Asri-unix.551
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utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!Marvin
Sat Jan 16 21:26:21 1982
Dean Machine History
From: Marvin Minsky@MIT-AI (Sent by MINSKY@MIT-AI)
Marvin Minsky@MIT-AI (Sent by MINSKY@MIT-AI) 01/17/82 00:25:30 Re: Dean Machine History
To: space at MIT-MC, Pourne at MIT-MC, sf-lovers at MIT-MC
Shortly after the Dean drive was described in Astounding,
John Campbell published a picture of it. I examined the picture
with a lens and managed to read the brand name of the bathroom
scale used to measure the loss of weight of the machine.
My college roommate, Roland Silver, and I conjectured correctly
that this scale had a "diode" in it that coupled the platform and the
reading device. So we went to Sears Roebuck in Porter Square, Cambridge
and bought that very scale.
When you stand on it it reads your weight fine, but if you pump your
arms up and down -- just as did the dean machine itself --
then the weight fluctuates a lot -- with the mean weight (and even the maximum)
far below the real weight.
So then Clause Shannon and John Pierce and I wrote a sharp detailed letter
to Campbell about this.
John Campbell didn't print our letter, but he sent me (knowing I was the
instigator) a long letter that I still have here, denouncing
establishment scientists for their reactionary and unimaginative
rigidity and general intolerance.
Suitably chastened, I dropped yhe matter and continued with my
reactionary, establishment-bound studies.
Anyway, this incident jibes with Pournelle's account about
Cambell seeing the machine which "jumped around a lot"
on a bathroom scale. I checked out all the other scales, too,
and finally found one that reads high when you bounce. But
these were much less common. So, possibly, Dean was
hoist by this pitiful petard. But I maintained that this was
extremely unlikely since, obviously, he was all too familiar
with flakey, vibrating, weighing mechanisms.
-- marvin
P.S.. I should add that much as we hated him, we loved him
greatly too, and for all he did for all of us. And same for
G. Harry Stine.
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