- I found a recording of later iteration of the talk posted on CHM's site:
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10278116...
Youtube link to 'unlisted video' - embedded in the CHM page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7unIXa84Pw
https://archive.org/details/sim_naval-engineers-journal_1984...
Contains the text of the talk, but 'borrow unavailable'.
First page visible here, but unavailable for purchase or view with a Wiley account:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1559-3584....
- I love Kagi - I asked "what unique citations can you find for a talk admiral grace Hopper gave to the NSA in 1982 titled “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People,” and it returned this citation first:
https://www.governmentattic.org/28docs/NatnlCryptoSchoolTVct...
The citation for Grace's talk is on p29.
I'd be really curious to go down this path and push more on freeing this up. Having never filed an FOIA request myself and lacking the training to litigate, do you have any advice for someone like me wanting to put some energy into this? I suppose reading up on muckrock's charter and mission is a good first step. I'd love to hear more about your experience in general if you feel like sharing.
- This sent me down a Jeff Minter rabbit hole. I’ve been using computers for composing and occasionally have done procedural visuals to go along with my procedural composing, but I was completely unaware of this thread of history in creative programming. Reminds me of the work of John Whitney https://youtu.be/cP5Mj6ZvZJc?si=HDOweehAPscTOei2
- Recently, I acquired a Zorba CP/M machine, which was my first back in the 80s. I had forgotten how simple but kind of clunky ED was, and didn’t know any backstory of it until now. Really fun! I’m trying to stay true to vim, but it’s hard with sublime text and all the intellij tools right there.
- I knew the speech synthesizer well but wow - what a setup with all of them in place! Did anyone witness this in real life?
- What a cool site! I had no idea about Sinclair’s history in the audio market. https://rk.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/marketplace/hifi_market.htm
- Thx for the reply. DD. Definitely using DS/DD with hub rings. My zorba seems to spin them fine. I bought a still shrink wrapped box of dshd 3Ms (out of curiosity) and I managed to format roughly 30 of the tracks.
- No apologies necessary! Great to hear it's taking off.
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In addition to pushing forward on the FOIA approach, I'd suggest trying to interest whatever group the NSA has assigned with historical preservation. I'm sure they are understaffed and underfunded but at least they have an interest in preserving things like this, whereas the FOIA people's goal is to find grounds to deny requests as cheaply and quickly as possible.
I imagine there are NSA history buffs outside the agency and contacting them first to get their input on who and how to approach (or maybe even an introduction) would probably be better than a cold approach. Two things that may help:
* Make it easy for them by doing the legwork up front. Find a preservationist or museum with a working 1-inch VTR, ideally one of the "portable" ones (actually like a large suitcase vs a washing machine). It may be that removing the tape from the NSA facility makes it a much bigger ask (keeping in mind they don't know for sure what's on it yet). The closer you can make the initial proposition sound to "it just takes one of your people to get the tape for a couple hours to digitize it. We'll set it up but NOT be in the room for the playback, then NSA can decide what to do with it" the more likely success will be. (obviously, it'll probably be more complicated but once they're in...)
* Highlight that this is ONLY about preservation not release. Old magnetic tapes degrade with time. Accessing playback gear may not be possible in another decade. It's probably still savable this year but will soon be lost forever (create urgency with FOMO).
Don't even talk about release or FOIA, make it about some NSA history initiative that already has support. Ideally, they're working on a "Women in NSA" or "NSA and Early Computing" exhibit for next year. Just between us though, once you know that the video exists digitally, the grounds for FOIA denial is gone :-)
Good luck!
And if you can find some NSA folks they would be able to make calls inside the system to get the wheels greased much faster than some FOIA intern will.