IP: flunking drafting

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>
>Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 17:12:03 -0400
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: "Lance J. Hoffman" <hoffman@SEAS.GWU.EDU>
>Subject: flunking drafting
>
>         Reading your story, Dave, I wonder how many of us got into computers as a
>result of being good in math but hopelessly unable to do drafting.  I
>recall that we *had* to take Engineering Drawing at Carnegie Institute of
>Technology, now Carnegie Mellon, and I was doing miserably, since not only
>could I not draw, I could not visualize anything in 3-space (let alone
>N-space).  In addition, the course was taught by a professor who
>interjected sermons from a local radio show he had on the weekends.
>         Somebody took me aside and said that they were trying to populate a new
>course, would I take it?  I told them I would take *anything* to get out of
>drafting.  Thus I was introduced to Alan J. Perlis and his great group at
>Carnegie and learned how to sleep behind the computer until the bell rang,
>signifying the end of one job and, thus, time for me to load punchcards
>into the hopper for the next.  This was, ahem, before the days of "batch
>processing".
>         Drafting.  If we had the tools and software then that we have now, we
>might have been in totally different careers.
>
>Lance 
>
>(you may share with IP if you wish)
>
>Lance J. Hoffman, Director, Cyberspace Policy Institute
>and Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The
>George Washington University, Washington DC 20052.  Phone (202) 994-5513
>Fax (202) 994-5505.  http://www.seas.gwu.edu/seas/institutes/cpi/