Words with Dick Ainsworth Adam Trionfo and Lance Squire There are always some good discussions going on at the Astrocade Discussion Group. I've (Adam) taken two postings (969 and 972) and created this article. I posted the first part, and Lance Squire posted the second part of this article. Here are two emails (unchanged) that were posted to the Astrocade group. Part I - Hello from Dick Ainsworth ---------------------------------- (July 18, 2002) Hello... I would be interested in being able to run old Bally BASIC programs under a current VisualBASIC. I would like to demonstrate some of my early Bally software on a current Windows system. Incidentally, I wrote the Bally BASIC book and the companion cassette, and designed the Easy-Entry Keypad that made the original Arcade programmable. I also designed the Bally music notation system for the keypad. Jay wrote the actual language. Many of my early Bally programs also appeared in my Sinclair Learning Lab, the Color Computer Learning Lab, and a few other books. The latest iteration of my Space Docking and other early Bally software still lives and is part of the Ainsworth Computer Seminar, a free download from my personal web page. Even before Bally BASIC, I designed the Bingo Math cartridge. This was the first use of interval timing, which later became the core of my Typing Tutor software (Microsoft, IBM, Simon & Schuster) and the current Ainsworth Keyboard Training System. Interval timing, which I also called time response monitoring and adaptive learning, was a major breakthrough in interactive computing. Bingo Math was much more sophisticated than most people realized. It actually sensed response times accurately enough to adjust the challenge level so that people with very different abilities would be evenly matched. It also made it possible to learn arithmetic facts easily because it differentiated between facts you knew and answered quickly, and combinations that were still being learned. In short, the program adjusted the mix of known and unknown math facts to create a constant challenge level, which is both fun and the ideal way to learn anything. This early concept is now the primary software technology behind many interactive educational programs, but it was done first on the Bally Arcade. I've forgotten which programmer I worked with in implementing my design for this cartridge. It was probably Jay, but I'm not sure. I think that the tape cassette that I wrote for the Bally BASIC cartridge was the first -- or certainly one of the first -- examples of personal computer software for the mass market. The cassette with Bill's Microsoft BASIC was released at the same time. In fact, I first met Bill at the GRT recording studio where we were recording masters for the Bally BASIC cassette and Microsoft BASIC cassette, so the release dates would be nearly identical. I don't know of anyone who had sold personal software to a mass market before this. If you have other examples, please let me know. I also designed the planetarium program which never completed production (although it made it into a few of the vaporware ads), as well as a few others. The Arcade was truly a remarkable computer, which I introduced at CES with a complete show-and-tell theatre. Bally asked me to do the CES intro because I looked the part. I was a Chicago ad agency exec at the time and didn't look too much like one of those "computer people" the Bally management never actually trusted. Too bad the management at Bally couldn't see the wisdom of the personal computer evolution in time to fully fund the project. They even refused to allow the word "computer" anywhere in the title or in the advertising because they were convinced that this word would scare people into thinking it was too difficult for the average person to understand. Hence the name Astrocade which none of us liked at the time. After the Arcade fizzled commercially, and a brief flirtation with the APF computer (what a dog), I jumped on the Color Computer as the next logical platform, writing another book with tape software, and designing almost half of the cartridges that were sold in Radio Shack. VisiCalc, the Apple, and the first floppy disk was the combination that changed the personal computer from a game machine for fans (or the world's most expensive desk ornament) into a serious personal computer system for the first time. Since many executives could do financial forecasts, they immediately fell in love with the original spread sheet on the Apple. But since most of them couldn't type, my Microsoft Typing Tutor was a natural solution and became an immediate best seller. But it was the Bally Arcade and the prospect of actually figuring out how to write software all by myself (with much help from Jay and other Friends) that introduced (addicted) me to computers in the first place. And I haven't looked back since. Now if I could only figure out all this .NET business... Regards... ...Dick Ainsworth Part II - More from Dick Ainsworth ---------------------------------- (July 18, 2002) Lance and friends... I'm happy to respond as best I can remember. I sent a copy of my previous Email to Jamie for comment and she now has no corrections or additions to my earlier statements. Actually, I said: "Try to catch any of the more blatant lies." But her recollection and mine are fairly in sync. As you point out, I did make an error re the name "Astrocade." This name came later. It is accurate that Bally refused to use the name "computer" anywhere because it would (they thought) kill sales to people because computers were too difficult. I should have said "Professional Arcade" instead of "Astrocade" as the name they chose to avoid saying "computer." (If you can, simply correct this in my earlier text.) Bally marketing... Bally's original marketing concept for the Arcade was to sell a "professional" version of the coin-op games. Essentially, they wanted to create a box to sell into the home that would get all the money at once instead of getting the money one quarter at a time. They had no interest in computers, or anything else technical. These are the same guys who made their fortune building slot machines and roulette tables, after all. I was originally contacted by Bally as a marketing consultant, and asked to make the Arcade "Look like it's educational." Those were the exact words. "Look like" meant, as a marketing ploy, do something that would allow coin-op players to feel justified in buying the Arcade for their homes. I asked if I could solve this marketing problem by design a program that would actually teach something useful, and have this programmed as a game cartridge by the people at DNA. They said, "Sure, as long as it looks educational and helps sell the Arcade." After some thought, I realized that I actually did have a real computer to use, not just a game machine, and I also had access to some of the best programming talent on the planet to boot. I designed "Bingo Math" as an interactive system with two goals. First, I wanted to help all the zillions of kids who had trouble with math because they didn't know the basic math facts (2 + 2 = 4, etc.) And second, I wanted to make a system that would be a constant challenge for any person at any level, and also a game that two people could play with an equal challenge for both. Two kids, a kid and a parent, etc. could compete at the "game" while learning math. Losing at the game would be easy to accept, and not at all the same as "losing" at math. This is a serious problem, and well worth solving. Interactive programming... I borrowed the basic idea of adjusting challenge levels from the coin-op game designers at DNA. Their challenge in effective coin-op design is similar in that, in order to extract as many quarters as possible, they had to design games that were fun for the novice player and for the expert alike. In fact, getting more or less equal playing time for players at any level was a basic goal that would optimize the play per quarter equation. I simply changed the goal to provide an equal learning partner (teacher) that would provide the right mix of easy and difficult challenges for someone learning a new task. My goal was to shift math facts from slow memory (having to figure out the answer while trying to add, subtract, multiply, divide) to high-speed memory where this data can be retrieved instantly, without thought. This is the difference between being able to run down a column of figures in your head and get the sum easily, or struggling with each step and often getting the sum wrong. I was, quite simply, using the computer for programming people, instead of the other way around. The DNA guys bought into this idea right away and we worked together to create the first ideal teacher, "Bingo Math" based on my design. This is the same concept I would use later in creating the first Typing Tutor program for Microsoft and IBM -- and now my current Ainsworth Keyboard Trainer and Ainsworth Keypad Trainer software. The goal here is to "program" people's responses so that they can look at the screen and focus on the content, instead of looking at the keyboard and interrupting their train of thought. There's lots more about this on my web site at qwerty.com. In fact, anyone is welcome to download Sampler4 from my web site (free) and see how the original concepts in Bingo Math have evolved to teach both writing and data entry skills. Select "Alphabet" and run a few games. The program collects micro- timing data for each key on the keyboard while the game is in progress. Switch to "Prescription Drills, Alphabet" and look at the graph. This shows the output of the cognitive modeling software (actual AI stuff) that determines which keys you are looking at or visualizing. The keys with shorter bars are the ones that slow down your game, and also may make writing or programming more difficult than it has to be for you. Click on the "Show Keys" button so that you can watch what's going on. Now type a few Prescription Drills and see how the program tracks your slower keys, actually forcing these responses into your high-speed or motor memory. This focused learning will eliminating the hesitations and any tendency to visualize the process (keys and hands) instead of the result (words on screen). After a few drills, the graph will tend to flatten out. If so, you've actually eliminated the tendency to visualize certain keys. Now run the games again and you may see your score go up a bit. Now try writing something using email or any word processor and notice that writing is actually easier when keyboard visualizations aren't blocking the creative process. The degree to which this interactive programming actually improves your ability to write (thoughts made visible) depends, of course, on how much you tend to visualize the process instead of your ideas in the first place -- and how much time you spend with my software. But it does work. And this interactive programming concept, using interval timing of the keyboard, was first created for and programmed on the Bally Arcade. Another comment on game programming in general... There was (maybe still is) a general snobbishness among some of the mainframe programmers who tended to look down on people write game software. This is similar to the paintbrush artists who sometimes think that people who draw cartoons and comic books aren't quite the same as "real" artists who paint pictures. Boo hiss. I delight in exploding this myth with the following story that I repeat for anyone who thinks that making a living by telling big computers how to calculate bills and print checks is somehow better than writing software that's fun to use... If you think that game programming is easy, go to the nearest shopping mall. Walk up to the first group of teenagers you see and ask each of them to hand you a quarter. You will, of course, do something in exchange -- tell a story, do a dance, sing, draw pictures, make funny faces, juggle phone books, take your cloths off, (or all of the above, at the same time) etc. If you are somehow successful, then ask them each to give you another quarter and you will do it all over again. Ha! Creating anything that is truly fun or interesting is a lot harder than it looks. Kids (and quite a few adults) aren't stupid. It takes real talent to write software -- or to write anything else -- that matters. In my opinion, creating software that's both fun and educational is a great deal more worthwhile that making electric money zip around or whatever. About copyrights, etc... I'm glad to place all of my original software on the Bally Arcade in the public domain. This includes the original Bally BASIC programming book and software, the cassette program software that was shipped with the audio interface, and the Bally demo cartridge. The later version of the Bally BASIC programming book also included content and examples from the Astrocade group, so I am not sure who may own copyright on this. Anyone who cares is also welcome to use or copy the Easy-Entry Keypad. As I recently mentioned to Jamie, I hope that legions of Bally programmers with bloody index fingers don't track us down and lynch us both for designing that one. In the "Ideas that didn't make it into Prime Time" department, Jamie and I discovered only slightly too late that we could have selected the colors on the keypad so that if the keypad is illuminated by the light from the TV screen, pressing any color key would automatically light up the corresponding functions (only) on the keypad. But it's amazing that so many of our ideas actually did see the light of day. The Bally BASIC book revisited... A few years ago I revised many of the ideas in the original Bally BASIC programming book, and added a few from later books I wrote for the Color Computer, Sinclair Z-80, etc, as the Ainsworth Computer Seminar. This is distributed free from my personal page on the Internet. I used QuickBASIC as the model for the program/examples. I also created a proprietary html browser that I could use to interact directly with (run) software as html links. This worked well, but current Windows systems don't support sounds using the internal speaker, as with QuickBASIC. I tried to get Microsoft to release QuickBASIC as public domain, but they refused. I have no idea why, since they used to give QuickBASIC away on the early Windows CD. Hence my seminar no longer works well where sound effects are concerned. I've been meaning to revise the seminar for Windows and external speakers, but haven't done so yet. And so, forth... There's a tendency, today, to think that computers, and especially personal computers, all happened on the west coast or in a garage someplace, and that people in the midwest know more about cow chips than computer chips. Too bad. It amazes and saddens me that so many "histories" of early computing simply ignore the incredible contributions of the DNA group. Not only were they there, they were there first, and they were there best. If Bally management had been convinced to effectively market the first personal computer instead of building a new casino... If they had invested as much money on the entire development and programming staff that they spend on just one catalog ad for the Arcade... Well, who knows? I'm just glad that so many people, bloody index fingers and all, have discovered the incredible creative power of the personal computer thanks to the game box that even looks like it's educational. Regards to all... Dick Ainsworth END OF ARTICLE