[rescue] Resurrecting an IBM RS/6000 model 590

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Dave McGuire said ...

> Unlike now when it's old hat, back in those days the
> *smartest people on the planet* worked on developing computers.

Before that, it was the space program ... before that, missiles, before
that, airplanes, automobiles, electricity, the railways, steam engines ...
before that, the wheel.

That Setright fellow had a great screed in Car and Driver about 25 years
ago, on more-or-less this same subject.  He was talking about the car
business, but if you s/automobile/computer/g it fits our time pretty well:

"In youth, when everything is known, it is easy to scorn the pioneers for
what they did not know.  Only later does one learn to admire them for what
they did know - and the early pioneers of motor engineering knew a
remarkable lot.  From Maybach to Zerbi there were quite brilliant men,
deeply embued with real engineering spirit, and before them there was
Frederick Lanchester, who alone among all the great men in the history of
car design could truly be called a genius.  The point is that, when the car
was new, it attracted the most effulgent intellects of the time.  Today, men
with that kind of brains devote themselves to something more newly
challenging, such as astrophysics or bubble memories: any working in the
motor industry may be presumed second-class brains until proved otherwise.
That is another reason why the Big Idea will come from elsewhere."

-Shel