Chips with everything

Once daring and new,
Now tomorrows history,
Pickled in perspex.


Computer geeks among you may know what this is, but for the rest of you ... it's a microprocessor from a Tandem computer around the late 80's. It's actually encased in perspex to form a paperweight.

How did I come by this? To be honest I can't quite remember, but back in the day I used write programs for these machines... they were quite mould-breaking at the time, being able to do true parallel processing and therefore able to recover from failure almost instantly, also they were hugely scalable, which is why they were used in big operations like stock trading and banking.

The company (long since subsumed into Hewlett Packard), were Californian and had an enlightened (pre-Google) approach to staff relations. Every Friday afternoon was a 'beer bust' which involved everyone getting drunk together in casual clothes as far as I can make out.

Remember this was in the days when business lunches involved copious amounts of wine and beer, none of that mimsy mineral water ...

Anyway, time marches on as it must. Things get progressively bigger and better, or in the case of technology, smaller and better. But I am rather pleased I have this as it is rather beautiful in a modern sculpture kind of way ... with the chip embedded in gold with it's acolytes of gold pins around it ...

more abstract things