I wrote:
On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 12:11:43 PM UTC-6, Stuf4 wrote:
snip
- Long meeting and discussions with the person who invented the
Personal Computer, who is also heavily involved at NASA JSC,
who was nice enough to tell me the whole story of how his company
pulled it off,
snip
History is amazing. But what is perhaps even more amazing is how accurate
history gets so distorted, and downright warped.

THAT right there is a perfect example of how WARPED history can be. One of
the most impactful inventions of the 20th century is the personal computer,
yet the VAST MAJORITY of people don't know who invented it. Or rather, they
*think* they know, but are totally mistaken. It radically changed our world,
yet people don't have a clue.

My estimate would be that if 10,000,000 people were asked, maybe one person
would know the answer. So I am very grateful to have had extensive
interaction with the inventor. We got to the Moon with small-sized
computers, and today they are everywhere.

Also forgot to mention...

- That day I was at Steve Wozniak's house. And then having lunch at Apple
headquarters. Woz & I share a special day. My brother would hang out at
his Segway Polo competitions.

- Giving a pitch at Google headquarters on one of my inventions. Having
one-on-one lunch with an important author who is friends with Sergey & Larry.

- Google HQ is next to NASA Ames. There are the lunches with Center Directors
of NASA Ames, sometimes one-on-one, my recommendations being sought, or me
seeing their advice. The most urgent meeting at NASA Ames HQ was in the
wake of 9/11 to pitch a high tech solution to prevent the issue from
happening ever again (single inventor). Ames being responsible for Air
Traffic Control research. Apollo astronaut John Bull was working there
at the time,

- Close interaction over the course of several months with Curt Michel,
another of the 'forgotten Apollo astronauts',

- Pitching a suite of inventions (again, single inventor) during assignment
as a test pilot, being sent to various key locations across the nation to
promote these concepts at Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, the
Joint Cockpit Office, Edwards AFB Flight Test Center, etc,

- Pitching another invention (single inventor) to Facebook, given feedback that
moving to California as an fb employee was required for them to pursue it..
(It was during this event that "timeline" was first presented),

- Face-to-face discussion with Guenter Wendt. Also Peter Diamandis,
Bob Zubrin, Curt Newport, Sergei Krikalev, Richard Garriott,
Andrew Chaikin ...face-to-face discussion with maybe half a dozen members of
this forum, to include close working relationship with adjacent offices at
major aerospace company, to include social interaction like lunches, dinners,
getting together to perform music (I'm glad to know that people are MUCH
nicer interacting in person than what typically happens here virtually),

- Visiting Nancy Pelosi's office to give her information on another idea
(single inventor) with a very positive impact to not only her voter base, but
her entire state, and inspirational to the entire country and people of every
nation. One of the Senators from California, a close friend, was very
impressed with the idea,

- Close family ties to top official in a foreign government. Being with
Eduard Shevardnadze, Jim Baker, Nelson Mandela, Barry Goldwater, having
Tom DeLay come by my house (again, the same house frequented by Buzz),

- Regularly visiting the house of one of the grandkids of Prescott Bush, so
a close relation to a couple presidents, governors, etc,

- Hanging out at Franklin Chang-Diaz's very nice lakeshore house, being a
houseguest at Lockheed Martin VP, him visiting my house, visiting the
spectacular lakeshore houses of other astronauts like the Fisher's and
Jerry Linenger, etc (houses like Neil & Buzz's were quite modest by
comparison),

- Living in the same neighborhood as the bombardier who dropped the last
atomic bomb, being friends with one of Paul Tibbets' close relatives.
Being entrusted with the delivery of megaton nuclear bombs & missiles,
certified as an instructor to teach others to do the same,

- Getting to know Ilan Ramon during his days as a fighter pilot, years before
NASA ever looked at him (he was involved in destroying the Iraqi nuclear
power plant in '81), then helping to train him for STS-107,

- Getting to know several astronauts long before they became astronauts,
going as far back as being teenagers together, being close friends with
winners of things like the Mackay Trophy, here too going back as far as
being teenagers together,

- Being close friends with crazy wealthy multi-billionaire families, like
motion picture tycoon (responsible for making Apollo 13, among many many
others), here too going back to teenage years. These are people with
an elevator in their house, kinda fun to ride,

- Friends with person who started a multi-billion dollar insurance company
(friends since teenage years), going through parachute training together,

- Friends with others since teenage years who are "mere" multi-millionaires,
one making their money in high tech stock options, another in medical,

- Friends with Olympic medalist, going back to our childhood, and schoolmates
with other multiple Olympic gold medalists (six golds between two of them,
let alone silvers),

- Having personal friends who are test pilots on SpaceShipTwo, going back to
when we were teenagers,

None of these people were involved with the invention of the PC. Not Woz. Not the others. It did not happen in California. (Although the inventors did work hard to try to get California involved, Intel failed to come through.) As indicated earlier, it was actually NASA people who pulled it off. Kind of crazy that NASA does not promote the story themselves. It's a great story.

- One-on-one discussions with John Young about selecting and developing
computers for the Space Shuttle were interesting as well.

~ CT