Claude Kagan memorial page

Most recent revision of this page may 17 2016, updates Sept 11 2020. Material written and quoted by others has copyrights by the authors. Original content here (c) copyright 2020 Herb Johnson.

Introduction

Claude Kagan was an early advocate of personal computing in the 1970's, a WW II veteran, a Professional Engineer, and a telecommunications and computing leader in the mid-20th century. Claude died April 26 2012 in Hopewell NJ at his home. He was 88 years old. As an old friend of mine, and a personal computing pioneer, I've established this memorial page of some of his work and activities. There are links to other sites as well, including the "RESISTORS" Web site which represents the youths he mentored in the 1960's and 70's.

On August 11th 2012, I attended a memorial event conducted by Claude's executors in the RESISTORS group, in cooperation with the InfoAge center, and attended by RESISTORS members and Claude's associates. References to these organizations are below. - Herb Johnson

The RESISTORS/Kagan PDP-8 is on display and exhibit, at the Vintage Computer Federation exhibits at Infoage in New Jersey. On April 18th 2015, at the Vintage Computer Festival - East 10.0 at that site, there was a public presentation of the restored PDP-8 as performed by the restorer, David Gesswein of pdp8online.com . See photos and discussion below.

Obituary

Claude's obituary was published July 8th 2012 in the Times of Trenton (New Jersey USA). The obit may not stay on the Times site. Here's a link to the text as published.

Among other accomplishments, he co-founded AFIPS, a 1960's computing information society; mentored a computer club of high-school students in the early 70's that ran computers from a barn and at a national computer conference. He developed SAM76, a varient of TRAC(TM) language which was a 1960s programming language developed by Calvin Moore, which used minimal computing resources. Claude continued to advocate SAM76, the Devorak keyboard, and other computing technologies until his passing. He was also a telecommunications engineer, working at AT&T from the 1950's until his retirement; including US Army Signal Corps telecomm work in post-WWII France and Germany.

I knew Claude at various times in the 1980's from his SAM76 advocacy; and met him again when I moved to his local in the 2000's. I helped him out from time to time, as macular degeneration (eye disease) kept him from driving. Yet he continued to work, repair and sell vintage and modern computing and telecom technology, advocate for his interests, and traveled locally and internationally. - Herb Johnson

Recent news

Auction of Burroughs B-205 mag tape drive, 2020

My colleague and friend Mike Loewen, called out a Sept 2020 Web-based auction in progress, of a Burroughs B-205 magnetic tape drive. He said it was obtained from Claude Kagan's B-205 several years ago. I asked Mike for details and got the story of how Stan Brewer acquired it. Follow the link for details. Contact me if you have a serious interest in acquiring this tape drive. This is not a toy that will fit in your car trunk.

Claude acquired before the 1970's, a Burroughs B-205 vacuum tube computer, and got it operational in his barn. Claude mentored a group of local high-schoolers who called themselves "RESISTORS", who ran that computer; their story is below. Decades later, the B-205 still resided in the barn. It was destroyed when the barn burned down in 2008. That fire is another story about Claude's character under adversity. - Herb

RESISTORS/Kagan PDP-8 on display in new VCF museum

In May 2016, the Vintage Computer Federation officially opened their new site for their vintage computer museum at Infoage. They have rooms in a recently renovated building there. Part of the exhibit includes the fully restored PDP-8 (less a new plexiglass cover). A Teletype and the wooden carrier for the 8 are part of the exhibit. The PDP-8 has been repaired and operated by the Museum, thanks to David Gesswein. - Herb

Restoration of RESISTORS/Kagan PDP-8

On April 18th 2015, at the Vintage Computer Festival - East at that site, there was a public presentation of the restored PDP-8 as performed by David Gesswein of pdp8online.com . The RESISTORS/Kagan PDP-8 "straight 8" has been on display and exhibit at MARCH (now Vintage Computer Federation) at Infoage in New Jersey, for a few years. It and a Calcomp plotter were donated by Claude a few years prior with the "consent of the surviving RESISTORS", and placed on exhibit after a cosmetic cleaning.

David Gesswein began the restoration late in 2014, including a complete teardown of the frame (repainted by Corey Cohen). Cards were tested cleaned, cables carefully checked (generally not replaced), and other such work performed, up to the days before the VCF-East weekend. Present at the presentation was RESISTORS member Andrew Walker who spoke briefly about use of the PDP-8. Then David powered up the system and ran test programs (with mixed success); a Model 33 Teletype was also demonstrated. Later, the system and Teletype was moved to the VCF-East exhibit area, for more demontrations through the weekend event. Here's David's review of his exhibit. David reported generally good operations with sporatic failures. More work can be done, including a replacement for the broken half of the Plexiglass covers, and some restoration of the front panel graphics. - Herb Johnson

In Jan 2016, David worked on the VCFed/RESISTORS PDP-8 during a VCFed repair workshop. I describe some of his work in my workshop report. He also helped me test my PDP-8/A built from parts.

Jan 2017 repairs
David discusses the RESISTORS PDP-8 restoration on his Web site.
VCF East 12 - Gesswein PDP-8 overview
David discusses a previous straight-8 restoration on his Web site.

2012 Kagan memorial event at Infoage

Also attending was Roger Amidon, a founder of Technical Design Labs and other computer companies of the mid-1970's. Roger designed the first S-100 Z80 CPU board, the ZPU, which was offered in mid-1976. Roger's and TDL's work was the foundations of software for Epson's QX-10, a popular personal computer of the early 1980's. He went on to develop video games in the 1980's, and consulted in personal computing to the present day. Roger and Claude worked together on assembly-languge coding in the 70's, swapping bits of code. Claude used TDL boards in a S-100 system and ported SAM-76 using TDL software. See some TDL software and discussion at this Web link. Note: Roger Amidon passed away May 13 2016.

Here's a YouTube video tribute to Claude, which was played at the memorial.

Other's memories of Claude

I was contacted in Oct 2014 by François Brault, who told me: "I recently found your page on Claude from a friend of mine Thierry Gauthier. In the early 80's I was during the weekend helping with sales at a French Tandy shop, having acquired one of the first French TRS80 in january 1979. One day we were visited by Claude. Following that I got invited with my friend Thierry to stay in Pennington (NJ USA), where we learned a lot from Claude. We contributed a French version of the Adventure game and also took home some copies of the SAM76 manual. I still have a few copies."

"So this was just a small hello from me in memory of Claude. I still have my TRS80 and a few years ago I booted it for my son but not much more. Maybe one day he will find an interest in this old machine (he can do C all right) or maybe not..."

The Home Reckoner

Claude's co-authored 1973 paper "The Home Reckoner" predicted the widespread uses of personal computers in home and business. It was a paper and presentation at the NCC (National Computer Conference) of 1973, a premier event in the era. A copy is republished on the Web by NJIT emertis professor Dr. Murray Turoff has a copy of the paper with the following description.

"In 1973 I was asked to organize a session on forecasting in the computer field at the AFIPS National Computer Conference and Exposition, June 4-8, 1973, NY, NY. My introduction to the session was: "Opposing Views of the Future", which is a nice demonstration of using opposing scenarios to stimulate people to think about the future. While there were many good papers there was one that in retrospect was an outstanding forecast and I have reproduced here: C.A.R. Kagan, The home reckoner - A scenario on the home use of computers (.doc)

"In 1973 Claude was right on with respect to what occurred in the 80's. Claude was a research engineer at Western Electric who used his own PDP 10 as his own personal computer and did build internally one fo the first operative Hypertext systems. Unfortunately Claude never published much in the open literature but he was an early pioneer in the field." - Dr. Murray Turoff

Here's a local copy of the paper .doc file.There's also a digitized PDF version on the IEEE Computer Society Web site, at this link at computer.org under the AFIPS 1973 NCC Conference Proceedings. Apparently it was digitized by the Computer History Museum. Again, here's a local copy of the PDF.

TRAC, SAM76 and the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S

The R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S, is a group of high-school age youth which Claude mentored in the 1960's and 70's. They often met in a barn near his home. The resistors.org Web site should have copies of SAM 76. Their site recounts how they used an ancient Burroughs B-205 vacuum-tube computer, and obtained a PDP-8 which they carried to various computer conferences. They also developed SAM76 onto other computers, and documented it in a book they published and sold. Many RESISTORS went on to careers in and around computing and engineering.

Various accounts elsewhere by members of the RESISTORS, state that Claude wrote a TRAC varient on a PDP-8, and various resistor members rewrote versions for other systems under the SAM-76 name. For example:

"Yes, we RESISTORS did indeed meet in Claude's barn which was filled with old telephone and computer equipment. Claude's version of TRAC started on the PDP-8, migrated to the PDP-10, and for the legal reasons mentioned ended up as SAM-76. (FYI, SAM stands either for "Strachey and McIlroy" or "Same As Mooers". RESISTORS always stood for "Radically Emphatic Students Interested in Science, Technology, and Other Research Studies" as much as it stood for anything."

"Starting when we were members of the RESISTORS, Peter Eichenberger and I wrote a PDP-10 TRAC processor and later reimplemented it for the PDP-11, eventually adding a little multi-terminal time-sharing monitor. We kept a lower profile than Western Electric (either that, or as 19 year olds we had no noticable assets) so we and Mooers stayed on cordial terms."

- From John Levine, Oct 25 1996, as posted in hypernews.org (a pre-Internet email discussion list apparently operated by Stanford University's SLAC computing organization.) Archived by the Internet Wayback Machine, retrieved July 8 2012 as found by Google on stackoverflow.com

Wikipedia has a reasonable description of SAM 76; the history of it is incorrect. Also of TRAC.

The SAM76 manual was written by the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S, a high-school group which Claude mentored in the 1960's and 70's, in a barn near his home. A 2008 copy of a quote from Claude from the resistors.org Web site:

"Do you have a copy of the RESISTORS book, called the sam76 Language? The foreword was written by Nat, and the 'backword' details a lot of names, and some of the history. That was the major long lasting product of the RESISTORS and the book is still valid, and the sofware is available for a number of platforms including the source code. That is also in AOL (keyword sam76). If you want the book let me have your address and I will be delighted to mail you a copy. The artwork in it was done by Joe Tulloch. and the book has been available since 1976, and is banned from the Hopewell Township School system due to the saracastic comments about said system." - Claude Kagan

Decades later in July 2013, RESISTOR member Nat Kuhn blogged an account of his former activites, and his recent inspiration to implement TRAC in Python. Here's Nat Kuhn's reminiscences and his TRAC implementation on the github archive site. Both contain further links to TRAC resources. Thanks to Nat for his 2013 correspondence with me.

SAM76 resources

Here's links to copies of the SAM76 manual, software, articles and descriptions; and related material including on TRAC. Claude maintained a Web site, sam76.net AKA sam76.org, offering the MS-DOS version, for several years before his death; that site went down after his death. Copies of Claude's somewhat cryptic but amusing Web pages would be appreciated by me.

Since Dec 2013, I acquired several copies of the SAM76 manual, as distributed by Claude. These are available from me, Herb Johnson. But I have a PDF of the manual too, and appendices, see below.

What's the status and availability of SAM76? In Nat's 2013 correspondence, he and other RESISTORS and I discussed the status of the SAM76 manual. Claude formed a company, SAM76 Inc, which held copyright to SAM76 and the manual which Claude distributed. In late July 2013 I had an email discussion regarding the SAM76 manual with a few RESISTOR members and with Larry Schear, a RESISTOR and executor of Claude Kagan's estate. Larry said quote "I still have a number of copies (40+), which I will distribute to any and all who request them, at Claude's Estate expense." I replied that I COULD scan and provide a PDF of that scan on my site, but so could the RESISTORs on their site. Nat followed up with the statement that it's up to Claude's executors. As of late 2014 I've had no further response. See below.

The following are various SAM76 or TRAC resources as available on the Web or this site.

Here's a sam76 MS-DOS self-extracting archive program, (Windows command prompt, 32-bit) version, from resistors.org.

Scribd.com has a copy of the SAM 76 manual, but you need to join to get it. It doesn't seem to be available otherwise. So contact me and I'll provide a PDF of the SAM 76 manual and appendices and updates. It's too big for me to host online, I don't provide archive-hosting services.

A CP/M version of SAM76 was made available as volume 34 of the CP/M User Group Library of 8-inch diskettes, distributed by that group. Here's my ZIP file of that distribution, as obtained from retroarchive.org's copy of the Walnut Creek CP/M CD-ROM. There's also an apparently identical copy of this disk's contents, on the same site as SIG/M volume 53. (SIG/M and CPMUG often replicated each other's archived diskettes.). This is not "load and go", it's a rough copy and you have to mess with it - read the notes.

Claude Kagan wrote a Dr Dobbs Journal article in volume 3, issue 1; and updates in subsequent issues. The author is "Ancelme Roichel", Claude's middle names; a pseudonym he often used. The article is a republish of the SAM76 appendices D through G, and some notes on an 8080 and Z80 implementation.

DECUS DEC-10 archive: at Trailing-Edge - PDP-10 Archives - decuslib10-11with several DECUS archived volumes. Here's my capture of SAM 76 for PDP-10, DECUS #342

A collection of TRAC and SAM76 publications was placed on Scribd.com by "TRAC_fan" at this link as of 2013. thanks to Nat Kunh for finding this. There are 31 articles or manuals. Again, you have to join scribd to access them.

In July 2013, RESISTOR Nat Kuhn produced a TRAC version in Python as described above.

The Dvorak keyboard

In his last years and likely earlier, Claude was an enthusiast for the Dvorak keyboard. He digitized a Navy demonstration film, possibly produced by Dvorak (a Naval officer) during WW II. Claude put it on YouTube in 2007. "Dvorak keyboard touchtyping" is the first of two parts, 10 minutes. 41K, views since 2007. "Dvorak keyboard touchtyping theory", is part 2, 13K views,10 minutes. I'll add more information at a later time. Thanks to Jeff Jonas for calling this to my attention in May 2020. - Herb

More Claude Kagan resources

The resistors.org Web site for the RESISTORS.

The Infoage Science History and Learning Center Web site. RESISTOR and Claude Kagan's PDP-8 and related artifacts are on exhibit or archived there. Vintage Computer Federation is an InfoAge member organization which exhibits those vintage computers.

The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota has a collection of Claude Kagan's AFIPS papers. A local search using his name will find a description of the archive's contents.

Claude's Web site for SAM76, sam76.org, is offline since 2012, but may be available in Internet archives.

Discussion of Kagan's influence on Teletype products, and an impression of SAM76 versus TRAC, is given by this 2013 account by Jim Haynes formerly of Teletype Corp. It was published by the IEEE History Center, details in the document. Haynes mentions Claude's interest in Dvorak keyboards.

Copyright © 2020 Herb Johnson