Tag Archives: gateway

computing, education, Engineering, Experiments

Out of the Archives – Calculators, Computers….and Stuff

July 19, 2010 Tim Jones 3 Comments

sinclair scientific calculator — Sinclair Scientific Calculator (Photo:Tim Jones)

This picture of a Sinclair Scientific is the latest recovered image from the 30 year archive of negatives I’m dutifully working through.

The reflections in this post are also prompted by this recent post on Andrew Maynard’s blog, (2020science), describing the sophisticated graphing calculator his children are required to have for school.

A pass-me-down from my brother, the Sinclair Scientific was my first electronic calculator. Built from a kit in 1975, I used it to prep for the UK O-Levels when I was 14 or 15; in the O-Level exams themselves we only had log tables :-P. By the A-Levels (16-18), I’d upgraded to a Casio fx-39.

John_Napier — John Napier, father of logarithms (Image: Wikicommons)

As it turns out, the calculator my nephews require for today’s GCSE syllabus is a Casio; but costing around £5, against the £75 or so for Andrew’s Texas Instruments machine.

An interesting feature of the Sinclair Scientific was its use of Reverse Polish Notation (RPN): an unusual but logical way to express calculations. Under RPN, the operator (+,- x, / etc) comes after the operands (the numbers); so the more well known Infix representation of 7+8 , in RPN becomes 7 8 +. RPN is more memory efficient for computers – a bigger deal once than it is now. Today, modern computers just translate into RPN without us seeing it.

You might think getting to grips with RPN was an awkward distraction for a 15 year old, but it proved handy background when it came to writing programs for this:

I guess this was our graphing calculator. Not exactly pocket size.

If memory serves, my school, named the ‘The Gateway’, acquired the 1958 Stantec Zebra from the local university; before that it was with the Post Office.

A small team of students operated and maintained the machine which, filled with hot valves, would frequently catch fire and give the occasional electric shock. This could never happen today of course, on safety grounds alone. But at the time, the teachers and students took it all in their stride, seizing the opportunity to build a short extra-curricular programming course into the timetable.

Programming lessons involved: writing code on cards with pencil and paper, encryption onto punched cards that the Stantec Zebra could read optically, then receiving line-printer output of the results. Looking back, it’s amazing any of this happened – a great opportunistic use of a rare resource.

powertran1 — Powertran Comp 80 (Photo:Tim Jones)

Pupils who later built their own computers, like the Science of Cambridge MK14, a basic kit machine launched in 1977 with about 2k of memory, or the Sinclair ZX-80, were doubtless inspired by the presence on site of their valve-driven (but still significantly more powerful) ancestor.

An interest in computers in this era meant just that: an interest in the information structure, solution algorithms, programming and hardware. High level programming languages, like BASIC even, were too memory inefficient to exist, and ‘games’ typically comprised simple models around the laws of motion; moon lander simulations were popular.

Our household variously hosted a home-built Powertran Comp 80, a Sharp MZ-80A (including some early green dot graphical capability), a Sinclair Spectrum and Sinclair QL. I’ve put pics of these and various other devices I’ve owned in the gallery at the end of the post – minus the obvious PCs that started with a Viglen P90 in 1995. Also our Creed 75 teleprinter – the only one I’ve seen outside the London Science Museum, this true electro-mechanical wonder was brought to good working order save for the chassis occasionally running live with mains voltage.

Are there any world-changing messages to be drawn from all this nostalgia? Possibly not. But I’m reminded how very hands on we were in just about everything. And that’s relevant given the buzz today about how kids might not be getting enough practical science and engineering experience in schools (I’m thinking of comments most recently made by Martin Rees in the Reith Lectures).

No one is arguing kids need a nuts and bolts knowledge of all modern gadgetry, but I do think off-syllabus projects like the Stantec Zebra (but perhaps less dangerous) are a good thing in schools. They show how diverse academic subjects come together in an application, making the theory real. This is pretty much my mantra in this earlier post about the Young Scientists of the Year competition. I would have thought such projects give a school a sense of identity and foster a bit of team spirit?

But it’s really an area I’m out of touch with. Does this type of stuff happen in lunchtime science clubs? Is there time in the curriculum? Do teachers have the time and/or skills? Or has our health & safety culture, however worthy, killed off anything interesting?

Also of interest

Kids Today Need a License to Tinker (Guardian 28/8/2011)

Television

Young Scientists, Fingerprints, and PVC

August 16, 2008 Tim Jones 3 Comments

Alright class, settle down. Hands up all those who remember the original Young Scientists of the Year competition? I’m talking about the weekly BBC1 television reportage, between 1972 and 1981, of the bloody battles for scientific supremacy waged between competing UK schools. This was prime time science on the telly, presented by Paddy Feeny and John Tidmarsh, with the enthusiastic participation of judges Sir George Porter, Prof. Heinz Wolff (pictured), Dr Colin Blakemore, Prof Eric Ash, Prof Aubrey Manning and Dr Donald Broadbent.

Gateway Young Scientists with Heinz Wolf — Gateway Young Scientists with Prof. Heinz Wolff

This post is something of a reminisce for me – because – I was there; albeit as an attendee, not a competitor, at Leicester’s Gateway Grammar School. Although too young to participate, I saw the effect the show had on the school, its pupils, and the viewing public.

So, beyond the nostalgia, can we learn something from the Young Scientists phenomenon?

The show’s origins trace back to the formation in 1963 of the Science and Features Department of the BBC: the group that gave us Tomorrow’s World, the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and the iconic productions of Jonathan Miller, Jacob Bronowski and David Attenborough. The team also produced Heinz Wolff’s next project after Young Scientists – The Great Egg Race.

Production entailed a combination of material filmed at the participants’ schools, cut with Q&A sequences from the studio. During the judging, contestants sat nervously with their rigs as backdrop.

My school participated twice. A project on PVC reached but floundered in the final, while an invention that automatically scanned fingerprints won in the UK final and the competition’s European equivalent, hosted by Phillips in Eindhoven. The self-effacing commentary of the PVC team, reproduced from the School Magazine, reveals the production pressures, and gives an honest insight into how laboratory science really works when delivering breakthroughs to order.

” We had won the heat largely on the technical achievement of building the machine and so we made it our policy to concentrate on doing some research with it rather than make modifications to improve its working. With reactions taking up to eight hours and only a few weeks to go before the recording of the final, we had to start working late again and on occasions were still at school at about 2 a.m. During this time we managed to produce two polymers, B.S.R. and P.E.O. but with the limit on our time we were able to complete only a preliminary investigation into these polymers. From these results we managed to draw a few vague conclusions and plan our future research. Armed with this we went to Birmingham for the recording of the final. We were not so apprehensive about what would happen this time as we had the experience of our first visit behind us. As expected, the procedure was much the same as before and we approached the day for judging and filming in a much calmer state of mind than on the first occasion. However, as soon as the first judge, Sir George Porter, began to question us we began to realise that all was not going well. He continually probed us about details of the process which we had only just begun to study. Because of the short period of time which was available to us between heat and final we had not been able to familiarise ourselves with all aspects of the chemistry of the process. Consequently our answers to our questions were rather vague and lacking in the detail that he seemed to want.“

The 'Competition' - Hiss! Boo! — The 'competition' - Hiss! Boo!

The series ran for nine years on BBC1. Why so successful? The popularity, I suggest, was partly due to the show’s tangible competitiveness – the ‘tune in again next week’ factor. The content itself was made accessible through the pupils’ explanations and chatty atmosphere of the studio. By raising the status of school science and ordinary pupils, there may even have been some flattery of parents by association.

Were there deeper benefits beyond entertainment value? Who knows how many fifteen year olds were swayed to science A-Levels by an inspiring episode of Young Scientists? I believe the participant schools were strengthened by the experience, and others motivated to reach the grade. Involvement would encourage higher quality teacher and pupil applicants to the school, and raise the school’s status with universities and employers. For those directly involved, the show was a springboard.

Could the formula be repeated? Was Young Scientists simply ‘of its time’ – never to be repeated? Promotion of school science is now more important than ever. Science competitions for young people still exist, but do they afford science the public exposure, status, and continuity offered by Young Scientists. Critics might say the format wreaked of elitism (the Grammar to Comprehensive school ratio would be interesting). Do schools have the time now? Would staff be motivated and willing? What about health and safety; PVC manufacture at 2 a.m.?

Despite the obstacles, the goal of broadcasting innovative school science – on prime time national television – with our greatest scientists in attendance – is a noble aspiration.

Could the UK public again be enticed to watch school kids do science? I like to think so.

Biography, education, History of Science

Fine Words

August 14, 2008 Tim Jones 2 Comments

In dusting down an old review magazine from my former school, I couldn’t help but notice a similarity, in tone and content, between the mission statement from one of the more formatively influential past headmasters, and some of my favourite lines from Thomas Huxley. As to which of these inspired me the most, or whether the ethos of the one led to a later empathy with the other – I cannot say. Both statements follow. In each case you will have to forgive the sexism; Huxley was a man of the Victorian Age, and Frazer was the headmaster of what was at the time an all boys school. Anyhow, not much evidence for ‘two cultures’ here. Both are worthy sentiments – enjoy !

Huxley first….

“That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a cold, clear, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gosamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; and who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.”

Thomas Henry Huxley

“A school in the twentieth century must try to educate the hands and senses as well as the mind; it will do each separate task the better for attempting all three. It will teach its pupil to create as well as to criticise, by giving him the chance to create in a variety of ways, so that he can find his own particular medium while to some extent sharing the experience of artists and craftsmen of all kinds. It will teach him to find out for himself, as well as to absorb the findings of others. It will try to produce men who may earn a living as scholars or scientists or technologists or craftsmen or artists, but who are to a varying extent all of these at once, and gentlemen too. Thus only can we produce the all-round men we need if the next age is to be one of high civilisation as well as of great prosperity.”

Dr H. Frazer

ALSO OF INTEREST ON THIS BLOG?

– Happy Birthday Thomas Henry Huxley

– Thomas Huxley and the Return of the Rattlesnake Bones

Communicate Science

Tag Archives: gateway

Out of the Archives – Calculators, Computers….and Stuff

Young Scientists, Fingerprints, and PVC

Fine Words

Zoonomian Blog