbia. We may have a pattern! I will have my kilt! Who will man-up with me? How far do we "dress" for this?

Kilt, socks, shirt, the rest is up to you. We should however have the same tartan colors.

Aye, tis gruesome !

Tamhas j

 

[puff4]

Kevin,

Remember his name? My mother was a secretary for Eniac at the University of Pennsylvania and Princton. She's mentioned in the book "Turing's Cathedral".

Yes, but I won't post it here. I'll send you a PM.

 

[Green67Alpine]

What if we use "chino" or kahki color kilts with clan sunbeam polo or t-shirts?

Tamhas j

 

[mikephillips]

Don't think I'd go quite that far. I would however consider a glengarry with family clan crest. A big guy like me, the kilt look wouldn't be what you'd want to see. However, here's a buck to see Scott and the officers in full rig.

And there still time to learn to strangle a cat!!!...

 

[Nickodell]

Kevin,

Remember his name? My mother was a secretary for Eniac at the University of Pennsylvania and Princton. She's mentioned in the book "Turing's Cathedral".

That's awesome, and you and she must be rightfully proud! But ...

Warning: Anyone who feels that stating a bald fact makes me anti-American, pro-Brit., or anything else on those lines, please don't read on. (And FYI, we were legal permanent [Green Card - they're actually blue] resident aliens from 1969 until 1975, since when we have been proud to be citizens and call ourselves Americans, not "expat. Brits" or anything else. Amazingly, we will soon have lived here for one fifth of the country's existence as a nation.)

Anyhow. It is, unfortunately, a "known fact" in the US that ENIAC, built at the U. of Pa., was the world's first electronic, programmable computer. Like Edison inventing the incandescent light bulb, Lindbergh being the first to fly the Atlantic, and several more myths, it just ain't so.

The first such computer was Colossus, built the year before ENIAC by the General Post Office in England, and used mainly to decypher a German code much more advanced than Enigma. It was so successful that we could read orders to the field before the German generals they were addressed to could. It was estimated that this ended the European war six months earlier.

Three Colossus machines were built, but after the Axis surrender in 1945 Churchill ordered all of them to be destroyed, along with their plans and coding, in case they ended up in Soviet hands. The people at Bletchley Park who operated them were sworn, under the Official Secrets Act, reinforced by threat of imprisonment, to secrecy. Some of the dismantled parts were used by the Post Office in their telephone exchanges. With hindsight, that may not have been as paranoid as it appeared, since a distressingly large number of scientists in the UK and US were covert communists, some of them defecting with crucial information.

However, this secrecy was only lifted in the 1970s, decades after the information could have been of any use to an enemy, which is why almost nobody in the US, and only a tiny number in Britain, have any idea what Colossus was. Only relatively recently could those who worked on the computer talk of their achievement on TV. A small group have spent several years painstakingly reconstructing a Colossus.

The U. of Pa. proudly advertises itself to prospective students with the assertion that they built the first electonic computer. I have written to successive university presidents, deans of the electronics department, etc., without even getting the courtesy of a reply.

Check Colossus out on Wiki.

 

[Series6]

Alan Turing was at Bletchley Park and (I seem to recall) headed up the team that cracked Enigma.

Far be it from me to argue with our resident Brit Historian, but the primary need to break Enigma was to predict the locales of U-Boats in the Atlantic. Nick-Back to you for correction...

 

[MikeH]

The Colossus was a purpose built computer as stated in Wiki.

"The ten British Colossus computers (used for cryptanalysis starting in 1943) were designed by Tommy Flowers. The Colossus computers were digital, electronic, and were programmed by plugboard and switches, but they were dedicated to code breaking and not general purpose.[28]"

"Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines with programmability, albeit limited by modern standards:[9]
it had no internally stored programs. To set it up for a new task, the operator had to set up plugs and switches to alter the wiring.
Colossus was not a general-purpose machine, being designed for a specific cryptanalytic task involving counting and Boolean operations."


Whereas the the Eniac was the first Programable General Purpose Digital Computer. From Wili

"ENIAC ( /ˈɛni.æk/; Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)[1][2] was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.[3]"

 

[Green67Alpine]

Wow ! from kilts to computers what a swing !

 

[Hillman]

The topic doesn't matter, Scots have the biggest package.http://www.sunbeamalpine.org/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Edit to add:
Ok, I dragged the smiley over to the text and what you see is what I got. What did i do wrong?

 

[puff4]

The topic doesn't matter, Scots have the biggest package.http://www.sunbeamalpine.org/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Edit to add:
Ok, I dragged the smiley over to the text and what you see is what I got. What did i do wrong?

Here's the correct code you should have used:

Scots have the biggest package.[img]http://www.sunbeamalpine.org/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif[/img ]

You need to use the "img" tags instead of the "url" tags. This results in:

Scots have the biggest package.

Dragging doesn't work. Just click the icon you want and it will add it properly.

 

[agmason54]

Clan Sunbeam reborn....right....

My good Scottish buddy Tommy Mc Hugh (aka 'Hoot Mon' or(mental) 'Anguish Mc Q')and I were watching this movie and he about went nuts when he saw this on the screen-
"It's shite being Scottish.We're the lowest of the low.The most miserable servile pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization.Some hate the English.I don't. They're just wankers.We on the other hand we colonized by wankers".........*

Long Live the Queen,
Albert Gears Mason-100% Limey Wanker heritage.
You'll never catch me in a kilt although I truly admire the 'Ladies from Hell' in WWII


* Renton played by Ewan MacGregor from the movie Trainspotting

 

[Nickodell]

Alan Turing was at Bletchley Park and (I seem to recall) headed up the team that cracked Enigma.

Far be it from me to argue with our resident Brit Historian, but the primary need to break Enigma was to predict the locales of U-Boats in the Atlantic. Nick-Back to you for correction...

Turing: Correct. The great shame of it was that he was a homosexual at a time when it was not only societally unacceptable, you could be imprisoned for it. So Turing never received the gratitude of the nation he helped to save.

Enigma: It was used for several purposes, the first being during the Battle of Britain (another almost unknown fact) to read German orders to the squadrons for daylight raids. Radar was crucial, but could only spot Luftwaffe formations when they had assembled and were on their way. It was, as is better known, helpful in combating the U-boat menace, but never so much as the sophisticated centimetric radar used by escort destroyers, sloops, frigates and corvettes from late 1942 on, using a wavelength so narrow that the German subs could not detect it. [Centimetric radar was made possible by the magnetron, invented at my old alma mater, U. of Birmingham. The Germans never caught up in radar from that point. Two of the scientists who invented it flew to the US with a hand-made example - but that is another story.]

The U-boats also were habitual radio chatterers (Doenitz insisted on daily reports), and the hunting groups easily homed in on them.

In any event, you seem to have missed this bit in my previous post:
" ... Colossus, built the year before ENIAC by the General Post Office in England, and used mainly to decypher a German code much more advanced than Enigma." The code, whose name escapes me, was a quantum leap over Enigma, and was said to have one hundred million, million numerical combinations. Solving this by humans would have taken until long after the war ended.

 

[Nickodell]

The Colossus was a purpose built computer as stated in Wiki.

"The ten British Colossus computers (used for cryptanalysis starting in 1943) were designed by Tommy Flowers. The Colossus computers were digital, electronic, and were programmed by plugboard and switches, but they were dedicated to code breaking and not general purpose.[28]"

"Colossus was the first of the electronic digital machines with programmability, albeit limited by modern standards:[9]
it had no internally stored programs. To set it up for a new task, the operator had to set up plugs and switches to alter the wiring.
Colossus was not a general-purpose machine, being designed for a specific cryptanalytic task involving counting and Boolean operations."


Whereas the the Eniac was the first Programable General Purpose Digital Computer. From Wili

"ENIAC ( /ˈɛni.æk/; Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)[1][2] was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.[3]"

True, but if you will forgive me for saying so, irrelevant. I was specific (italics added):
"It is, unfortunately, a "known fact" in the US that ENIAC, built at the U. of Pa., was the world's first electronic, programmable computer. .... it just ain't so.

The first such computer was Colossus, built the year before ENIAC by the General Post Office in England ..."

 

[Paul N.]

In any event, you seem to have missed this bit in my previous post:
" ... Colossus, built the year before ENIAC by the General Post Office in England, and used mainly to decypher a German code much more advanced than Enigma." The code, whose name escapes me, was a quantum leap over Enigma, and was said to have one hundred million, million numerical combinations. Solving this by humans would have taken until long after the war ended.

The code you're referring to was the Lorenz code.

I visited Bletchley Park earlier this year and they have a reconstructed working Colossus. If you ever get the chance, it's well worth a day out.

 

[MikeH]

True, but if you will forgive me for saying so, irrelevant. I was specific (italics added):
"It is, unfortunately, a "known fact" in the US that ENIAC, built at the U. of Pa., was the world's first electronic, programmable computer. .... it just ain't so.

The first such computer was Colossus, built the year before ENIAC by the General Post Office in England ..."

I've given this a bit more thought and I think the trick you are pulling here is taking the statement out of context by eliminating part of the description. I will give you that Colossus was the first electronic digital device, but as evidenced in multiple references, ENIAC was never said to be such. It was stated to be the first programmable general purpose digital computer. In that regard it was capable of performing multiple tasks; by reprogramming it. Colossus served a single purpose.

So at best, I think this ends in a draw.