User talk:P.r.newman

Luminosity function

I removed your addition to Luminosity function. Wikipedia does not allow speculation or original research in its articles. As an encyclopedia, we only report what has been published elsewhere. In principle, everything that appears in Wikipedia should have a citation or reference to back it up. (Although often there is little need to quote it explicitly.)--Srleffler (talk) 05:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

BCL systems and the 2741

Thanks for the add but... are you sure that wasn't a 1050 mechanism? The 1050, not the 2741, is the ruggedized "Selectric-based" printer/keyboard that was used as the console on the 1130, many models of System/360, etc. A 2741 would never stand up to the kind of near-continuous duty expected of a directly attached computer console. Put it this way... if it didn't look like a Selectric that was half-embedded in a little desktop, with the logic in a bay underneath and behind the desktop, it wasn't a 2741. Also, if the keyboard and printer mechanism were more physically distant separated from each other than they would be on a normal Selectric, it wasn't a 2741. Jeh (talk) 00:26, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it was definitely a 2741 - there are pictures at http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/9515/BCL-Susie/ P.r.newman (talk) 10:57, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

There's a picture of an actual 2741 in this manual: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/27xx/GA24-3415-3_2741_Data_Terminal_Aug72.pdf , page 4, figure 1. A 2741 is always built into that specific style of desk/cabinet, with a cage full of IBM SLT logic cards in the back to implement a UART and the serial line protocol. That configuration (cabinet, interface logic, and all) is what makes it a 2741, and it was not sold in that configuration for integration into other people's machines. Or to put it another way, if BCL had used a 2741 it would have been a separate unit, connected to the BCL equipment by RS232 cable. Instead, we have there a Selectric I/O writer built into a larger system unit, one with far more functionality than the 2741. There is no doubt that the I/O writer in the BCL machine shared most of its electromechanical components with a 2741 (or maybe the older and more rugged 1050), but I also have no doubt that BCL implemented their own interface logic to the Selectric's tilt/rotate codes and other controls. (There's much more on the vagaries of talking to a Selectric mechanism in the IBM Selectric article, btw.) In any case the pictures you linked simply do not depict a 2741. Jeh (talk) 11:23, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you are correct, but be that as it may, at BCL we referred to the device as a 2741, not as a Selectric. Whether the were gutted "real" 2741's or cobbled together otherwise, they were not the standard Selectric enclosure . The other devices on the table (punched paper tape or punched continuous cards) were quite separate. (But I shy from further argument, I was at BCL to do software, not hardware :-) P.r.newman (talk) 13:39, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Market town status

Hi. I see you've been querying the issue of market town status for various places in East Sussex. I added most of these a couple of weeks ago (and, for the record, also "did" West Sussex and Surrey at the same time). So this is a general response.

I'll start by saying that I'm quite happy to accept that there's no absolute historical-legal definition of a market or market town, so the category is inevitably going to be a bit woolly. Even possession of a charter isn't an absolute guide: there were settlements with "prescriptive" (customary) markets which never obtained charters; and, conversely, there were charters obtained speculatively by medieval manorial lords, which never actually led to functioning markets. There's also the complication of "village markets" – successful functioning markets in settlements which themselves never grew to a truly urban size: do we call those places market towns or not? I was basing my additions, selectively, on the Gazetteer of Markets and Fairs in England and Wales to 1516: I added all places cited as having markets in c.1600 (the Gazetteer bases its listings on Everitt, whose lists are based in turn on contemporary C16 and C17 published lists), plus a few other places not in those lists, but which did have charters and which I thought merited inclusion. But I won't complain if you want to challenge or delete.

Of course, all this should have been clarified in the Market town article, and in the articles on individual places, but I'm afraid I don't have the time or inclination just at the moment. However, that's where I was coming from. GrindtXX (talk) 19:35, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Additions to EW and WW

Hi Peter Thanks for your contributions. I have tried to provide some references and pointers to archives of EW and EE. Have also added that it was known at one time as E&WW when I started reading it and wrote a small article in it back in 1986 when I was a kid enthusiast. Kindly take a look if it looks alright. Best regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxkrish (talk • contribs) 22:36, 1 May 2016 (UTC)