It has been a busy day for me. I chased the last remaining (yet to be surveyed) USHCN weather station in Georgia at Dahlonega, plus did historical reference interviews with TWC founder John Coleman and Director of Meteorology Joe D’Aleo which I’ll post later. The reason I was invited and am covering it is here
Right now I’m at the Mansour Center in Marietta, GA where people are arriving for the event tonight. I’ll post images and notes as the night goes on. Check back here for regular updates.
Sorry for the short notice – couldn’t determine ahead of time if they had working WiFi here.
John Coleman shows up…with what looks to be an ancient six pack of “TaB” diet drink…and then proceeds to open it!
I though he was joking, but it still fizzed and he drank it!
Turns out they still make it here it Atlanta and have limited distribution,
here’s some of the literature from that era of founding in 1982, note the hi-tech computer:
Socializing:
Al Lipton, TWC original, and organizer of the event, opens the event
Some familiar and famous names:
Dinner is on at the moment, expecting some presentations afterward…about 15 minutes from now: 8:00PM EST
Some of the original staff showed up after midnight at the new TWC building and crashed their party:
Amazingly they got in:
The two photos above by Darlene Periconi
One of the pioneers who could not be present, addresses his friends and coworkers via webcam:
Founder John Coleman relays the story of how TWC got started. I’ll have video of this story later. He says David Hartman of ABC News Good Morning America was such a time hog that he could never do a good job covering the nation with so little time left…and this gave him the inspiration for TWC.
Joe D’aleo talks about the technical challenges of creating the first 24/7 all weather TV channel. 148 people were on board to kick off the debut. From technicians, to talent, to visionaries.
Alan Galmubeck talks about the computers and the need for the “weather star” character generator inserter.
The first nationwide launch was plagued with a glitch – they all showed the same time no matter what time zone they were in. Another glitch was that in some cable TV head ends in some TV markets, these electronic boxes wiped out TV channel 2 with interference.
Back then NOAA/NWS didn’t have access to all watches/warning they generated in forecast offices in one place. A solution with WSI corporation was created called the Digital Access Module Network or the DAMN box…which put all this together and made dissemination of watches and warnings via the “weather star” box possible for cable TV viewers.
A blooper reel of the early days was shown (about 25 mins ) that I hope to have up here next week along with a tape of the event.
While I realize that this may not be of interest to everyone, but I’m priviledged to be here and to have contributed in my own small way during those years.
Regular stories on WUWT will resume on Monday.
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Will your report on Dahlonega’s weather station make the town famous again?
First gold rush. Gold on the Georgia State house. Perfectly sited weather station – or not! Inquiring minds want to know.
VAX and VT-100 terminals bring fond memories. VMS was a fantastic operating system, 32 bit more than a decade before Windows. The command language DCL would still run circles around the command language in today’s Windows.
By the way, if you add 1 to the ASCII codes of VMS, you get
V+1=W
M+1=N
S+1=T
VMS+1=WNT (Windows NT) . WIndows 7 is Windows NT version 6.1, so in a way VMS lives. And so does the real thing: http://www.openvms.org/
Ooooh, I love it when people talk DEC p0rn! I ran a group with a DEC 11-780, then wonder of wonders, several years later wound up doing technical marketing for DEC supercomputers – into H’wood of all places.
****
_Jim says:
April 28, 2012 at 7:37 pm
And who did Bill Gates hire to do the “NT” code (and the basis for Win 2000, Xp onward)?
****
You forgot the original — NT 4.0! That OS keep me going at home from ~1996 to just a month or so ago. Pretty good OS for me, other than the occasional blue screens of death…
beng says:
April 29, 2012 at 7:06 am
Pretty good OS for me, other than the occasional blue screens of death…
Sure glad to see they got rid of that “feature” in windows. Now if they could only fix the BSOD.
Will your report on Dahlonega’s weather station make the town famous again?
First gold rush. Gold on the Georgia State house. Perfectly sited weather station – or not! Inquiring minds want to know.
If it’s still there. According to MMS, it was closed in 2000, reestablished in 2009, but was deactivated in May of last year. So maybe the equipment is still ibn place, but maybe not.
We don’t know the curator. NOAA removed all the curators’ names from MMS specifically because of Anthony’s surface station project. “To protect their privacy.” Although I spoke to dozens of those curators (thanks to a compilation of the earlier available info.), and they were always all too delighted to speak with me about their weather stations. Often at quite some length.
As for NOAA, they greatly fear (and hate) Anthony. I don’t remember ever telling this story, but at the risk of repeating myself . . .
I remember speaking to the curator of Angelica, NY, station, in early 2009, for over half an hour (he said he’d send some ground shots). Then his wife called me back, furiously angry. She had called the NOAA and they had told her that Anthony and Dr. Pielke were malign deniers and tools of industry and never to speak with any of us ever again. (She completely believed them.) The word was out. So we never did get those ground shots.
So much for Scientific Method.
I wrote up a brief account of this on my station survey:
http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=61692
Speaking of DEC porn, this has been around forever but I still get a chuckle out of it…..
If you don’t find it humorous, see Figure 1!
http://www.dourish.com/goodies/see-figure-1.html
(or just search for “see figure 1” DEC — it was the first hit on google…)
Fortunately for all of you the Climate keeps on Changing… 🙂
I’ve watched TWC from the beginning. Shame what it’s turned into.
The pioneers did the hard work but it could also be a frustrating time for the viewer as certain things got worked out. I remember watching a radar of an approaching storm, figuring time and distance to my location, judging if it would miss me just to north … or not…when up popped this text page with the wordy warning from the local NWS office which blew the radar off the screen. That used to frustrate the heck out of me.
But everything steadily improved, a lot from viewer feedback, as the technology improved as well.
I also remember that Michelin practically OWNED them for years.
I also remember mornings before I’d had my coffee praying to the Gods that Marney Stanier (whom I liked) would not look directly at the camera and smile.
And no matter his views on climate change, I just can’t hate Jim Cantore. He’s a natural teacher and his enthusiasm for the weather was and is contagious.
Yeah I watched…a LOT.
DEC porn indeed. Mind you, it was all a lift from Burroughs MCP anyway. LOL
I’m allowed to say that because I worked for both Burroughs and Digital.
Jump directly to the dessert menu. Do not pass GO.
http://mariettadiner.net/pages.php?PID=desserts
No wonder some of those station vets are a bit girthy! Counting the Calories on that page would require scientific notation.