Ed Fredkin, once known as "world's best programmer", passed away on June 13, compare the Tweet by Dag Spicer (CHM senior curator). This links to Ed Fredkin's oral history [0], which is full of amazing stories and well worth reading.
I believe, Triple-I was initially founded as an AI firm, powered by Ed Fredkin's own PDP-1. (I guess, since the first commercial CAD system by Itek and Adams Associates was also on a PDP-1, the transition happened quite naturally. Ben Gurley, the PDP-1's designer, who tragically happened to be shot at the family dinner table in 1963, was also at Tripple-I at the time. Ed Fredkin was quite fanatic about the PDP-1 and probably its best ambassador. He also chaired the PDP-1 restoration project at the CHM.)
I worked at iii in the late ‘70s, and my desk was in the cubicle next to the movie group’s. I loved looking over the divider to look at the latest pictures from Westworld (Yul Brinner with a photogrammetry grid) or Tron, or a teapot. Fun stuff.
As a young kid right about to go to college I got to meet Ed (probably 24 years ago now). He was easy to talk to and seemed eager to share knowledge. I remember him showing me some of his work on a Mathematica workbook.
He told me a story about how the phone dial tones were designed with 2 frequencies such that a human wouldn't accidentally make those sounds while talking. But he figured out how to simultaneously hum and whistle to mimic a dial tone. The phone company guys were in disbelief but loved the MIT folks (the first phreakers) because they would keep finding vulnerabilities in the phone system. That story was fascinating to me and was my first intro to the hacker mindset.
Ed was one of those OG hackers. May he rest in peace.
> because they would keep finding vulnerabilities in the phone system
that is certainly rewriting history there! The FBI was involved more than once, several young men went to jail over this. You said "loved" ? thats actually twisted to say that
I don't have a date for that story - but I would expect it was before the widespread adoption of Touch Tone in 1963... And maybe the authorities were more lenient then, as well as with faculty. I think this was probably late 50s or early 60s. I imagine DTMF was deployed at MIT before it was done nationwide. Not trying to rewrite history - just saying theres a lack of detail in my comment and yours.
The probably first reported hacking incident (in the modern sense, as in computer assisted phone phreaking) was at MIT using a PDP-1 to connect various tie-lines between MIT and Harvard, and reaching out on tie-lines to the Millstone Radar Facility, the Sudbury defense installation, IBM Kingston/NY, and to the MITRE Corporation, while redirecting the long distance call fees to a local radar station. As reported in "The Tech", 20 Nov. 1963 issue[0]. It doesn't seem that this had any serious consequences, though. Carlton Tucker, MIT’s telephone system administrator, is quoted with (while expressing warnings regarding future liabilities), "we don’t have too much trouble with the boys; we appreciate their curiosity."
In a comment, I mentioned the Three Scientists and Their Gods profile (which someone else in the comments has also mentioned) and also that Fredkin was apparently the ultimate origin of a very widespread anecdote about overfitting in machine learning:
>Edward Fredkin (born October 2, 1934, died June 13, 2023) was a distinguished career professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and an early pioneer of digital physics.
>Fredkin's primary contributions include work on reversible computing and cellular automata. While Konrad Zuse's book, Calculating Space (1969), mentioned the importance of reversible computation, the Fredkin gate represented the essential breakthrough. In recent work, he uses the term digital philosophy (DP).
>During his career, Fredkin has been a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at Caltech, and Research Professor of Physics at Boston University.
Ed Fredkin - Reversible Computing (Keynote from the CCC's Workshop on Reversible Computing)
Fredkin tells a great story about making Stephen Wolfram's eyes pop out of his head by showing him how to transform his own rule into a reversible rule.
>Computer science is still so new that many of the people at the cutting edge have come from other fields. Though Toffoli holds degrees in physics and computer science, Bennett's Ph.D. is in physical chemistry. And twenty-nine year old Margolus is still a graduate student in physics, his dissertation delayed by the work of inventing, with Toffoli, the CAM-6 Cellular Automaton Machine.
>After watching the CAM in operation at Margolus's office, I am sure the thing will be a hit. Just as...
I've been watching since the original cast in the 70's. I don't know much about what he did as a writer on the show, but I didn't care for him as a performer. Strangely, I did get a kick out of his Stewart Smalley character. As silly as it was, there was something genuine he brought to it, and that made it work for me.
I'm not from Minnesota, but he impressed me by what it seemed he tried to do as a senator. I think if more of our politicians showed his intelligence and level of care for their constituents, we'd all be better off.
Finally, I think he got screwed over when he was pressured to resign over his hover-hands picture. If we cancel everyone who has done something in poor taste, we'd all be on the outs, and no one would go into comedy, or last long if they did.
Fredkin’s Paradox is a powerful idea that I find myself referencing often:
"The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them—no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less."
32 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 85.1 ms ] thread[0] https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10263050...
Also compare the previous post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36326390
An interview with Ed Fredkin during the Triple-I Reunion October 14th, 2014: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZKOq5_Vcp4GGdZHCzKzr...
I think the chapter about him is excerpted in this Atlantic piece:
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/88apr/wright.ht...
He told me a story about how the phone dial tones were designed with 2 frequencies such that a human wouldn't accidentally make those sounds while talking. But he figured out how to simultaneously hum and whistle to mimic a dial tone. The phone company guys were in disbelief but loved the MIT folks (the first phreakers) because they would keep finding vulnerabilities in the phone system. That story was fascinating to me and was my first intro to the hacker mindset.
Ed was one of those OG hackers. May he rest in peace.
And there I was, humbly whistling in front of this comment.
I managed to humwhistle "11*". Though the detector [0] might have a different accuracy than me.
[0] https://nhollmann.github.io/DTMF-Tool/
I produced "D##DDD##D*DD*DD00*00*133009". This is fun.
that is certainly rewriting history there! The FBI was involved more than once, several young men went to jail over this. You said "loved" ? thats actually twisted to say that
[0] http://tech.mit.edu/V83/PDF/V83-N24.pdf
In the end the universe probably doesnt work this way but one the charms of the human mind is its ability to conjure up alternative plausible models.
RIP
https://paulabrahams.substack.com/p/memories-of-ed-fredkin
In a comment, I mentioned the Three Scientists and Their Gods profile (which someone else in the comments has also mentioned) and also that Fredkin was apparently the ultimate origin of a very widespread anecdote about overfitting in machine learning:
https://gwern.net/tank
Sum the neighbors, modulo 2, and assign to the cell on the next timestep.
Astonishingly this allows patterns to replicate in multiple directions across the plane. https://cellpylib.org/fredkin.html
Works with any kind of lattice. Even works in 3D.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36429420
DonHopkins 7 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The Neural Net Tank Urban Legend
>[...] with a probable origin in a speculative question in the 1960s by Edward Fredkin at an AI conference about some early NN research [...]
RIP Edward Fredkin, who recently passed away on June 13, 9 days ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin
>Edward Fredkin (born October 2, 1934, died June 13, 2023) was a distinguished career professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and an early pioneer of digital physics.
>Fredkin's primary contributions include work on reversible computing and cellular automata. While Konrad Zuse's book, Calculating Space (1969), mentioned the importance of reversible computation, the Fredkin gate represented the essential breakthrough. In recent work, he uses the term digital philosophy (DP).
>During his career, Fredkin has been a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at Caltech, and Research Professor of Physics at Boston University.
Ed Fredkin - Reversible Computing (Keynote from the CCC's Workshop on Reversible Computing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROv1HX-gdas
Fredkin tells a great story about making Stephen Wolfram's eyes pop out of his head by showing him how to transform his own rule into a reversible rule.
Reversible Computing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing
Fredkin Gate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredkin_gate
Digital Physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
Conservative Logic, by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli
https://web.archive.org/web/20061017232512/http://www.digita...
Digital Philosophy
https://web.archive.org/web/20170729191558/http://www.digita...
Google Scholar: Edward Fredkin
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5QMmygwAAAAJ&hl=en
Rudy Rucker writes about his CAM-6 in the CelLab manual:
Cellular Automata Laboratory: Fourmilab home: Origins of CelLab: Classical Era: Von Neumann to Gosper
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/chap5.html
>Computer science is still so new that many of the people at the cutting edge have come from other fields. Though Toffoli holds degrees in physics and computer science, Bennett's Ph.D. is in physical chemistry. And twenty-nine year old Margolus is still a graduate student in physics, his dissertation delayed by the work of inventing, with Toffoli, the CAM-6 Cellular Automaton Machine.
>After watching the CAM in operation at Margolus's office, I am sure the thing will be a hit. Just as...
I'm not from Minnesota, but he impressed me by what it seemed he tried to do as a senator. I think if more of our politicians showed his intelligence and level of care for their constituents, we'd all be better off.
Finally, I think he got screwed over when he was pressured to resign over his hover-hands picture. If we cancel everyone who has done something in poor taste, we'd all be on the outs, and no one would go into comedy, or last long if they did.
"The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them—no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredkin%27s_paradox
RIP. I loved Three Scientists and Their Gods and had the privilege of seeing him speak at CMU in 2001. He was hysterical and brilliant.