A Family’s Economy

always associate in life – so I am also doing it with the newest “brand eins” edition.

Unpredictable!

I like that! After all, I am currently writing an article on Operation Research (OR) and entrepreneurial research. According to Wikipedia, it is the same thing. I, however, would demand that entrepreneurial research be more concerned with leadership and entrepreneurial culture than with trying to force enterprises to follow mathematical models, like OR.

The Family’s Economy

Naturally, family is important for me. What would I be without? Especially as an entrepreneur, I find family great: a family is nothing other than a small enterprise and you – especially if you are a woman – need quite a bit of entrepreneurial spirit in order to start one.
But follow me through the magazine:

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Today, I will give you a short insight into the past of InterFace!

At InterFace, there are always plenty of small items embellished with the IF logo. I believe it helps with creating identity – and I know that many enterprises highly esteemed by me do the same. Moreover, we, too, give our employees a nice Christmas present each year – of course one which also displays the IF LOGO.

As the years go by, quite a few items have been added to the list: the box of peppermint pills and the InterFace jacket, various kinds of mugs and dinnerware, even a pan for cooking Bavarian veal sausage, sports bags and clasp knives.

At one time, we had a small figurine. We called it the
“HITPC Manikin”

Our text system is not only available for UNIX, but also for PCs. Mind you, we are not just talking the German version, but also, for instance, the Russian (Cyrillic) one!

And as an extension to the UNIX-HIT-CLOU work benches, the HITPC was quite widely used, even with DOS. We designed the HIT-PC manikin especially for the DOS users. It always cut a fine figure on the then rather clumsy-looking PCs.

The beautiful advertising character made of plasticine (Plastilin) was designed by Hildegard Heidecker. She gave face and shape to our service idea.

In those days, we also had an (original) “Märklin” rail car for InterFace Connection. It also showed the HIT PC manikin. The number of vehicles ordered was very limited (I seem to remember it was 200, but I am not quite sure) and we gave them to our customers and employees as a Christmas present.

The rail car also made it into the Koll-Catalogue (Koll-Katalog) for Märklin advertising characters and (is said to have) achieved a rather high collector’s value.

It all happened more than twenty years back.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

P.S.
On the second floor of our building at Unterhaching – directly next to the reception area – you can admire a gold-plated HITPC manikin. Frau Heidecker gave it to us on our 25th anniversary! And, of course, you can also see one of the Märklin railway cars in my office.

Shortly after having graduated from high school, in 1969, sitting in a computer science lecture by the great professor F.-L. Bauer, I first heard the term “context sensitive”. There was a lot I did not understand during the first semester. The same is true for some themes with pictures in the book that was supposed to accompany the lecture “Informatik I”, the famous yellow “Bauer/Goos”.

Many years later, now on a friendship basis with F.-L. Bauer and after many private discussions with him and visits to the computer science section in his company to the “Deutsches Museum”, I finally understand what informatics is all about.
A similar thing happened to me with the term “context sensitive”. The term was relevant for me whenever talking programming and programming languages. During my programming career, I soon realized that self-made software with all its corrections and modifications must be free of “context sensitivity”.

Compared with inter-human communication, the description of a problem in a formal language or the solution of said problem with a programming language seems literally trivial. But especially in real life, “context” plays a significant role.

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On Tuesday, March, 9th, they elected the workers’ council at Siemens Neuperlach. Throughout all the parts of the building still used by Siemens, the loudspeakers were heard inviting everybody in German and English in the most urgent terms to vote. It was so loud you had to interrupt your meeting.

Although I had spent plenty of time behind these walls during my life, this was the first time I heard the loudspeakers consciously. I am always a little moved by loudspeaker announcements in buildings. The reason must be a mixture of school, armed forces and Orwell.

All the time, some rumours are spread behind the fences at Siemens Neuperlach. Still being on friendly terms with quite a lot of people there, I am informed about all the newest whenever visiting.

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Every year around Christmas, memories of old times come. And often you are lucky enough to meet old friends.

Some meetings are especially nice. What happened long ago is re-awakened, shared memories are exchanged and almost forgotten companions reappear.

My meeting with Frau Dr. Gudrun Falkner is always special. Gudrun and I met 38 years ago during our first computer science studies at TUM. To this day, neither of us has managed to understand the two-valued logics we were supposed to learn at the time.

Those were good years. There came a day when Gudrun went transatlantic and moved to America. Back in Germany, she wrote her dissertational thesis at TUM, was made Dr. Gudrun B. Falkner and finally worked at InterFace for many years. Her main field of interest was innovative: the development of technical documentation for IT systems.

Then came the call of science. Today, she teaches at Stralsund University, where she also is equal opportunity commissioner. I took the picture from her website.

And once a year, around Christmas, we meet for a Thai dinner at Neubiberg. Over dinner, we talk about everything and nothing at all, about the past and the future.

It was a nice evening

RMD
(Translated by EG)

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

For several years, I worked a lot with punch cards. In those days, punch cards were totally innovative. They meant an end to those stupid strip cards and more flexibility. In punch cards, it was possible to insert some text of your own (which was absolutely impossible with the strip cards).

The punch card in this picture (which, by the way, is taken from wikipedia) contains 40 symbols. Our punch cards were more modern than that and contained 80 symbols (columns in our “sheets”, also known as programming forms which we filled in with pencil and were given back as a package of stamped punchcards. What a programming method!).

You had to mark column 72 if the program continued on the next card. The text fields from column 73 on were reserved for numbering. Column 71 was reserved for something special (it might have been a commentary symbol or something of the sort – I no longer remember). The first 70 columns were the “useful symbols”, dependent on the language, sometimes further structured.

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Between May, 1st and May, 3rd, Munich hosted the VCFE (Vintage Computer Festival Europe). I am sure you remember my Post announcing it.

At the end of this article, you can find a few snapshots taken by Roland Dürre. All these beautiful machines were displayed, most of them in perfect running condition.

The gentleman on the last picture is Wolfgang Stief. We all know him from the GUUG.

Rok
(Translated by EG)

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.