Looking for something to post, I came across a series of pages I saved many years ago from a now-defunct website. They listed the Number 1 songs in Australia from 1949 to 1972. Some of them also included the Number 1’s in the USA and the UK.
I’ve chosen 1960. I turned ten that year, and I actually remember (and love) a lot of the songs that we used to hear on the radio. It’s interesting to see that Australia often seemed to trail behind the other two countries.
This house was built for my great-great-grandfather in 1888. The name came from Cleveland Terrace – a row of shops with residences above – in Bath, England, where he lived as a child.
“Cleveland” is now on the market for around nine million dollars. In 1980 I was privileged to have a personal tour of the house just before it was auctioned for $202,000 - which seemed a huge amount in those days, but pales into insignificance compared to its present value.
Judging from the video, there have been major additions and much refurbishment since 1980, and I wonder how much of the house my grandfather, who was ten years old when the family moved there, would remember.
I have a photo of my grandfather and his twin brother standing next to the corner veranda post.
SBS reports that “Nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, its youngest victims are still in their infancy. Across the country, some babies are still being born with defects as a result of their parents’ exposure to dioxin found in in the crop-killing herbicide Agent Orange.” The US military sprayed about 44 million litres, or 12 million gallons of the substance over the country between 1961 and 1971.
The article tells the story of three year old Dang Hong Dan, who was born with a cleft lip and deformities in one hand and foot. Dan’s parents take work where they can get it, but their income is not consistent, and they have trouble caring for their young son.
There are about 1.2 million children in Vietnam who are living with disabilities. Of those, 150,000 are believed to be victims of Agent Orange. What a sad legacy of a sad war – one that should not have involved either the USA or Australia. Chemical warfare has no place in a civilised world.
“Last year,” SBS says, “the US government agreed to assist in clean-up efforts of Agent Orange, after a long period of bilateral discussions with the Vietnamese authorities. Australia is not involved in the clean-up effort, but through AusAID is funding programs to help those affected by the substance as well as other children with disabilities.” Dan’s family is one of those receiving help.
AusAID director Peter Baxter says the decision to provide aid is not related to our involvement in the war, but it is “not only the right thing to do, it’s a smart thing to do to ensure that the human resources that are available in developing countries are actually used to benefit those societies.”
While Australia did not use chemical weapons in Vietnam it is gratifying to see that we are helping in a small way to help the people there cope with the aftermath of the war.
The Age reports that in 2011, military police seized from a Canberra bookshop a number of obsolete service training manuals dating back to the 1930s. Last Monday the booklets were returned to the shop.
The reasons given for the seizure – that the manuals were restricted documents and that there was information in them that was not for ‘certain people’ to see – seem a bit specious considering that some of the same manuals were on public sale at the Australian War Memorial during the two years the booklets were held by the MPs.
The bookshop’s owner, Simon Maddox, said that when the items were seized, “I was partially stunned and thought it was pretty humorous. I wondered why things from 1937 would affect the security of Australia now.” He is now wondering why it took so long for the MPs to decide the manuals were harmless. “Even reading slowly you’d imagine you could get through it quicker than that.”
An interesting postscript to the story occurred in January when the bookshop received a donation of another 85 similar pamphlets. “The Canberra Times reported this and, within two or three days, they were all sold. I think the the general public was trying to protect us from the military police,” Mr Maddox said.
SBS reports that “The world’s oldest computer has been rebooted by two dedicated engineers who have spent nine years bringing it back to life.”
Roger Holmes and Rod Brown, working in a barn in Ashford, Kent, have returned the ICT1301 computer, known as Flossie, to full working order. The machine, which measures six metres by 6.7 metres (20 feet by 22 feet), and cost £250,000 in 1962, was originally bought by London University to organise exam grades and print certificates. Flossie was delivered to the University on 19 September 1962, so she has just celebrated her 50th birthday.
Working on the ICT1301 in Kent
The computer’s memory alone weighs half a tonne… all 12 kilobytes of it! Yes, that’s 12kb; there are 1024kb in a megabyte, and a modern smartphone can have 8192 megabytes (8 gigabytes), which makes Flossie’s memory seem rather inadequate :).
Roger Holmes at the ICT1301 console
The front panel of an ICT1301 was used in The Man with the Golden Gun as well as Doctor Who and Blake’s 7.
It’s interesting to note that there’s an unrestored ICT1301 at Otago Settlers’ Museum in Dunedin, New Zealand.
The Computer Conservation Society (of which Holmes is a member) visited the restoration project and has a report, complete with photos.
The project has its own website, which includes the history of the machine, reports of public open days, photos and a video, and other information. It also includes a report of a visit by the original designer. (The site—appropriately enough, I guess—features a binary clock. Let me know if you can read it!)
