I’ve been scanning and organizing old photos.
A year after I started at Caterpillar, management sent me to a week-long SLAM training course in Chicago. Turns out that a random bunch of engineers can be a lot of fun.
It’s mundane to see robots moving around factories, but it was innovative when I started in 1986. That was only four years after IBM had introduced the first personal computer, so the computers that were in use were expensive workstations. The SLAM software would simulate how robots and other vehicles would move around a factory.
The output simulation looked like this:
That is the best analogy available. Current simulations look like Sim City.
None of us knew each other or were from Chicago, but we were all on expense accounts and had our evenings free.
This guy started the week kind of grumpy and aloof. When we were sitting around having a few beers, it came up (somehow), that he could light a match with his feet.
Of course everyone had to try and we were still drinking, so the party got rolling. Here’s what passes for a group shot.
This was the only other person from Caterpillar at the training. He was from a manufacturing plant in Mexico. At that time, he said that Mexicans could only handle rough work like welding bulldozer buckets. I asked him what the welders were paid. He said, “25 dollars”. I asked if that was per hour, which is about what are guys were getting. He said, “No, per day.” Tough to compete with that.
He and I got chummy, so Thursday night, we decided to go into Chicago to checkout the night life. We went into one of those trendy nightclubs like I’ve only seen in movies. It cost $20 to get in. That’s like $50 in today’s money.
It was something. There were women dancing in cages, dressed like tigers and whatnot. Don’t worry, they weren’t slaves or anything. It was like a go-go thing. I guess, I don’t know, it was weird. There were probably people doing cocaine in the bathrooms.
Knowing then, what I know know, it was definitely run by vampires, it was that kinetic and unhinged.