RE: Card-Stunts, Computers, Engagement
While I was going to gradschool for my MSEE, my emphasis was in computing and I got to know the big new WhizBang IBM-1401 in the Business School's Comp Lab.
After I graduated in Feb'62, I taught a part-time computer lab section for the EE dept.
One Saturday in Oct'63 I was attending a home football game at which we had had CardStunts for as long as I could remember. It was half-time and it was H.O.T. and I was feeling sorry for everybody on the field and in the stands and my mind drifted to the little instruction cards which were on the seat-backs in the section and the LABOR INTENSIVE preparation of the colors stamped on the 20-to-40 lines and the numbers written by some to control the sequencing.
So I decided to design a computer system to print the instruction cards.
I had to get a deal made between the Director of the CompLab and the Director of Student Activities; the latter wanted to make sure that this was NOT part of a class assignment, which was simple, and in return he agreed to give me 2 free season tickets on the 50-yard-line.
And so by the following year the system was in place.
The students who used to stamp the cards with a rubber stamp would prepare the input, and my system would print the cards.
It essentially involved their punching an IBM card for each row with a letter punched in each column for each seat. Then we'd run some afternoon or evening or weekend and print-out the pre-perforated card-stock to be torn apart and hung on the seats before the game.
The first season began in Sept 1964.
Arliss and I had met at work at NAA in the mid 1960s, and I finally got up enough nerve to ask her out for New Years Eve 12/31/65. Thereafter we dated continuously nearly every weekend. By 9/66 I was still too shy to ask her to marry me and figured that I needed something that would impose a time constraint on me and force the issue.
So, having complete control of the process, I designed my own stunt and stuck it in place in the input stack.
Necessarily I had to suppress the printing of the "proof" that was used to validate that the input was going to look OK when displayed.
The game was the USC-NotreDame game 11/26/66; we lost 51-0.
The scene/stunt was inplace for about 12-to-15 seconds, during which time I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. She had wanted to go to the snack bar for coffee, but I managed to keep her in her seat. I had brought my good 35-mm SLR camera and managed comp-ticket for a friend who brought along his Polaroid. My instructions to him were
to look for any anomalies in the presentation of the card-stunts and take a good picture for evidence. As the 3 of us left the stadium, he agreed to be my best man.
Had a few 11x14 prints made of it for our folks and our own wall, some wallets, and a few slide copies for those little trinket-doohickeys that you hold up to your eye toward the light. When our daughter got engaged, I tried to shame her guy for doing nothing of the sort, but he was a UCLA Bruin and seemed to fail to understand where I was headed, so I dropped the discussion.
At the 1/1/67 RoseBowl Game, as we walked into the empty stadium early with our credentials, the crew attaching the cards onto the seats asked in a LOUD VOICE, "What's hidden in today's stunts, Hugh". Soon after, we set the date as the last Sat in May'67. And the rest is history.
The process continued for several years until USC gave up card-stunts under pressure from the Band Director; occasionally, some little puny things are done, but the StudentBody's assiduity and attention to the performing the task of holding up the cards to make the stunts has markedly waned.
One of my ex-coworkers, Craig Franklin, who is now in SantaBarbara had told his co-workers about this weird guy with whom he used to work, and when we visited a few years back he told them that I was that guy and they all congratulated us and wanted to see the picture from my wallet.