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"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection."
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Drafting Dan | ||
| The first computer software drafting program (Computer Aided Design - CAD). |
This is the first mention of a computer software drafting program, like AutoCAD and the many other drafting packages available today.
| I knew that they were using powered semi-automatic drafting machines now... You could put straight lines or curves anywhere on an easel just by punching keys. |
| Technovelgy from The Door Into Summer,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1956 Additional resources -
|
This novel was published in 1956, which I believe was before the use of computers in drafting. In the mid-1950's the US Air Force developed SAGE (Semi Automatic Ground Environment) for air defense; it provided one key component; a cathode ray tube to show computer-processed information (in this case, radar and other data). The first true CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems emerged in the 1960's; the first was The Electronic Drafting Machine, which used PDP-1 computer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corp., a vector-refresh display and a disk memory device used to refresh the graphic display. An electronic light pen was used to input commands.
I spent some time working with PDGS (Product Design Graphics System), Ford Motor Company's home-grown CAD program. PDGS started with a few FORTRAN programs to calculate specific parameters for subsystems (like suspension designs); by the 1990's it had grown to a full-fledged system with (reputedly) 10,000 sub-menus full of features.
(Special thanks to Bill Mullins for pointing this one out.)
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and Technology from The Door Into Summer
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Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
