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A Short Biography of

Ed Thelen



I started this web site in 1996, when most guys showed themselves in their favorite T-shirt next to a red convertible. Being a contrarian, and having no favorite T-shirt nor red convertible, I refused to do that.

In 2003, George Runkle asked for a picture, and J.P. Moore asked for a short bio.
Sensing fame and fortune at my doorstep ;-)) I agreed.

Here goes!


Left puppy died April 2005 at age 16 :-((
Center puppy still writing web sites ;-))
Right puppy was a super dog, died April 2004 after challenging/ignoring an auto for right of way :-(((
Hmmmm - a bio - you asked for "a little bio" -

Ah good, that means I can

- leave out all the disgraceful stuff
- leave in only the hero/intellectual stuff.
- and spin everything to my advantage :-))

OK - lets try it -

A "short" autobiography of (bring up the sound of trumpets)

ta ta - ta ta

Ed Thelen

Executive Summary of Ed Thelen
A proposed script for "Dilbert" by Scott Adams
- Lady says to Dilbert, "Say something romantic."
- Dilbert (Ed Thelen) says "Kepler discovered the paths of the planets."
- Lady thinks "I wish I remembered Bill Clinton's telephone number."

Cheers

Ed Thelen - October 26, 2003 - tweaked since -

84 K bytes
I didn't have any pictures of my military days. (Maybe this web site is over-compensation for not taking any.) In January 2004 "Mac" McCabe sent to me this picture (printed May 1955) that he took after we had completed 13 months of classroom, practical, and range firing of the Nike Ajax guided missiles. We were about to leave Ft. Bliss to set up our Nike sites in the U.S.
He said "This picture should make your day - young, slender & single. Your SAM-23 Classmate Mac McCabe".
I wish I could say that I am the friendly, cool, handsome dude on the left - but that is Fredrick Toevs.

This is the end of the short bio - the following is recollections of various employers I've had - I never had the guts to go into business for myself.

Comments about General Electric Computer Department
And I even worked for IBM
Indeed - A group of about 10 of us left General Electric Computer Deptartment at the same time -
Infact the same going away party - about 9 were going to California to set up their own computer related company (probably timesharing software) and me - I was invited to go along to do a FORTRAN compilier for them - but I also had a job offer from IBM in New York, to help on their TSS (Time Sharing System) effort. Manny Lemas, from G.E., had joined IBM a few months previous, and said the water was fine at IBM - and some good solid work needed to be done. (I also had a job offer from Control Data in Minnesota, but that didn't seem so exciting. What glory days!!)

Being a bit chicken about helping start up a software company, I *finally* (after the going away party) decided to head for IBM Advanced System Development (Mohansic Labs) in Yorktown Heights, New York.

Friends - I like to think that I'm as smart as the average bear. Learned that I wasn't brilliant when quite young, but I can hang in there most of the time. I'm an incrementalist, but can usually move things along.

Friends, those guys at IBM were *smart* - it was kind of a thrill to associate with them. They would tell adventures of conning customers into getting extra equipment. My boss's boss had recently received a $9,000 cash award (about half of a nice house at the time) for developing a timesharing system to run on a 7094. One of the guys had done the DASDI software for the new disk packs that were just coming out - and all stood in awe of him. I felt that I would really have to hustle to stay up with these guys.

I was put under the wing of a contract employee - This guy was your basic slug - what he was doing in this crowd I never did figure. After a couple of months I was doing the work of both of us, and I was trying to get this turkey fired! My boss said that was not an option - "cope".

We were part of a 45 person group doing performance analysis and providing suggestions for performance enhancements of the TSS (see above) effort that was dragging in schedule and performance.

"Slug" and I were taking instruction traces of the IBM 360 Mod 67 doing an assembly of a few lines of 360 code. Our goal was to suggest groupings of subroutines so that there would be fewer "page faults" requiring access to the swapping drum which cost a lot of "wall clock" time. Basically, try to get more through-put from the machine by positioning the modules of this task in a more optimum manner.

"Slug" and I (actually I) designed and wrote a FORTRAN routine to take the address in the Program Counter from the trace tapes, take the module locations from the loadmap tape, identify which subroutines/modules were being accessed, and make a report suggesting optimizations.

This was a wonderful task, well defined, I could understand it quickly, very doable, and I felt that I could make a definite contribution quickly - and get recognized and get even more interesting job assignments. I even found a bug in the FORTRAN F - I put in lots of comment cards about interfaces and things, and FORTRAN F got lost and did quirky things if there were more than 19 comment cards in a row. Basically, I was having a blast, full access to the documents of the TSS technical reports, code, design documents - the whole tomato :-))

The wife was unhappy with the neighbors, they had been there for years and regarded her as a passing phase. And she wasn't too happy with our rental house (a somewhat winterized summer cabin that I had picked while she was coming from Phoenix). Then she got really unhappy - wanted to go back to sisters and family in Minnesota. Well, I had dragged her all over the U.S. - I guess it was my turn to get dragged.

So I called Control Data and asked if the job offer was still open - They said sure - when and where do you want the truck? No kidding - computer's glory daze :-))

So I busted my butt to get my project all tidied up so that I could resign and not leave a mess. My sleepy looking boss - who didn't seem quite up to the rest of the staff - called me in one day and said that I was doing an outstanding job. I thanked him - then he popped me with this "Are you getting ready to resign?"

I nearly dropped my teeth - how the $%^& had he figured that out?? All the short timers I knew about sloughed off before leaving. I suddenly figured my boss was a heck of a lot more savvy than I had given him credit for. I told him "yes" - I was going to give 2 weeks notice Friday. We talked for a spell about why - and possible opportunities with IBM in Minnesota. I didn't want to go to that tape drive division in Rochester, Minnesota, and I didn't trust the new IBM ad campaign that advertised a free IBM Software Engineer with each new system - that sounded to good to last (and was!!).

So, in a couple of weeks we were moving to Minnesota and wife's sisters and Control Data 6600s :-))
I always looked back at my IBM experience with great fondness - and that is partly why I'm hanging with some IBM guys restoring an an old IBM 1401.


Control Data Corporation 1966-1971 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Hemmendinger" 

> I'm interested in the early history of 
> interrupt-handling > -- not so much the hardware 
> as the development of techiques for dealing with 
> real-time problems.  

Ah - "Real Time".   Indeed - that overworked, vague term.

I spent 5 years at Control Data - Special System Division -
     with the CDC-6x00 series.

As you know, the PPs did not do interrupts - BUT -
we could offer guaranteed performance, 
  * PPs and CPU have deterministic, repeatable performance *
  not just a best effort by an interrupt system
      with many things to do.

We pushed the term "Time Critical" to highlight 
     our capabilities,
  and in fact could guarantee time performance 
     on such items as:
   - multiple telemetry streams 
      (from say aircraft prototypes in test flights)
        - helped sell, implement, install, acceptance test
            a system to Volkswagen (multiple test stands)
        - helped sell and implement a system to 
            Grumann Aircraft for the then E-15
        - hybrid systems to Naval Underwater Weapons Lab and
            naval aircraft range at China Lake
            
   - function generation in hybrid computation
        input from analog, computation, response to analog

   and background  software development and debug
   and a base-load of normal batch operations. 
              

For timing purposes we grouped time critical events into
  - Input groups such as ADC, contact closure, etc
  - Computation such as 
  - Output groups such as DAC, contact closure, etc
  - data streaming into pre-allocated circular disk buffers
      (I understand 
and provided software aids for users to measure the above
and means of queuing  jobs requiring various resources.

We in CDC Special Systems made these capabilities 
  - exceeding anyone else's, :-))
  - into a dying market     :-((

I have tried to contact former bosses/co-workers
such as John Sansom (inventor of a digital language
emulating an analog computer that CDC offered as MIMIC) 
with out success.  Dave Cahlander and Greg Mansfield
(Kronos/NOS fame) were active in prior art in 1991.


[Ring buffer patent indeed - patents feed lawyers
    not inventors!! 
   In the 1960s G.E.'s 625 operating system GECOS 
    and CDC's SCOPE used them for spooling 
    - any attorney can dig them with a 15 second explanation]
Control Data was fun - but it transfered our sales force (which had a hard enough time understanding what advantage they had) back to Minneapolis - and I figured CDC were doomed to failure. So I left to join the "up and coming" Measurex that knew how to replicate software and make money!

Yes - Measurex in Cupertino, Ca - was there 17 years - first 16 years were *GREAT*.
see Measurex

Many ex-Measurex people use this e-mail list service.

Big Toys for Big Boys

Rita and Bill's son Kendall grew up in L.A. but insisted that he go to college in Colorado (great skiing). Ken is your basic college drop-out over achiever. Ken had started with little more than bare hands, boundless enthusiasm, winning personality, hard work, nerve, luck with friends, some of his father's advice, and built a contracting and property management business in the Crested Butte ski area in about 10 years. (And had wooed and wed a wonderful lady - and fathered this adorable baby.)

This is my cousin Rita's first grandchild - and we just had to see the little guy. There was another big attraction. Ken, the new daddy, advertised that if I visited, I could play with his big earth moving toys :-))

Pictures by Betty Thelen and Rita Collins.
The game plan is to add some soil to cover lots of rocks in the back yard of Kendell Collin's back yard. Here I am, driving a front loader. I have just picked up another scoop of soil and am bringing it into the back yard. Charlie has told me repeatedly to keep the load low! I can't see it well and bang a lot :-((
The house has been a work in progress for years - very serviceable but never finished - something always needs doing. In the evening we all sat on the front porch, watching the evening, drinking beer.
This is my boss, Charlie, with a pony tail, who works for cousin Kendall. He is operating the track-hoe to flatten the soil that I bring over the remaining rocks and tamp it down to prepare for grass seed. Charlie has worked with and for Ken for over 8 years. Charlie is very skilled, works fast, very opinionated, a good beer drinking companion, and not overly polite.
Towards the end of each summer season Charlie and Ken have a big fight, and Charlie goes some where for the winter. Each spring Charlie is back working for Ken - who is damn glad to have him. - That's the story -
I have just dropped the load off to the right where Charlie pointed. I am backing up quick like a bunny while Charlie is goosing the engine to swing the track-hoe back to the soil and start flattening and stamping it.
In another 15 feet I will do a 180 and head back down the hill 150 yards for another load. My goal was to keep Charlie supplied with soil and try to look competent. We did this for about 6 hours.
This is my good side :-))
This is a worm's eye view of Charlie pointing to where I should drop this load. I think I would rather be a people than a worm.

Later in the day, Ken and Charlie let me dig a deep hole with this thing. The hole was ok, and I didn't do any permanent damage to anybody - but sure scared me and cousin Ken!!! I was later informed that the machine is hands-off-safe - in general, if something bad is happening - just take your hands off the controls!!

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