John Baymore on thu 16 oct 97
------------------
........snip........
With the advent of the personal computer, we have the opportunity to
present the topic of glaze chemistry conceptually and let the machines
do the number-crunching. .......zap.........I think educators in
ceramics would quickly come to use such a tool once the innovators provided
it. ......zap......
So, you rare people out there with vision, and who know the conceptual
and the technical territory well, how about it? And you rare educators
who are willing to risk, how about it?
........clip.......
As an instructor (and tech-weenie) who has been teaching ceramic materials
courses since the mid 70's, I have found the PC to be a godsend to helping
students develop a solid technical understanding of the nature of glazes
and the uses of raw materials.
The block to the process prior to PC use was not the complexity of the math
involved (it is simply division and multiplication) or the chemistry
involved (it is overly simplified at best), but just that to be truly
useful one has to do a LOT of calculation and then relate actual tests to
the chemical formulas. Way back when I was your age (BG),
....................to do a glaze calc problem by =22hand=22 (using a slide =
rule
and looking up mol wts. and the like in a table in one or more books), took
a LONG time. The hand electronic calculator helped a little when it showed
up, and then programmable ones allowed faster repetitive functions. But
students still spent their available time for =22technical work=22 doing =
math
busywork and flipping pages, not in evaluating cause and effect concepts.
Because of this, most did not devote enough time to the whole subject.
Glaze calc software changed that. Once a student understands HOW the
calculations work (I still think that is a KEY important concept) that is
the end of the hand calculation. Let the PC do the busywork and use your
brain to deal with the results. Fast formula revision feedback on raw
materials changes and time spent evaluating tests done from the computer
calcs works wonders. This stuff still requires TIME, STUDY, and a lot of
actual TESTING to learn well, but the PC sure helps a lot.
Actually, the use of the home PC for glaze calc is not very new. We are
looking at just about the 20 year mark in the craft pottery field. Here's
a little slice of history that I don't often share (it is certainly not the
only slice relating to this) for those who weren't around back (quite) a
few years ago. (Boy am I getting old=21)
My frustration with the slow process of hand calculation and my great
interest in cheap home computers (took programming while in college ......
BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN) led me to try to apply the new relatively
inexpensive PC's to the problem back around 1978-79. Around that time, Hal
McWhinnie had a pretty good program up and running on a mainframe the the
U. of Maryland, if I remember correctly. I first started out to write
software for glaze calc on a Radio Shack computer (Trash 80) that sold in
the =242000.00 range, I think. Worked fine, but most potters wouldn't spend
that kind of money for such an application.
Then came a home PC price breakthrough. By about 1980 I was developing
glaze calculation software, digital pyrometers, and primitive kiln control
systems to run on the incredibly cheap Sinclair ZX-81 (Timex 1000). This
was a machine potters could afford to buy back then......... with a small
printer and a tape storage system and a couple of other accessories it
could be had for less than =24300.00. Although not slick...... it worked
great.
My glaze calc software was commercially marketed by late 1981 or early
1982. Of course there wasn't much of a machine base out there then, so the
software was more of a =22service=22 than a commercial venture (g). The =
code
was written in a subset of BASIC and Z80 machine code, and had to run in a
whopping 16 K of RAM without any disk access for DATA lookup.....there was
no disk drive. Talk about sparse code. I was trying to save single bytes
all the time=21 (Hey........that was a lot of RAM back then .........and
Bill Gates once said that noone would ever need more than 640K (g)).
By 1983 I was offering a course at Massachusetts College of Art on computer
use in ceramics, and had also integrated their use into my materials
courses. This early work showed a dramatic improvement in a students grasp
of the material, and I was convinced of the apropriateness of the tool.
In December 1983 my article, =22Potters and Computers=22 appeared in =
Ceramics
Monthly. At the end of that article in a section titled =22Where to from
here?=22, I proposed that with potters having computers with modems, we =
could
establish a two way central information center. And my goodness........
here we are on CLAYART (and CeramicsWeb) about 15 years later=21 At that
time, many (probably most (g)) other potters thought I was nuts playing
around with computers........ computers represented much of the mainstream,
corporate, material world that many were still =22rejecting=22 in those =
days.
At the 1984 NCECA conference I was co-chair (along with the late Pat Doran)
of a panel presentation titled =22Computers in the Studio=22. We presented =
a
program that featured business uses, glaze calc, and even graphics and
design functions. It was a logistic nightmare...... computers, monitors,
electrical supply and the like. I had contracted with a company to supply
projection monitors for that presentation....... what a horror show=21 They
set them up and then we had nothing but problems with them...... you could
hardly see the screen information. We ended up turning the regular
monitors around and inviting the audience to come up close to the stage
area. (That projection stuff was primitive back then too.) The NCECA
Journal that year carried my piece which again called for the establishment
an online =22Potters Information Center=22.
Potters STILL thought we were nuts=21
Wanting to be a potter, not a programmer, I stopped developing further
software commercially shortly after that, although I continued for my own
uses. Computer technology was moving too fast to keep up unless I devoted
a lot of time to it so I could remain commercially viable. I used that
basic software logic tree and source code on a number of machines (with
modifications) over the years. As computer technology progressed, I was
more interested in making pots than in keeping up with sophisticated
programming techniques...... and by Windows advent, I was really a
programming dinosaur (still know my way around the DOS environment though
(g)).
It has been facinating to watch this aspect develop over the years, after
being involved in the germination. And of course, I still stress
computerized glaze calc in my materials courses (g). I personally use the
Insight software by Tony Hansen of IMC now, it does all that I would want,
and it keeps evolving.
Best of all, I didn't have to take the time to write it (g). That is, if I
even knew how to program for Windows=21=21=21=21
Hope this gives some small amount of perspective on some of how we got
where we are now. Are there any of the others involved way back in the
late 70's and early 80's here on the list here that can share some stories
of the early work? Please share your stories too.
Joe and Richard.......... exactly how did CLAYART start?
Best,
.......................john
PS: Some potters STILL think we're nuts (g).
John Baymore
River Bend Pottery
22 Riverbend Way
Wilton, NH 03086 USA
603-654-2752
JBaymore=40Compuserve.com
Louis Katz on sat 18 oct 97
Hi John,
I wrote a program for the MainFrame at the University of Michigan in 1975
or so, It could have been as late as April of 1976 that I had my final
version running. It was set up to automatically produce a recipe from a
molecular formula within certain limits. It couldn't handle some extreme
formulas well.
It was not interactive. There was no choice in materials without changing
the program. You punched the unity formula numbers on cards, put the min
the right order, and handed them to the techy behind the counter. Ten
minutes later you could pick up your results. It was written in PL-C if I
remember correctly. Somewhere buried deep in a box of old papers in my
office, I have a copy of it. But glazes calculated on a slide rule, are for
me, more beautiful, I prefer them even to those calculated by hand.
Louis
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