One letter sent to Richard Nelson years ago - the Power of the PPC Journal

[Gene]

I have always thought this was a powerful letter. I shared it with Richard a while ago, but wanted to share it here.

I have no idea who this is / was, but he would be 95 years old in 2019 if he were still around.

Gene

Dear Retiree

[rprosperi]

(04-21-2019 06:21 PM)Gene Wrote:  I have always thought this was a powerful letter. I shared it with Richard a while ago, but wanted to share it here.

I have no idea who this is / was, but he would be 95 years old in 2019 if he were still around.

Gene

Dear Retiree

Thanks Gene, this is cool! I think this is roughly the story of a LOT of people, the difference is he wrote the letter to send RJN some sincere thanks.

While most of us can boast of sharing that moment of triumph and superiority at finally having crammed a too-long program into their HP- (insert the HP model of choice here - mine was a 25) this Gentleman took the time to pen an eloquent 'thank you' for the common source of inspiration, and you've taken the time and effort to save it and share here as a reminder. It's funny that those victories were really rather small after all, yet we can still remember them with great clarity.

Thanks!

[pier4r]

Thanks for sharing. It seems like a lot of things I read on internet (and that happens to me constantly). One is proud of a solution only to be demolished by others. Unfortunately in real life you also have people totally convinced that they are the best because they never confronted themselves with passionate communities.
Here for example some users post really impressive solutions.

But as the author wrote, theory, patience, practice and grit let you reach at least good results. Maybe not the best ones, but some that not everyone else can reach in a blink.

Also the letter is just lovely.

OT: request
May I ask if the letter can be shared somewhere else? Dropbox has the bad habit that after a while the link gets broken and from time to time we want to archive the forum and linked content.

[Gene]

Someone can download the jpg file and save it somewhere more permanent.... ?

[Sylvain Cote]

(04-23-2019 09:59 PM)Gene Wrote:  Someone can download the jpg file and save it somewhere more permanent.... ?

Hello Gene,

I have put the file here:

Code:

location: https://www.hhcworld.com/files/hpmo/retiree_from_gene.pdf

Sylvain

[pier4r]

Thanks!

[Eddie W. Shore]

(04-21-2019 06:21 PM)Gene Wrote:  I have always thought this was a powerful letter. I shared it with Richard a while ago, but wanted to share it here.

I have no idea who this is / was, but he would be 95 years old in 2019 if he were still around.

Gene

Dear Retiree

Thank you for sharing. You, Richard, and everyone here have been an inspiration to me for a long time.

Eddie

[burkhard]

Yeah, this is a great letter. It's neat to see somebody enthused with learning something new just for the sake of enriching himself and not because he really needed to in order to further his career or anything like that. The author is entranced by the possibilities of the new (then-new) technology and immersed himself for his own betterment. I expect 5 years later he was doing the same thing on an Apple II, Atari, Commodore or other 8-bit home computer.

[Willy R. Kunz]

Really nice. As chance would have it, I've been perusing many issues of 65 Notes (renamed to PPC Journal on Jan 1, 1978) lately while developing the HP-55 emulator. These guys did amazing things with the early HP calculators. Anyone remember John Rausch, inventor of the famous Rausch overlay, mostly used for word games and coding messages? Also author of Mugwump Hunt...
A few years ago, the same John Rausch got hold of an HP-65 for me, fixed the card reader, then sent the fully functioning calculator across the Atlantic so I could develop RPN-65!
Sadly, haven't from him after he moved to Bexley, OH, in October 2015, although he promised to stop by in Zurich on one of his frequent trips to relatives in Germany and fix the card reader of my HP-67. I do know that he was still in close contact with Richard Nelson at that time.

As to the shortest Fibonacci numbers program, you can't probably get much shorter than this:
01 RCL + LASTx
02 GTO 01
You have to initialize the program with:
0 ENTER 1 +

Granted, not too many calculators have a merged RCL+LASTx command... Among my emulators, only RPN-32 and RPN-38 come to mind.

Willy

[grsbanks]

(07-04-2019 01:31 PM)Willy R. Kunz Wrote:  Granted, not too many calculators have a merged RCL+LASTx command... Among my emulators, only RPN-32 and RPN-38 come to mind.

The 42S and therefore Free42 (and the DM42) have that, too. "RCL+ ST L"

[bshoring]

(07-04-2019 02:40 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  

(07-04-2019 01:31 PM)Willy R. Kunz Wrote:  Granted, not too many calculators have a merged RCL+LASTx command... Among my emulators, only RPN-32 and RPN-38 come to mind.

The 42S and therefore Free42 (and the DM42) have that, too. "RCL+ ST L"

I actually find RCL + LASTX quite useful. I use the emulators Willy mentioned.