December 8, 2004
- 1954
Hello, and
welcome to 1954 "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 1954 my life
changed dramatically. . . For the better!
As some of you
might remember, from last week's program, my birth-Mom (literally) ran away with
a traveling salesman and I ended up in an orphanage.
In 1954, the
people I grew up knowing as Mom and Dad, Kathy and Bob Lehman, first took me in
as a foster child and then, as fast as they could, adopted me. Boy was I lucky!
The world of
1954 was much different than today's world. In those times a married woman
without a baby was on socially difficult ground. Kathy, unfortunately, couldn't
have a baby for medical reasons. So, I was welcomed in to her home as if I were
the most valuable gift anyone could receive. It wasn't all growing-up-roses but
it started out nice.
In 1954, Dwight
Eisenhower was President, the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus was
launched, the first kidney transplant was performed and segregation was ruled
illegal.
Alan Ameche won
the Heisman trophy, West Germany won the World Cup, Linus Pauling won the Nobel
Prize for Chemistry and Ernest Hemmingway won the Nobel Prize for literature for
Old Man and the Sea.
In Movies, the
Best Picture was On The Waterfront staring Marlon Brando and Grace Kelly won
Best Actress for The Country Girl. As often happens, the "best movies" weren't
the most popular. The Top 10 Movies for 1954 were:
1. White
Christmas
2. The Caine Mutiny
3. The Glenn Miller Story
4. The Egyptian
5. Rear Window
6. The High and the Mighty
7. Magnificent Obsession
8. Three Coins in the Fountain
9. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
10. Desiree
The most popular
Fiction book was "Not As A Stranger" by Morton Thompson and "The Holy Bible,
Revised Standard Edition" was, as last year, the most popular "non-fiction"
book.
As a regular
feature of "In Mike's Life", here's a clip from one of the top 10 songs of
1954. Dean Martin singing "That's Amore".
Dean Martin was
my Dad's favorite singer of all time. My Dad used to play his records and watch
his TV show with a passion he rarely displayed.
My Mom, in 1954,
carted me back-and-forth across the country to show me off to my Dad's Mom and
her 4 brothers and 4 sisters.
In 1954, people
traveled by train as there were not yet any interstate highways nor was air
travel affordable for the average post-war family.
If there had
been frequent rider programs, we would have been platinum members.
Another regular
feature, on "In Mike's Life", is what was happening in the world of computers
and software.
As I'm still a
few years away from starting my own computer adventures (though it starts
earlier than you might think), here's what was going on in 1954:
John W. Backus an employee of IBM designed the programming
language FORTRAN(7)
FORTRAN: FORmula
TRANslator.
Engineers and
scientist flocked in droves to programming with a higher level computer
language. Rewiring of machines to reprogram them belonged to the past. Another
gigantic step forward!
In this year
IBM's first commercial computer: IBM 704, was introduced. With build in indexing
and a Floating Point Unit it could reach 40.000 additions per second and capable
of approximately 5 kFLOPS. Principal architect is Gene Amdahl who also designed
the first Operating System ever for a computer, in this case it was the IBM 704
The first
company to start with mass production of silicon transistors is Texas
Instruments
And… from the
"can-you-believe it" department….Jack Tramiel starts Commodore.
This firm will
be the one that took the front runner position in the field of Personal
Computers, a term not even coined yet. It would give the greatest push ever in
the hobby computer industry.
I once had the
opportunity, about 34 years in the future from 1954, to meet and work with Jack
Tramiel after he'd left Commodore and bought Atari. More about that coming up
in 1988.
1954 was much
like 1953 in terms of Television. Comedy and Variety shows dominated the
airwaves.
The top 10 shows
of 1954 were:
1. I Love Lucy
(CBS)
2. The Jackie Gleason Show (CBS)
3. Dragnet (NBC)
4. You Bet Your Life (NBC)
5. The Toast of the Town (CBS)
6. Disneyland (ABC)
7. The Jack Benny Show (CBS)
8. The George Gobel Show (NBC)
9. Ford Theatre (NBC)
10. December Bride (CBS)
And so, we come
to the end of the second 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 1954 …In Mike's Life
8:07:42 AM 
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