{"id":26,"date":"2004-06-15T14:22:41","date_gmt":"2004-06-15T21:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2004\/06\/15\/26\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T09:54:35","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T16:54:35","slug":"george-a-michaels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2004\/06\/15\/26\/","title":{"rendered":"George A. Michael"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I followed a link from Frank da Cruz<\/a>‘s I<\/a>BM 704 page<\/a> at Columbia to George Michael’s 704 page<\/a>, which is part of his Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing<\/a>. I sent an email asking if George or his colleagues remembered the Fortran \u2018Tome\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

1. I do not recall any book called the \u2018Tome,\u2019<\/em> although I was one of the first users of the original Fortran. We had four 704s but if the \u2018Tome\u2019<\/em> existed, I never saw it.
2. One of our programmers, Bob Hughes worked with the original Fortran development team. I interviewed him and the interview is posted on our web site http:\/\/www.computer-history.info\/Page1.dir\/pages\/Hughes.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will call him to check on the existence of the \u2018Tome\u2019 and if he (still) has a listing of the original Fortran. But I’m not overly hopeful. In any event, I’ll let you know what results I get.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Bob, who was listed as one of the authors of the original 1956 IBM Fortran manual, said this in his interview with George:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“I worked on what they called the “first-level” documentation. And I made the biggest mistake of my life by not bringing a copy of that home. Now you understand why I missed making my first million dollars.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So I’m guessing he didn’t bring a copy of the \u2018Tome\u2019 back to LLNL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update<\/strong> 2016\/1\/2\/ and 2016\/12\/29: Updated URL’s for George Michael<\/a>‘s web site. He passed away in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update<\/strong> 2024\/05\/08: Updated Columbia URL to https.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I followed a link from Frank da Cruz‘s IBM 704 page at Columbia to George Michael’s 704 page, which is part of his Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing. I sent an email asking if George or his colleagues remembered the Fortran \u2018Tome\u2019. George replied: 1. I do not recall any book … Continue reading “George A. Michael”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fortran","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1346,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/1346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}