Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85 131
Beetle B. writes "Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!"
From his February 2010 TED visit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dead? (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't know he was still alive. So much for assumptions.
I only knew he was still alive because of this song.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Mandelbrot%20Set [jonathancoulton.com]
Re:Fractint (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dead? (Score:3, Informative)
.
Re:Testimony (Score:3, Informative)
I put the pseudocode into Atari Basic on my trusty 800XL (1.86kHz)
I think you mean something megahertz. A one kilohertz computer wouldn't be good for much of anything. The Apple II, C-64, Atari 400/800, etc. all ran 1 Mhz 6502 CPUs at approximately 1 Mhz, somewhat more than that in the Atari case.
Re:Was there ever a real-time viewer... (Score:3, Informative)
He asked for "real time".
I would suspect the switch from hardware doubles to software arbitrary-precision produces many orders of magnitude of slowdown so the answer is no.
Re:Fractint? Pah? (Score:3, Informative)
Real men did it with checkerboards. In the 80's i had an ST, so i was not trapped in 8-bit color land. But the overnight thing, i totally agree.