Dick Barnes has died, aged 98:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48036921I can definitely beat the ten seconds to do a multiply operation in decimal. A new programming language interpreter which I was the co-designer of in 1984 took 35 mins to do 2+2. We waited and waited and waited and just decided it had hung so gave up and went off to get a bite to eat. Came back and the machine said 4. So then we had to do it again, and sat and waited and waited and waited and timed it. Thinking that perhaps that was too hard a problem, we tried asking it to do something easier and calculate the value of just "2" or similar. That was a bit quicker, I forget, but maybe 25 mins instead. My colleagues were panicking and freaking out. Needless to say I got stuck into it and speeded it up - a lot. So that it only took a second or so.
