TL 9 microchips?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On the other hand, simple narrative descriptions will often imply actual numbers. See for example Heinlein's Starman Jones, where astrogation problems are entered into a computer by looking up the decimal numbers in a table of decimal to binary conversions and manually entering the binary numbers!

Of course in real life from 2004-2008 ot thereabouts I did mortar FDC by putting a pencil dot on a rotatable piece of lucite, rotated the lucite until it was aligned with the direction of fire, read the deflection off a vernier scal (designed in the late 1800s) printed on the board and then looked up the charge and elevation in a big book of tables. In 2008 we got handheld ballistic mortar computers, and were still required to check the results by plotting board. I then often was expected to give the fire command by talking into a unpowered bakelite handset last manufactured probably about the time you, Bill, were born which then would transmit by conductance on.a copper wire by the same technology children used to use soup cans and string for. So while Bob, Navy man that he was, was certainly far off about the specifics, he was relating something essential about the military institutional mindset.