APL85 Photographic Review (captioned photographs)

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 70

[Photographs: the Seattle skyline from the water; the Space Needle; the Westin Hotel’s twin towers behind the monorail.]

APL 85 took place in Seattle, Washington (for those with bad geography, Seattle is to be found near the top left on a map of the USA!). The venue was the Westin Hotel (left), with its imposing twin towers (a great location for a conference but too expensive to actually stay there). The monorail in the picture takes you to the Space Needle (above).

[Photograph: two men at the Analogic APL Array Processor stand.]

“Look no hands!” Jim Ryan demonstrates the super-fast Analogic array processor.

[Photograph: the STSC stand, “APL*PLUS Systems for the UNIX Operating Systems”, with people at a terminal.]

James Wheeler shows off APL*PLUS/UNX running multiple APL sessions on a Sun workstation.

[Photograph: the Dyalog stand, “The APL for UNIX systems”, with a man writing.]

Each APL vendor at APL85 was asked to solve problems set by the other vendors. Here John Scholes puts the finishing touch to one of his answers.

[Photograph: a band with marimbas on stage.]

One of the entertainment high spots must surely have been the excellent Kutamba band who played for us after the boat trip across the Puget Sound to Blake Island.

[Photographs: a bearded man crouching at a marimba; a smiling bearded man.]

Bob Gailer, APL85 Conference Chairman, tries out one of the new knee-top micros, and the Program Chairman clearly can’t believe his eyes.

[Photographs: a man on stage holding a stack of chairs; the same stage empty but for a blackboard; a group singing from song sheets in front of an “apl ’85” poster.]

Roy Sykes (on the left with a stack full and on the right with a clear workspace), gives a welcome repeat of his famous APL81 cabaret. Also on Banquet Night a rendition of ‘APL Blossom Time’ was given with a few new verses added (this song is an amusing and often historical account of the development of APL).

[Photographs: Adin Falkoff at a blackboard; a team holding up numbered cards; Kevin Weaver and another man at a blackboard of words.]

Banquet fun: everyone was split into three teams and pitted against each other in a variety of ways. The photographs above show two of the teams trying to find as many words as possible which contain the letters APL in the correct order. Adin Falkoff (top) looks for help from his team in adding a few more words to their list. (Adin, as it turned out in another game, can write backwards - not just in capitals but in script - very useful for coding APL presumably).

Underneath, Kevin Weaver counts up the number of correct words for Crick’s team; “Chapel” and “Alpine” are definitely suspect but “Cheaply” and “Haploid” are great!

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a cell in an array then this game is for you - but you’d better be ready to move to the right place when someone shouts out “two three reshape” or “one rotate in the first direction

[Photographs, p.75: two men at the rostrum behind an “apl ’85” poster; Philip Goacher speaking at the rostrum; Andrew Tobias at the rostrum, hands raised.]

Ian Sharp and Dan Dyer (at the rostrum) receive their outstanding achievement to APL awards.

Philip Goacher tells an excited audience about APL86; there was much applause when Phil explained that software demonstrations would accompany the delivered papers at APL86.

Invited speaker Andrew Tobias tells the banquet audience “How to get by on $100,000 a year (and other sad tales)”.

[Photographs, p.76: six people holding up cards; John Carpenter at the rostrum holding up a “Dallas” card; the six cards spelling DALLAS.]

John Carpenter goes to great lengths getting the venue of APL87 across (thank goodness they brought those cards out in the right order).

[Photographs, p.77: delegates bending and stretching in the aisles; Denise Austin on stage, one arm raised; Denise Austin with a microphone.]

Fitness consultant Denise Austin gets the packed hall to its feet for an example “Tone-up at the Terminal” session. Everyone present stood up to win the ‘Star Prize’ - a free Ampere lap-top APL computer.