Dear dead Dos dreams

In the High and Far-Off Times, the PC, O Best Beloved, had no mouse. It had only a Keyboard… I can’t keep up with Kipling but you get the idea. This was aeons ago. This was the age of Dos when today’s careless texters and wilful misspellers would have been required to bend the knee to the computer’s rigours rather than the other way round.

Say you had a file called Teacup in a folder called Saucer and you wanted to copy it to another folder called Milkjug. On a blank screen devoid of pretty icons you typed something (age has affected my memory) like this:
C/>: copy: /Saucer/Teacup/: /Milkjug/
And if you didn’t get it exactly right nothing happened.

Windows plus a mouse meant any fool could drag and drop but the advantages weren’t immediately apparent. When told about Word for Windows I remember asking: why complicate a typing procedure by breaking off to use a mouse?

A computer running on Dos was like an Austin 7. Repairs and maintenance were within anyone’s grasp. You could tinker with the central cortex by rearranging the autoexec/bat file, causing the PC to boot up differently. You could penetrate the hard disk and alter the way programs appeared on the screen.

My favourite game was Columns, a childish version of Tetris. When I changed to a slightly faster computer I realised I would never match my earlier scores because Columns too was now faster. So I found the score box on the hard disk, deleted the old figures and started again. I was Master of the Universe.

But it didn’t last.

Were you looking for this?

Essential news for technologians:

TALKING SAW Sensor in blade detects absence of pencil marks on wood, triggering recorded message: “You’re deviating, you’re deviating.” (Japanese accent optional).

NEW CE RATING Die-stamped symbol (labrador rampant) indicates approval by Le Laboratoire Culinaire de Bretagne. Applies to small kitchen utensils.

ITEM FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL GIFT CATALOGUE Portable transmitter causes hologram of Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward, reciting extracts from De Profundis, to dance tango on car bonnet of Richard Littlejohn. (US model note: For Richard Littlejohn read Rush Limbaugh, for bonnet read hood.)

SARKOZY TEMPTS ANGLO TOURISTS A bill just issued by the Elysée will force all French supermarkets to erect a 50 m high mast carrying illuminated sign visible for 5 km, “Closed for LONG lunch break”.

WHICH? EASES SHOPPING Polymicroancrylinate glove increases finger-tip sensitivity allowing shoppers to check ripeness of melons, soft spots on apples, cracks in egg-shells (without opening box) and tastelessness of prepared meals. Not suitable for use on humans.

FROM HEREFORD WINE LOVERS SOCIETY New gadget combines essential features of gas chromatograph and allows potential buyer to check whether wine is corked without need to open bottle. One member says: “Saved me thousands in one year”.

POLYGRAPH DEVELOPMENTS After British MPs rejected being attached to a conventional lie-detector during Newsnight interviews (“undermines the dignity of the Mother Of Parliaments”), the manufacturer has designed a variant which flags up Hasn’t answered the question. PM Gordon Brown orders an enquiry.

Type setter's toast; presses still roar

During a professional low tide I wearied of giving space on MotorCycling’s letter page to readers celebrating the Golden Age of British Bikes. Disapproving of many models cited I inserted a fake letter decrying this tendency, adding “nostalgia is a suspect emotion”. The foam-flecked response was gratifying. Yet here I am being just as nostalgic.

But not about badly engineered bikes with total-loss oil systems. Rather the mechanisms of publishing. This is a Linotype which set type in the hot-metal days. Press a keyboard key and a brass mould (for a letter, a number, a punctuation mark or a space) came tinkling out of the large box on top. Repeat this until sufficient moulds for a line of type assemble themselves in the machine’s bowels.

Work another control and molten type-metal from the Linotype’s small furnace – Just imagine it! – flows into the moulds to cast that one line of type. Start again. A newspaper might well own two dozen such machines, tinkling away and smelling like… well, over to Proust. Now my humdrum computer can do the same job and I haven’t seen a Linotype for thirty years.

One mechanism still remains. To print many newspapers in next to no time you need a press. And a Heidelberg, a Hoe or a Crabtree in full flight (and full throat) resembles open warfare. The power of the press indeed, all directed towards an ephemeral product with a life-span often measured in minutes. The newspapers I worked on were printed in a Bradford street called Hall Ings and the soles of my feet twitch sympathetically down the years as I remember the roar and vibration of those majestic machines.

Christmas wish list

Technology to improve all our lives:

● Force field that levitates certain objects (china, books with bookmarks, hi-fi knobs) when anyone under age of five enters living room.

● Additive for milk and milk-based dishes to prevent skin forming.

● Lavatory brush that…. sorry, can’t complete this one.

● Wine-glasses that change shape from slender (white) to wide (red) and wash themselves while user remains prone on the couch.

● Bath plug flexible enough to seal the ‘ole but strong enough to withstand removal.

● Display panel at rear of car for touring in France. Lights up with – what else? - Trop proche!

● Quarantine flag, indicating outbreak of cholera, for use when queueing at airport check-ins.

● Auto-censor for TV news bulletins. Deletes user-selected expressions (eg, “The England soccer team hopes…”, “billions”, “trillions”.)

● Standardised supermarket checkout card reader with label: Insert here (50 pt Dayglow yellow type) this way round (with picture).

To be continued

A sort of secular prayer

POST NUMBER 150. Try something different.

Each Tuesday and Thursday I swim 90 lengths of an 18 m pool, just slightly more than a mile. This takes about 49 minutes. Because I swim crawl my face is mostly submerged and the non-aqueous world is glimpsed only in two-second bursts while taking on air. Otherwise I commune with tile patterns suffused pale blue, the roar of breath exhaled underwater and the passage of numbers through my mind. Those numbers are gathered into sets.

Lengths 1 to 11. Sense of burden and a need to struggle out of single numbers; 10 lengths is pseudo-single-number; 11 marks first real – albeit minor - achievement.
Lengths 12 to 22. Dog days. Length 15 is 1/6th of total but passes uncelebrated.
Length 22 and a bit. Quarter distance. Fraction makes it messy. Uncelebrated.
Lengths 23 – 30. One-third distance. Worthwhile milestone but must avoid thinking about 60 lengths that remain.
Lengths 31 – 45. Long haul, preferably done mindlessly. Halfway there.
Length 46. Vital number! Future now smaller than past.
Lengths 47 – 60. Sense of swimming downhill. Mild exhilaration. Glance sideways at other swimmers doing breast-stroke, head out of the water. Accelerate and blast past.
Lengths 61 – 90. Each length increases laddish tendencies. Legs kick frothily, turns become flashier. Finally, climb out of pool, careful not to breathe hard, off to changing room without a backward glance.

NOTE: Frequent flashes of terror that lengths have been miscounted are quite normal.

Now, the computer does the measuring

Pretty boring photo, I’m afraid. Perhaps that’s forgivable since it’s here for sentimental reasons.

The millimetric scale on the right suggests it’s a ruler. However the units on the left won’t be familiar to everyone for this is an em-rule used in an activity that has almost disappeared. Twenty-five years ago, if you wanted to lay out a page design for a magazine or a newspaper you cut up galley-proofs with a pair of scissors and glued them to a large sheet of paper. The stone-hand or clicker at the printer’s used this to create the design for real with cast metal type. Now the designer creates a virtual page on a computer screen and sends the result over the wires in file form.

Printing employs some of the most wilfully obscure units outside pharmacology. Typeface heights come in points and there are a handy 72 of them to the inch. Theoretically column widths could be similarly measured but because this would lead to large figures ems (equivalent to 12 points) are preferred. These archaic units are retained on DTP software and elsewhere on computers because printing is nothing if not conservative.

When computer design became widely available I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Now, with a perversity born out of wishes granted, I have sentimental (if not practical) regrets. Print-shops were smelly, dirty, esoteric places filled with ex-apprentice craftsmen who shared a journalist’s desire to put ink on paper. I enjoyed their company. The em-rule is a memorial to that friendship.

Stays a must when boarding

My brother was bringing Takista into a slotted berth at the – which? – marina. Say Ile de Ré, it’s such a smashing name. My job was twofold. To jump on to the pontoon and prevent the bows from hitting the rear of the berth. Then, using a line attached to the boat, tie on to a mooring cleat.

Ashore a French lad looked up questioningly. I nodded and it was he who protected the bows. When I joined him to tie on he gestured, Un joli bateau. He was right. Built for racing, and somewhat cramped below, Takista was sleek and purposeful. Here she is at St-Jean-de-Luz and the photo reminds me of when I first boarded her. No doors, as with a car. How do you “get on” a boat?

First, don’t grab the guard-rail. It prevents people going into the sea but it’s not intended to withstand the pull of someone climbing aboard. Search out the metal cables, called stays, running to the top of the mast from the edge of the deck amidships. These, duplicated at the other side of the boat, hold the mast up and are strong enough to pull on.

Other stays, forward and aft, do the same job and are your good friends at sea. Leaving Cap Breton Takista emerged into shallow water over which poured a tide race which corkscrewed the boat alarmingly. I’d gone aft to stow a fender in the lazaret (Yes, yes, I love the jargon) and wanted to return to the cockpit two metres away. Impossible. So I stood up, took hold of the backstay, feeling safe and relaxed enough to enjoy watching Takista’s pirouettes.

In those days equipment did the selling

Machinery is only one aspect of technology but I wonder if a coffee roaster I saw in the late forties in my home town, Bradford, was the first device to awaken my interest in things that did things. Mind you, it wasn’t the roaster’s raison d’etre that attracted attention. Its ostentatious manufacture, its flamboyant operation, the way it was displayed and its delectable byproducts meant it was unignorable.

The inset gives some hints but this machine is smaller and more utilitarian. The Bradford roaster had a cast-iron chassis with the name (alas now forgotten) standing out in relief. The chassis had something in common with clothes wringers dating back to the previous century, and was painted in brilliant red and green.

Even at rest it looked impressive. When working, flames licking round the huge central drum that held the beans made it look like an industrial accident. My wife says something similar still functioned in the seventies in Kingston-upon-Thames but, not surprisingly, the HSE had suppressed the flames.

With an asset like this marketing instincts (long before the principles of marketing were articulated) had it positioned in the shop’s front window. Wow! But of course there was another powerful positive, and the olfactory products of roasting were allowed to escape into the street. This at a time when probably nine out of ten Bradfordians drank tea.

To tell the truth I didn’t really understand what it did since my apostasy from tea was a year or two away. But it worked in the way a firework display works. And I can see and smell it now.