Reply to post: J. D. Bernal

RIP: Kathleen Booth, the inventor of assembly language

keithpeter Silver badge
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J. D. Bernal

J. D. Bernal, student of W. G. Bragg, is one of those people who enabled a huge range of research. Not a household name. Worked on hard problems (X-Ray crystallography applied to organic chemicals). My favourite Bernal idea was exploring the structure of amorphous solids (e.g. glass). Get a football bladder. Stuff it full of ball bearings and pour glue or bitumen in. Wait for it to solidify. Then cut the mass out of the bladder, put it on a spectrometer table and measure the positions of each of the ball bearings. Apply appropriate maths to work out the density function and the spectral splitting and so on.

I knew that Bernal had an interest in computing but this article adds an extra thread to my knowledge, and tip of the hat to Mrs Booth.

Now, how about an article on George Spencer-Brown and his railway signal logic?

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