Some recent thoughts and sites I've come up with and across. Everything on 11/26/04 and before was all entered on 11/26/04 from ClipCache Plus from XRayz Software.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Epson HX-20, first notebook computer? (announced 1981)
One unique use of the HX-20, was by the Zeiss company, which wrote Basic code for it to translate serial port code from an infrared survey instrument, an Elta 38 (?), which, through its telescope, one took sitings of a reflecting prism, turned into x,y,z triplets for topographical information (for the planet Kpax, in the HX-20). I grew attached to one, it's little built in printer predating the cash registers that arrived and the microcasette recorder to store programs, as we watched the "ticker tape" machines in the financial district hit the curbs, replaced by the "green snake" of LEDs and LCD displays. Used on a number of sites (early New Amsterdam remains in NYC on Whitehall St., and others) for one-time Britannica Yearbook "Western Hemisphere" archaeology author Joel Grossman, Ph.D., it went with him and Mike Davenport to map an indigenous mound for archaeologist Anna Roosevelt (former President Theodore Roosevelt's grand-daughter) on the largest freshwater island in the world, in Brazil on the Amazon. It cacked from humidity, I think, on a Hudson River terrace while I was using it at the site of the "last village of the Wesqueskecks" in Dobbs Ferry, NY. I had to rewrite some of the software once, as 0,0 is positive from Columbus Circle in NYC in all directions, in the old system (under Christopher Columbus' statue?) to try to synch up old Bronx maps with an old Wave Hill map for a tree survey (Samuel Clemens once lived there and had a treehouse for visiting, Arturo Toscanini also lived there, its last "private" use, the British Embassy compound in 1961 or so, and now a cultural and horticulture center, and actually two mansions and grounds) then also in NYC's nearby Riverdale Park. Certain "escaped" plants (especially "porcelainberry") are taking over the woods there and it was once thought to remove them before they choked all the pathways along the Hudson River (pre GPS).
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