>
> If you are interested in weather modeling, you should read "Turing's
>Cathedral" recounting the early days of the first digital computers. The
>one built at Princeton was used to secretly model Hydrogen Bombs but the
>cover story, which had to be real, was weather modeling.
>
Back in the day, a series of Kray supercomputers were assembled
specifically for weather forecasting. One of them was given the task of
modeling thunderstorms, and it was then that researchers understood the nature
of roller (aka feeder or ring) clouds that accompany strong thuderstorms.
Just bought a hardback copy of "Turing's Cathedral" (ISBN 0375422773), as
you suggested. My first digital computer was an ancient business machine at
high school that had an astounding 4K rotating drum memory and a couple of
converted RTTY terminals. It used punched tape and had a CRT display so you
could observe the address and accumulator as it chugged along. The teacher was
amazed when I programmed it to decompose a 2X2 linear algebra matrix. My first
pocket calculator had more power than that.
Chris
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro
- Hunter S. Thompson
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