December 1, 2004
Hello, and welcome to "In Mike's Life" a weekly autobiographical retrospective of the past 52 years beginning with the year I was born and ending with my 52nd birthday.
On this podcast I talk about not only the events that happened during each year of my life but also my own personal recollections of, during the last 35 years, my experiences as a software developer.
In the beginning there was me. . . At least my beginning. . .
I was born at 10:16PM at Saint Luke's Hospital, December 1st 1953 in a small town in eastern Iowa called Davenport to John and Marilyn Smola. I have a sister who is 3 years older than me and a brother 5 years older than me.
In 1953:
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated President of United States (Jan. 20).
The world's population was: 2.681 billion
The population of the United States was: 160, 184, 192
DNA was discovered by Franklin, Watson and Crick
In that year, "From Here to Eternity" won the Academy award for best picture (you know, the one where the couple are kissing on the beach and the wave washes over them)
In music, the #1 song on my birthday was St. George and the Dragonet by Stan Freburg. Here's a clip….
"Make Room for Daddy" was the best new TV show.
Ernest Hemmingway won the Pulitzer prize for "Old Man and The Sea" (which I always thought was much, much older than that!)
The most popular fiction book was "The Robe" (which was also the top movie of 1953) and the most popular non-fiction book was "The Holy Bible Revised Standard Edition".
The remainder of the top 10 movies movies of 1953 were:
2. From Here to Eternity
3. Shane
4. How to Marry a Millionaire
5. Peter Pan
6. Hans Christian Anderson
7. House of Wax
8. Mogambo
9. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
10. Moulin Rouge
The top 3 TV shows were "I Love Lucy", "Dragnet" and "Arthur Godfrey's Amateur Hour"
All-in-all, your quintessential middle American, baby boomer.
So far, so good until sometime around the end of the year. . .
The details are murky even now but right around that time my mother (and I'm not making this up) literally ran off with a traveling salesman. My father took my brother and left me and my sister with my grandparents. Shortly after that I ended up in an orphanage.
I only know about these events from recollections of other family members who I met about 20 years go (around the time I was 30). I know I must be making it up but I swear I have a memory of a scream and a slamming door but how I could form that at such a young age, I have no idea.
Fortunately I was adopted shortly thereafter by Bob and Kathy Lehman, a very nice couple who came from New York and Pennsylvania. More about them, of course, in future programs.
In retrospect, I have always felt like there was some kind of divine intervention in all of this as I learned later in life that I would have had a miserable childhood if the family had stayed together.
In the computing era, I wasn't quite ready to code yet <wink, wink> but here's what was going on in the rest of the industry:
IBM introduces the first "mass" produced computer: type 650 also known as the Magnetic Drum Computer. This is a machine between mainframe and micro. Later this breed of machines will be called mini computers.
Around 450 will be sold in the first year of production.
In the following 15 years about 1500 (1800) will be sold. And that is for this period an unsurpassed sales result. Like the 701, the 650 can read from and write to both magnetic tape and punched cards.
Bell Telephone Laboratories build the first completely transistorized computer, the TRADIC. It contains 800 transistors.
Tradic computer, interface panel mounted in a B52 Bomber,
The first high speed printer is developed by Remington Rand for use on the UNIVAC
Whirlwind general view
Ferrite core memory, invented in 1948 by An Wang
Magnetic-core memory replaced electrostatic tubes on Whirlwind, doubling the speed, quadrupling the input data rate and reducing memory bank maintenance time from 4 hours/day to 2 hours/day
ILLIAC - the world most powerful computer ran at University of Illinois.
In the Netherlands Philips built the PETER (Philips Experimentele Tweetallig Electronische Rekenmachine). But by an agreement with IBM Philips promises not to enter the computer market and developed computers only for internal use
First product to use transistors is on the market: hearing aids
And so, we come to the end of the first program in this series. If you like it, hate it, want to make a comment you can contact me by email at mike-at-inmikeslife-dot-org. You can leave a voice mail if you'd like to make an audio comment by calling my evoice number at 1-832-218-3161.
And that's how I remember 1953 …In Mike's Life
8:46:45 AM 
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