It was the early 70's and as I have commented in other articles, our Neuroscience Department had a 12-bit 32 Kilo Words computer, a punched tape reader and an extended typewriter to punch tapes.In those days, computers were scarce, very scarce, and that meant that their use as such was in the hands of large ministries or large companies, but it was very rare for a small department to have one. The self-sacrificing work of the Department staff that prior to my entry into it and usin...

Any two-dimensional screen can be viewed as a collection of rectangular cells. A point and even the entire screen can be defined as such.Almost all cell phones and computer screens are two-dimensional screens.Therefore, anything that runs on mobile phones or PCs or Macs is viewed on a two-dimensional screen as a collection of rectangular cells.In conclusion, anything that runs on mobile phones or PC or Mac can be conceived as a spreadsheet both practically and theoretically.Spreads...

The history of Spreadsheets is fascinating, from Richard Mattessich who in 1972 wrote the article "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" creating the concept, to Pardo and Landau, who tried to obtain a Patent.But the renowned inventor of Spreadsheets is Dan Bricklin, with his VisiCalc, which was available since 1979 and was, let's say, the first and most important computing tool in the hands of anyone when it was implemented for the first computer that we can call "personal".I kn...

It is known to all that the use of Spreadsheets, such as the current Excel, since the beginning when VisiCalc appeared in 1979, have allowed many users without programming knowledge to be able to develop many and varied applications.In particular, the world of economics has been empowered by Spreadsheets. An accountant can directly carry out all or almost all of his work using them, since from the beginning they were conceived with a varied communication with other data processing...

It was the early 70s of the last century, and in our PDP-8 compatible minicomputer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) there was almost no way to program except by hand-coding machine language. Later, the Central Institute for Digital Research (ICID) developed the assembler and later the LEAL language (LEnguaje ALgoritmico) that I have referred to in other articles and in which it was quite difficult and tedious to program as it was postfix notation, especially when evaluating...

It was in the early 80's of the last century when a psychologist named Roberto began to work with us, a very affable man, always with a smile, I never saw him annoying, much less bothering anyone. He was welcome in our Neurosciences collective, although he actually belonged to the psychology school of the university. He immediately became interested in using the personal computers we had to design and create applications that would have an impact on psychology. We talked a lot, he...

My current works and ideas.Over the years I have been developing a series of works and research proposals that I would like to present to you as a whole for your consideration. For each one you will find here an introduction to the topic and also links to the complete content already more elaborated. Most of the topics are under development and from time to time I add or modify information. Keep this in mind so that from time to time you can revisit the topics that were of interest...

At the beginning of the 70s we had a computer with 32 Kilowords and 12 bits in length each word and to program it encoded the machine language by hand and could also use a posfix notation language called LEAL although it was difficult for us anyway to translate algorithms especially if what prevailed was the calculation, so frequent in the Neuroscience applications that we developed supported by statistics, including multivariate ones.In those years and also in the 60's, it was com...

Well, I didn't know whether to put this article in "Stories" or if here, in "ProgramSolving", but in the end, due to the randomness of the Programming, I decided to put it here.It was between 1973-1974 and a Programmer from the Center's Department of Mathematics, Raisa Cepero Bonilla, was in charge of carrying out a project to carry out a "Factorial Analysis by Correspondence", which is a fairly sophisticated statistical analysis and not very broad utilization even today.It was pro...

Basic Ideas in the History of Humanity. An idea, a conception, a way of working, of direction, and in general any human activity is considered basic when it has never been formulated by anyone before and is also so simple and powerful that multiple ideas and applications have sprung from it throughout history, but none existed or would exist without having been promoted by that basic idea that is always present in all subsequent development. Often, it's not possible to attribute this basic ide...

I still remember when I was programming with GoTo. Programming without using it was not conceivable. Until the revolution started by Dijkstra with his note "Goto considered harmful" came to "structure" our minds for program development.The progress made with "Structured Programming" is incalculable, which allowed not only to increase the speed of having correct programs, but also to increase the number of people capable of programming.At that time, "Top to Bottom Programming" and "...

Yesterday walking and walking I went to repair a fan where a technician who has been repairing electrical appliances for more than 20 years, has a lot of experience, is fast and accurate.Upon arrival there was a "return at 2:30" sign and waiting for it a Mrs. arrived with a rice cooker. Well, we started talking and talking, and I said to myself, why wait until everyone has internet to use Facebook? Facebook we have it within reach...Well, without meeting each other, exchanging pho...

It was 1974 and an Engineer from the Department of Neurophysiology named Alberto Caro had designed a device for the experimental work of the department that could be controlled by our CID-201-B computer, compatible with the PDP-8, which I referred to in the article "CONCATISO. My first program.".Due to production priorities, the Central Institute for Digital Research (ICID) did not give us what would later be named as MEDICID-2 and for that reason, with great inventiveness, the eng...

I will tell how I started working in the Department of Neurophysiology of the National Center for Scientific Research. It was the year 1971 and I was studying Pure Mathematics at the University and it turns out that a doctor, Dr. Pedro Valdés Sosa, better known as "Peter", also began to study Mathematics as a second career. Peter and I were together for almost two years, we became good friends, we even studied together. Peter was already a worker with many obligations, he skippe...

CONCATISO. My first Program. Second part. By reading the first part you will already have an idea of the computational equipment that the Department of Neurophysiology had back in the years 1972... 1973 Now I will tell the other part: Professor Erwin Roy John, head of the Department of Neurophysiology at New York Medical College, donated to Thalía and her Department an analog "Transient Averaging" computer called "CAT" that was capable of obtaining, from synchronized stimuli an...

  Amazon puts in your hands the book: Classic motors in Cuba 1899-2007 (Spanish Edition). Launching by Hobbiesenred of the Book: "Classic Motors in Cuba".Dedicated: To the motorcyclists of Latin America, the world and especially to the Cubans.The legend of classic motors in Cuba began on September 3, 1899. Motorcycles continued to penetrate and, from that moment on, riders began to leave their footprints all over the island, thus maintaining their permanence, hegemony and development. This bo...

One afternoon of the many in which the programs we developed took hours and even days to produce results, several colleagues were meeting near our computer and the topic of robots came up.Some of us talked about the distance between the human being and the automation of processes by computers, which by the way is currently maintained, others about the development of Neuroscience itself, others the development of mathematics and computing itself, in short, almost any topic fit into...

In other articles I have commented that in 1972 I was studying Pure Mathematics and I  coincide with Dr. Pedro Valdés (Peter, as everyone knows him) that he was continuing his studies in Mathematics to increase his working capacities in Neurosciences.We became good friends, we studied together in the University Park, in the Classrooms, in the Library, until one day he told me: "Tomorrow, Saturday, I'll wait for you at my house to continue."Saturday comes, I go to Peter's house, I r...