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Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

The wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel) has even the link to the picture of Mel, whose name is discovered from the preface to the manuals for the Royal McBee LGP-30 ACT 1 (Algebraic Compiler and Translator) compiler (dated 1959). Then somebody discovered the group picture in http://www.librascopememories.com/Librascope_Memories/1950_-...

and there it is:

http://zappa.brainiac.com/MelKaye.png

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I was first to find that image of Mel in the Librazette archives. In fact, the following post was my first on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3110883

More context: http://librascopememories.blogspot.com/2012/03/59-mel-kaye-l...

I did eventually manage to get in contact with Mel, but I scared him away, unfortunately. That's a story for another day... :-/

> I did eventually manage to get in contact with Mel, but I scared him away, unfortunately. That's a story for another day... :-/

Tell us today! Tell us! Please?

I third Stratoscope's and jacquesm's request for that story.

Also interesting to note: that picture you found is from his first month on the job, yes? The "Welcome" section at the bottom of the PDF claims he just joined in July in "Engineering--Commercial," and the text above the picture says that the three instructors pictured (Hazlett, Behr, Kaye) will transfer to Royal-McBee payroll "as announced in the July Librazette." The July edition claims Hazlett, Behr, and Fred Flannel are the engineers to be transferred.

Oh wow. Well consider this another day! That's amazing.

Please do tell us about what he said!

I did upvote, but that doesn't communicate our desire to hear the story. This is one of those rare situations where a "me too" post serves a legitimate purpose.

He looks much younger - and less bearded - than I'd imagined when reading The Story of Mel countless times. This changes my whole perspective on the story; the character of Mel transitions from a scruffy and disillusioned veteran to something of a youthful and rebellious hotshot.

Thanks for the Librazette link and photo; that's awesome.

The same, although come to think of it, in the 50s, how many scruffy, bearded veteran programmers could there have been?

That's true; he's probably a proto-scruffy-bearded hacker in that photo. I'd be interested to see him 10 years later; he'd probably put Thompson and Ritchie to shame in terms of beard mass. ;)

And somebody even discovered the dump of the BlackJack for LGP-30, but still can't disassemble it.

http://www.jamtronix.com/blog/2011/03/25/on-the-trail-of-a-r...

There's also the BlackJack for RPC-4000 manual written by Mel Kaye(!)

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/royalPrecision/RPC-40...

According to the caption, there's a guy from the NSA in the group.

> the picture of Mel

hacker bigfoot ???

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