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2005 Mini GE-Reunion

Most of these people were the OKIES (except me, Ed Thelen) as described in Time Sharing History of Don Fry
In Pheonix, the OKIES adopted my family even though we were from rural Minnesota instead of Oklahoma)


An announcement of the larger, formal 2006 G.E. Reunion is here in .pdf format.


Some of the people who worked at General Electric Computer Department in Phoenix, Arizona meet in the San Francisco Bay Area most years (until about 2010).

The people in general worked for Jerry Weiner and Sherbie Gangwere in the early 1960s. Many left GE (Jerry was fired ;-)) and moved to San Jose around 1966.

A group that went to San Jose formed a software contract company. - (see comments/corrections I guess this will be the alpha release ;-)) - They provided IBM Western Region with "Call/360", a time-sharing software system to compete with General Electric Time Sharing, and TimeShare. The little company hired other people to help complete this contract, and succeeding contracts with Memorex and other companies.
see Don Fry's history, starting at G.E.
( I had gone east to IBM and CDC and lost contact for some years. )

In 2003, maybe 25 people reminisced at George & Lois Fraine's in San Jose In 2004, about 18 people showed up at Sherbie & Ann Gangwere's in Moss Landing. This year, Sunday August 28, 2005, 11 people celebrated at Vince and Jennifer Busam's house up in the Santa Cruz mountains near Skyline Road.

I didn't get formal pictures of Vince and Jennifer Busam's house, but the people pictures shows some the lovely house :-))


Dick & Susan Hoehnle

George & Lois Fraine

Jerry & Netha Thacker

Sherbie & Ann Gangwere

Vince & Jennifer Busam

Ed Thelen

Clock

from Paula Newman, August 29, 2005
Thanks for the pictures. The "history" part is a little off. You can get a more complete story from some others, but the way it went was that after leaving GE, Jerry Wiener joined an outfit called CAI (Computer Applications Inc), where I was already working, in NYC. In the spring or summer of 1966 we got a contract with IBM to write a "360 Quiktran" which was supposed to be a time-sharing Fortran for the 360, like the 7044-based time-sharing Fortran they already had.

After lots of headscratching and debate which I don't remember too much about, Jerry hired some of the people he had worked with at GE (some of whom initially moved to NY), and then the project,, minus Jerry, assembled in San Jose at the beginning of 1967 to build what became Call/360 (which had a Basic compiler rather than the originally planned Fortran interpreter). The startup was formed after Call/360 was essentially completed (and I returned to NY).

Sherbie can take it from there; I don't recall whether the follow-on Call/OS was built by the team while still employed by CAI, or after starting the new company.

Paula (another CHM volunteer, occasionally)


The much larger and more formal General Electric Computer Department Reunion is scheduled for October 2 & 3, 2006 in San Francisco :-)) Warren Prince ( WPrince525 at aol adot com ) and Herm Moss are coordinating it.


If you have comments or suggestions, Send e-mail to Ed Thelen

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