From the November/December 1976 issue of People's Computer Company magazine
[CAFTP Editor’s note: This “interview” took place two years before Raskin was hired by Apple and three years before he started the Macintosh project.]
An interview with Dr. Hiram Carmichael Dobb, Titular head of Dr. Dobb’s Journal of you know the rest.
by Jef Raskin
We were invited to the elusive Dr. Dobb’s residence high on a stone bluff overlooking the pacific ocean in the small town of Polio Del Mar, California.
Polio Del Mar is said to have the highest number of computers per family of any place in the world as well as having a sewage treatment plant that ranks with any in the state. Dr. Dobb himself looks older and acts younger than he is. He says that is easier than looking younger and acting older than he is. We found such wisdom commonplace as we began our interview.
US: Dr. Dobb, so far you have managed to evade any public exposure or interviews, and we are honored that you have agreed to our request. May we ask why?
Dr. Dobb: Yes.
US: Why?
Dr. Dobb: Nobody else asked.
US: When did you start playing with computers? We hear you have been doing it for a long time.
Dr. Dobb: Where do people hear such things? But it’s true, I started out in 1900, and, buster, that’s a long time ago.
US: But the first computers weren’t built until about 1946 or so!
Dr. Dobb: Did you come here to tell me history or to interview me?
US: But you were born in 1900!
Dr. Dobb: That’s what I said: “I started out in 1900” and you interrupted.
US: Sorry.
Dr. Dobb: As I told Johnny . . .
US: You mean Von Neumann?
Dr. Dobb: You do keep interrupting. You think you have some kind of priority? Like I was saying I told Johnny: “These computer thingies won’t amount to much until you can have one in every garage, and a chicken in every pot.” That phrase became famous, as you will remember.
US: We do remember something like that. Why, to change the subject, have you settled in Polio Del Mar?
Dr. Dobb: This town has the highest number of computers per square head.
US: How did you come to be associated with the journal of which you are the titular head?
Dr. Dobb: You know, I like that title “Titular head,” it does something for my image. But, actually, they had never heard of me when they named the journal.
US: No?
Dr. Dobb: It was named after my cousin Hilary Cynthia Dobb.
US: Hilary Cynthia Dobb?
Dr. Dobb: You do seem to have a case of echolalia! She is the expert for whom the journal is named. By the way, how much should each issue of Byte cost?
US: Tell us more about Dr. Hilary Dobb.
Dr. Dobb: Answer my question, I asked it first.
US: How should we know?
Dr. Dobb: Eight bits!
With this joke Dr. Dobb cracked up and was laughing so hard that we couldn’t get anything coherent out of him. Just then a dignified woman came down the stairs. Her eyes seemed to look right through us, and she wore a brooch of pure silicon, its jet blackness gleaming against her green dress. Since she is also Dr. Dobb you will have to figure out which of them is speaking from context.
Dr. Dobb: Oh. Hiram. I bet I know what joke you just told.
Dr. Dobb: (still incoherent)
US: Dr. Dobb, we have just been told that it is *you* that Dr. Dobb’s journal is named after.
Dr. Dobb: That may be the ease. Some other things have been named after me.
US: Yes?
Dr Dobb: Did you know that the color molded into IC’s with plastic cases is known as “Dobb’s Black” and that I invented the Dobb’s code which is used by many electronic hackers?
US: (impressed) No, we didn’t.
Dr. Dobb: You are familiar with the “ten” codes used by the CB people.
US: Slightly.
Dr. Dobb: You know 10-20 means “location” and so on. Well to save engineers and computer scientists time I set up a lot of codes so that they could talk more easily and snow anybody who might be listening.
US: Could you give us, and our readers some examples?
Dr. Dobb: Surely: The code for four 2-input nand gates is “zero-zero” or the code for a J-K master-slave flip flop is “seventy one.”
US: And do you prefix these numbers with ten like the Hams and the CBers do?
Dr Dobb: No. I use “seventy four.” And those are called, properly, the Dobb code.
Dr. Dobb: (still incoherent).
Dr. Dobb: And to keep the military people happy I gave them their own code.
US: Can we guess? They use “fifty four?”
Dr. Dobb: For a magazine writer you seem awfully bright.
US: (blushing) Thank you.
Dr. Dobb: Have you been doing interviews for long?
US: About four or five years now.
Dr. Dobb: And how did you get to specialize in computer reporting?
US: It comes from an early interest in stopwatches. When I was four years old my aunt Hilda mere gave me this stopwatch, and I began to time everything...hey, who is doing the interview?
Dr. Dobb: (sweetly) You are. What happened with the stopwatch?
US: I started to become an efficiency expert around the house, and compared different ways of washing dishes. . . you got me doing it again.
Dr. Dobb: Sorry, let me ask you a question.
US: O.K.
Dr. Dobb: (still incoherent)
Dr. Dobb: Where did you go to school?
US: The Wisconsin State School of journalism. And where did you go to school?
Dr. Dobb: Wait a second. I’m doing the interviewing.
US: ?
Dr. Dobb: Ha! Ran a 7404 on you!
US: A 7404?
Dr. Dobb: Ran you through a hex inverter, turned the tables. You got to learn the codes if you want to talk to hackers.
US: Can you teach us a few more?
Dr. Dobb: Sure. What do you think we mean when we say that a couple is all 7471?
US: Tell us.
Dr Dobb: It means you can’t tell who is in control, a perpetual master-slave flip flop relationship. When you’re sure you say that you’re 7430. And that’s an input positive nand gate, and that’s pretty positive. To go into your house is to “open a 74100” you know, a bistable latch. A woman (or a man for that matter) who worries about their age is a 7490. A decade counter. And my son, James, we call a 7488 since he likes the library so much. He’s got a read-only memory.
US: It seems that almost any situation can be represented by one of your 74-codes, Dr. Dobb.
Dr. Dobb: Thank you. I hope I’ve made a contribution to human communication, liven so obscure situation as finding a snake when you come in through the fence has a 74 code.
US: Really?
Dr Dobb: Sure. It’s a 7480.
US: A 7480?
Dr. Dobb: A Gated Full Adder!
At this joke Dr. Dobb went into pleasant peals of laughter, and we found ourselves with two incoherent Dr. Dobbs. We decided to call it a day and make our way back from Polio Del Mar. We would be back another day to continue our interview with the Drs. Dobb. Or maybe not.
About the author; Jef Raskin lives in Polio Del Mar, where he is at the Polio Del Mar Doctor’s Hospital, where a team of experts are trying to get his tongue out of his cheek.
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