There's a concept in history whose name escapes me, but which was evoked often when Harrison Tyler died in 2025. Tyler was a private citizen, but he was of note because he was the grandson of the US's 10th president John Tyler -- who died in 1862.
The gist is how surprising bridges to the past are closer than you realize -- as is the past itself.
At my first corporate job in 1994, we had a machine room. Those weren't uncommon back then. What WAS uncommon was that, over in a corner, sandwiched between racks of shiny new DEC Alphas, was a PDP-11 that was still running production code.
My employer then was TeleCheck, which did point of sale risk analysis for checks. The business had originally been run as independent state-by-state franchises, and back then someone had the bright idea to create an IT company that provided services to these franchisees -- and, occasionally, to other companies, too. By the time I was hired, the franchises AND the IT company had all been brought under one ownership, and all the IT company's external clients had gone elsewhere EXCEPT ONE.
That holdout was perfectly happy with what they got from that ancient computer.
I assume it eventually died, but TeleCheck had a DEEP bench of DEC talent, so it could've kept running a long, long time.
The gist is how surprising bridges to the past are closer than you realize -- as is the past itself.
At my first corporate job in 1994, we had a machine room. Those weren't uncommon back then. What WAS uncommon was that, over in a corner, sandwiched between racks of shiny new DEC Alphas, was a PDP-11 that was still running production code.
My employer then was TeleCheck, which did point of sale risk analysis for checks. The business had originally been run as independent state-by-state franchises, and back then someone had the bright idea to create an IT company that provided services to these franchisees -- and, occasionally, to other companies, too. By the time I was hired, the franchises AND the IT company had all been brought under one ownership, and all the IT company's external clients had gone elsewhere EXCEPT ONE.
That holdout was perfectly happy with what they got from that ancient computer.
I assume it eventually died, but TeleCheck had a DEEP bench of DEC talent, so it could've kept running a long, long time.