<VV> Future of the Corvair - LONG!!

[Jack Kean]

Interesting post from someone my age.

Jack Kean

--- Who still uses FORTRAN in real-time F-16 fast attack fighter 
simulators being made and sold to our Air Force, and foreign air forces 
(Denmark, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Taiwan, and Korea (south of course), 
and more (http://www.link.com/aircrew-training.html).

Bill Hubbell wrote:
> Since I am writing to Virtual Vairs I can assume that many of you reading
> this have at least two things in common: a love of Corvairs and at least a
> passing interest in computers.  I hope, therefore, that most of you will
> appreciate the following.
>
> I have owned a Corvair of one sort or another since 1970, the year I turned
> 16.  Back then, we who worked on our cars were considered "mechanics", and
> the best of us learned how to take apart and fix almost anything
> "mechanical" on our cars.
>
> A few years later, I became interested in computers.  My first programming
> experience (1976) was at the University of Michigan, using the then
> state-of-the-art technology of mainframe computers, punch-cards, and an
> obscure programming language based on something called FORTRAN.
>
> About ten years later (1986) I got my first personal computer, a Leading
> Edge Model D.  I splurged for the 30MB disc drive and the amber monochrome
> CRT monitor.  Rather than bore you here with all the amazing details of this
> (at the time) amazing hunk of technology, you can read all about it here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_Edge_Model_D
>
> The computer transformed my life in the same way that the Corvair had some
> 16 years earlier.  Suddenly, I had the power to "word-process", make
> "spreadsheets", and eventually use a very powerful program called "dBase".
> After a few more years, I was using the computer to do my personal finances,
> first on a program called "Peachtree" and then on a new program called
> "Quicken".  All of these amazing programs had to be loaded on to the
> computer using 5 1/4" "Floppy" discs, originally holding only 360kb of data.
>
> It took only a few years before I started using the computer to communicate
> with other computers, using something called a "modem".  E-mail did not
> appear until a few years after that.
>
> By 1994, my "old" Leading Edge was 'way past obsolete, so I bought a new
> Gateway 486-DX33 with a way-cool CD-ROM drive and VGA color monitor.
>
> I could go on, but I won't.  I'm sure many of you have similar experiences.
>
> Yes.  Those were the "good-old days" of computing.  We were the mavericks of
> our time - the "early adopters" of technology.  We were, indeed, on the
> "leading edge" of the technological revolution; the beginning of "The
> Information Revolution".
>
> And all of it - the 5.25" floppies, the 30MB hard drive, dBase, DOS, etc. -
> is now hopelessly obsolete.  Most people don't even have the capability of
> reading old floppy discs anymore, even if they would want to.
>
> Our children, born in the early 1980s, still retain some memories of those
> early computers, but really, what we are all using now - smart cell phones,
> IPODs, HDTV, Wireless Internet, etc. - it is all so far advanced from those
> early computers that hardly anybody remembers, or cares, how it used to be.
>
> The last Corvair was built in 1969, with technology from the mid 1960s.
>
> Today's automobiles have more computational power than my Leading Edge Model
> D had in 1986, (which in turn had more computational power that the Apollo
> mission which landed on the moon in 1969).
>
> What's my point?  It should be obvious.  The world has changed - so much and
> so fast.  We who have lived through these times have grown to accept the
> change as it seemed to occur gradually to us, but to our children (the
> "younger" ones), the world of the 1960s - the Age of Corvair - would be
> almost unrecognizable.  Indeed, the 1980s seem almost unrecognizable.
>
> Attracting "younger" people to the Corvair hobby means attracting them to
> the past - not their past, mind you, but to a past they never knew.  Sure,
> it can be done - after all, there are still people re-enacting Civil War
> battles, even though the last Civil War veteran died a half-century ago -
> but keep in mind that our interest in the ancient past (i.e. - the past
> before our lifetime) is largely based on how significant the events were
> when current.  
>
> The Corvair, while representing a significant advance in technology at the
> time, was never widely embraced by the public, and nothing about its
> technology was so unique that it has not been replaced by advanced
> technologies.  Therefore its place in history is, at best, a footnote.
>
> Yes, we - who grew up in that era, who fondly remember those times, who
> learned how to set points, balance carburetors, change brakes, etc. - we
> will always love and cherish that car.  But we cannot expect our children,
> or our children's children, to have the same love or reverence for something
> so obscure and alien to their world.  It is just an old, obsolete car to
> them, ancient and discarded technology - just like the floppy disk.
>
> Still, there are always a few oddballs in society who are attracted to the
> ancient, obsolete, or obscure things.  Somebody has to be the
> anthropologist, archeologist, paleontologist, or Corvairologist.
>
> Hopefully there will always be somebody who appreciates the Corvair.  There
> just won't be so many of them.
>
> Let us enjoy our cars (and the youthful memories they stir) while we can.
> Let us "preserve, protect, and defend" our Corvair and Corvair memories
> while we can.
>
> Perhaps someday there WILL be a Corvair Museum, full of dusty artifacts and
> arcane volumes of information, maybe even a Corvair or two, where someday,
> perhaps a hundred years from now, a young boy or girl will visit and fall in
> love all over again with our air-cooled wonder.
>
> Let's build that dream.
>
> Bill Hubbell
> President, Stock Corvair Group
>
>
>
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