This is part #9, "VT-100 terminal to a DEC mini-computer, Timothy Linick and Karl Koch," in my "Steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud hacker theory," series. For more information about this series see part #1, "Hacking an explanation & Index." References "[A]", etc., will be to that part of my original post. Emphases are mine unless otherwise indicated.
[Index] [Previous: "13th-12th centuries: Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date is against the preponderance of the evidence (1)" #8] [Next: "Vignon markings: Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date is against the preponderance of the evidence (2)" #10]
Continuing with tracing the steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Shroud hacker theory in my early 2014 posts (last three): "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker? Summary," "My replies to Dr. Timothy Jull and Prof. Christopher Ramsey," "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: Revised #1" and now "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: Further to my replies to Dr. Timothy Jull and Prof. Christopher Ramsey".
Arizona laboratory's "control console computer" was a VT-100 terminal Further to my post, "Were the radiocarbon dating laboratories duped by a computer hacker?: My replies to Dr. Timothy Jull and Prof. Christopher Ramsey," Prof. Ramsey gave the misleading impression in his email to the anti-authenticist Editor of the British Society for the Turin Shroud Newsletter, Hugh Farey posted on March 10, 2014 to Dan Porter's now closed blog:
"Yes – I agree with all that Tim says. This would seem to be a suggestion from someone who does not know what computers were like in the 1980s [false - see 22Nov16]. In the case of Oxford the AMS had no connection to any network (and indeed even today our AMS control computers have no network connections). The software was very simple just outputting counts of 14C and currents measured. Age calculation was done offline and could just be done with a calculator, or by a simple program into which you typed the numbers from the AMS."that the AMS control console computer in the Arizona University's radiocarbon dating laboratory was little more than a calculator. Which
[Right (enlarge): Arizona radiocarbon laboratory's AMS control console `computer' (actually VT-100 terminal to that computer) just after it had displayed on its screen the uncalibrated `radiocarbon date of the Shroud', which was then calibrated to "1350 AD"[2]. I have identified this as probably a DEC VT-100 terminal connected to a DEC VAX-11 (or PDP-11) 32-bit minicomputer (see below).]
led Porter to question whether the AMS control console computers were even "programmable." My reply to Porter on his blog, included:
>Has he determined if the AMS Control Consoles at all three labs had programmable computers
There is no such thing as a NON-programmable computer. Prof. Ramsey confirmed that the AMS control console computers were under the control of "software," which is just another name for a program. When I get to that part of my series I will give further evidence about this.[A]
Arizona's AMS computer required an engineer-programmer I then [on March 30, 2014] added a further comment on Porter's blog (lightly edited): I meant to add, but I could not remember the name, that one of those listed by Harry Gove as present at Arizona's C-14 dating of the Shroud was "Art Hatheway" who was "connected with the Arizona AMS facility" and was a signatory to the 1989 Nature paper:
"The next morning at about 8 am (6 May 1988) I arrived at the Arizona AMS facility ... I would be the only one present outside the Arizona AMS group. Doug immediately asked me to sign the following statement:A Google search on "Art Hatheway Arizona" (without quotes) had"We the undersigned, understand that radiocarbon age results for the Shroud of Turin obtained from the University of Arizona AMS facility are confidential. We agree not to communicate the results to anyone-spouse, children, friends, press, etc., until that time when results are generally available to the public." It had been signed by D J Donahue, Brad Gore, L J Toolin, P E Damon, Timothy Jull and ART HATHEWAY, all connected with the Arizona AMS facility, before I signed. My signature was followed by T W Linick and P J Sercel, also from the Arizona facility"[3].
[Left (enlarge): Grave of "Arthur Loyal Hathaway" (1940-2008), East Lawn Palms Cemetery, Tucson Arizona[4]. On 4 December 2015 I received an anonymous comment under my 31Mar14 post:
"You will be sorely pressed to find a more ethical and upstanding character than that of the late and sorely missed Art Hatheway. His search for truth was genuine and dutiful."I responded that I was not alleging that Hatheway was a hacker but included him to indicate the "high level of sophistication of the Arizona C-14 lab's computers." I ended my response with, "Have you any information you can give me on this?" But I didn't receive a reply. There must be many people out there who knew Linick or Koch (see below) and I am always hopeful that at least one of them will provide me with more information about one of them in support of my hacker theory.]
turned up an obituary of an "Arthur Loyal Hatheway" who was "Senior Staff Engineer at the AMS Lab in the Physics Department at U of A." and a "computer programmer":
"Arthur Loyal Hatheway Obituary HATHEWAY, Arthur Loyal, born in Los Angeles on March 26, 1940 to Philip and Pauline Hatheway, went suddenly to Jesus on October 11, 2008 ... In 2006, Art retired from his position as Senior Staff Engineer at the AMS Lab in the Physics Department at U of A. There his skills as COMPUTER PROGRAMMER and small instrument engineer, his thorough nature and precise workmanship, his understanding of chemistry and physics, as well as his abilities to invent and mentor, WERE PUT TO GOOD USE. Art met Jesus in 1992. This new relationship changed his perspective on life ... Arizona Daily Star on Oct. 14, 2008"[5]I am NOT alleging that Art Hatheway was one of the hackers, just that there was at least one member of the Arizona C-14 lab staff who was a "computer programmer" and indeed a "Senior Staff Engineer," which is indicative of a high level of sophistication of the Arizona C-14 lab's computers, and presumably of the other C-14 labs' computers.
And that presumably a major role of Senior Staff Engineer Hatheway was ensuring the AMS control console computer program controlled the AMS C-14 dating process:
"The first sample run was OX1 [oxalic acid standard]. Then followed one of the controls. Each run consisted of a 10 second measurement of the carbon-13 current and a 50 second measurement of the carbon-14 counts. This is repeated nine more times and an average carbon-14/carbon-13 ratio calculated. ALL THIS WAS UNDER COMPUTER CONTROL and the calculations produced by THE COMPUTER were displayed on a cathode ray screen"[6]. [B]Prof. Ramsey's downplaying of the AMS computer is significant I had originally thought that the computer which
[Right: Dr Christopher Bronk Ramsey: Science Photo Library]
controlled the AMS dating was different from the AMS control console computer, but according to Gove's words above, they were ONE AND THE SAME. Now a lab does not need to employ a "Senior Staff Engineer" who is also a "computer programmer" and who "put[s] to good use" those "skills," on a computer which Prof. Ramsey gave the misleading impression was little more than a calculator:
"The software was very simple just outputting counts of 14C and currents measured. Age calculation was done offline and could just be done with a calculator, or by a simple program into which you typed the numbers from the AMS." ("Comment Promoted: On the Hacking Hypothesis," March 9, 2014).and which led Dan to question whether it was even "programmable".
Now Prof. Ramsey is highly computer literate, being himself a computer programmer, as the author of "OxCal" a computer "program ... intended to provide radiocarbon calibration":
"The OxCal program is intended to provide radiocarbon calibration ... For further information contact the author: Prof. C. Bronk Ramsey ..."[7]So Prof. Ramsey presumably KNOWS VERY WELL that the AMS control system computers at Arizona, Zurich and Oxford were not little more than "a calculator" but were PROGRAMMABLE computers [indeed DEC Vax-11 and/or PDP-11 minicomputers, i.e. mini-mainframe computers - see below], controlling the entire complex AMS radiocarbon dating process as well as outputting the uncalibrated C-14 dates of each sample onto their screens.
I personally find Prof. Ramsey's (and Dr Jull's) defensiveness significant.
But again, I repeat, that I am NOT alleging that the late Art Hatheway (or Prof. Ramsey) was one of the hackers. All I am seeking to establish is that the C-14 labs' AMS control console computers were PROGRAMMABLE. And therefore HACKABLE!
I regard this evidence that the AMS control console computer at Arizona radiocarbon dating laboratory (and therefore presumably at the Zurich and Oxford laboratories which had the same Accelerator Mass Spectrometry system), was programmable and therefore hackable, as a further step forward in my proposal that the radiocarbon dating laboratories at universities in Arizona, Zurich and Oxford, which in 1988 dated the Shroud of Turin as "mediaeval ... AD 1260-1390," against the preponderance of the evidence, may have been unknowingly duped by a computer hacker [But see below]. [C]
Timothy Linick and Karl Koch PS: I have posted the following as [on March 31, 2014] a comment on Dan Porter's blog (slightly edited):
I decided to Google the name which was after Art Hatheway's on Prof. Harry Gove's list of those present at the Arizona lab's 6 May 1988 dating of the Shroud. It was "T. W. Linick". I found out his name was
[Left: Photo of Linick and report that "He died at the age of forty-two on 4 June 1989, in very unclear circumstances"[8]
"Timothy W. Linick". I then discovered that he died on June 4, 1989[9], a few months after the Nature paper to which he was a signatory appeared, on February 16 of that year. Moreover, it was rumoured that Linick had committed suicide[10] (since confirmed - see 30Dec15, although I claim that Linick's, like Koch's, "suicide" was murder by the KGB made to look like suicide.).
It may be significant that Karl Koch [see below right], a self-confessed hacker who had worked for the KGB, died on May 23, 1989[11], less than 2 weeks earlier than Linick, in what appeared to be an execution designed to look like suicide. [It was significant - see 17May15 where Koch's death was between 23 and 30 May 1989, and police publicly identified his burnt body as Karl Koch on 3 June 1989, the day before Linick's `suicide' on 4 June 1989!]
[Right: Karl Koch. "He was involved with the KGB scandal that involved hackers being bought by drugs in exchange for breaking into key NATO and corporate installations ... Koch, of Hanover, West Germany, died Friday, June 3 [1989][12]. No - see 17May15]. Koch died between 23 and 29 May 1989. His charred body was found by the police on 1 June. So 3 June is evidently when the police publicly identified the body as Koch.]
I then Googled the names of other signatories to the 1989 Nature paper but found no other untimely deaths. However, as the Wikipedia article on Karl Koch notes, Koch's fellow hackers Pengo (Hans Heinrich Hübner), and Urmel (Markus Hess) also confessed that they had worked for the KGB but were not harmed.
While I do not claim that Timothy W. Linick WAS a hacker, nor that his untimely death WAS suicide [I do now claim both.], let alone an execution by the KGB designed to look like suicide [I do now claim that also], it nevertheless is worth keeping in mind as a possible piece of the jigsaw.
This will no doubt be dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" by those who prefer mindless slogans to thinking. But it is a FACT that the KGB did CONSPIRE with hackers, notably Karl Koch, of whose death Wikipedia notes that, "there is little evidence supporting suicide and many believe that Koch was killed in order to keep him from confessing more to the authorities". And it is a FACT that the KGB did CONSPIRE with hacker Markus Hess whom Clifford Stoll caught. [D]
PPS: Here is a further comment I posted [on March 31, 2014] to Dan Porter's blog (with light editing):
I have discovered what make and probably the model of the AMS control console computer was. On Googling "Linick Arizona computer" (without the quotes) I found the paper, Linick, T.W., et al. 1986, "Operation of the NSF-Arizona accelerator facility for radioisotope analysis and results from selected collaborative research projects," Radiocarbon, Vol. 28, No. 2a, pp.522-533.
In it the late Dr Linick, described the computerised process that Prof. Gove wrote of Arizona lab's AMS control console computer, and mentioned that it is a "DEC computer system":
"The DEC computer system largely controls the cycling of isotopes, accumulation of data, and calculation of results for each 15-minute run.""DEC" stands for Digital Equipment Corporation, the maker of the powerful PDP and VAX range of minicomputer which were very popular in laboratories in the 1980s. However I have been unable to discover what model it was, e,g. PDP-11, VAX-11, etc.
Googling "DEC" and then selecting "images," the Arizona Lab's AMS 
control console computer in the photo on page 176H of Prof. Gove's book (see above), looks like a DEC VT-100 terminal.
[Left (enlarge): DEC VT-100 terminal[13].]
If that is so, and given that Arizona's AMS system was installed in 1981, its AMS control console computer was probably a 32-bit VAX-11:
"In 1976, DEC decided to extend the PDP-11 architecture to 32-bits while adding a complete virtual memory system to the simple paging and memory protection of the PDP-11. The result was the VAX architecture, where VAX stands for Virtual Address eXtension (from 16 to 32 bits). The first computer to use a VAX CPU was the VAX-11/780, which DEC referred to as a superminicomputer. Although it was not the first 32-bit minicomputer, the VAX-11/780's combination of features, price, and marketing almost immediately propelled it to a leadership position in the market after it was released in 1978. VAX systems were so successful that in 1983, DEC canceled its Jupiter project, which had been intended to build a successor to the PDP-10 mainframe, and instead focused on promoting the VAX as the single computer architecture for the company. Supporting the VAX's success was the VT52, one of the most successful smart terminals. Building on earlier less successful models (the VT05 and VT50), the VT52 was the first terminal that did everything one might want in a single chassis. The VT52 was followed by the even more successful VT100 and its follow-ons, making DEC one of the largest terminal vendors in the industry. With the VT series, DEC could now offer a complete top-to-bottom system from computer to all peripherals, which formerly required collecting the required devices from different suppliers"[14]Whichever DEC computer system it was, whether a PDP or VAX, it
[Right (enlarge): The DEC VAX-11/780[15]. Introduced in 1977[16], this likely was the very 32-bit "supermini- computer" that the AMS computers at Arizona, Zurich and Oxford were, which Prof. Ramsey suspiciously attempted to downplay as little more than a calculator!]
CERTAINLY was programmable and therefore HACKABLE! [E]
Further to my above original assumption that the laboratories were "unknowingly duped by a computer hacker," I still think that was the case, originally. But because of the very responses of Professors Jull and Ramsey, to my mere blogger's comments (since when do Directors of major radiocarbon laboratories deign to respond to blog comments?); let alone that their responses were "self-contradictory, misleading and false" (Jull) and "ad hominem fallacious, misleading and false" (Ramsey); I find it difficult not to think that, following the discovery of Linick's name in David Sox's 1988 book, showing that Linick leaked Arizona's first "1350" date to Sox [see 22Nov16], and then after Linick's `suicide', Arizona laboratory discovered, or at least suspected, that Linick had hacked Arizona's (if not also Zurich's and Oxford's) radiocarbon dating of the Shroud, but they covered it up! [see also my 15Sep16]. It is noteworthy that Profs Jull and Ramsey are in the unique situation that they are Directors of the same laboratories in which they were in 1988 junior scientists involved in radiocarbon dating the Shroud, and signatories to the 1989 Nature paper. As such, if Linick did hack the Shroud's radiocarbon dating (as the evidence indicates) they would know that, and would have a powerful vested interest (not only for themselves but for their laboratory leaders back then) in covering it up! Their very responses (let alone that they were misleading and false) to my anonymous (to them) blog comments, I regard as `body language' that they are covering it up!
Continued in the next part #10 of this series.
Notes
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided it includes a reference to this post citing my name, its subject heading, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Gove, H.E., 1996, "Relic, Icon or Hoax?: Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud," pp.176H, 264. [return]
3. Gove, 1996, p.262. [return]
4. Extract from "Grave Site of Arthur Loyal Hatheway (1940-2008)," BillionGraves. [return]
5. "Arthur Loyal Hatheway: Obituary," Arizona Daily Star, Oct. 14, 2008, Legacy.com. [return]
6. Gove, 1996, p.264. [return]
7. "OxCal," Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, 18 March 2017. [return]
8. Bonnet-Eymard, B., 2000, "The Holy Shroud is as Old as the Risen Jesus, IV. Caution! Danger!, The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century, No 330, Online edition, May. [return]
9. Jull, A.J.T. & Suess, H.E. , 1989, "Timothy W. Linick," Radiocarbon, Vol 31, No 2. [return]
10. de Nantes, G. & Bonnet-Eymard, B., 2014, "The Holy Shroud of Turin: II. The conclusion of a new trial," The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st Century, 27 March. [return]
11. "Karl Koch (hacker)," Wikipedia, 2 September 2017. [return]
12. "WikiFreaks, Pt. 4 `The Nerds Who Played With Fire'," The Psychedelic Dungeon, 15 September 2010. [return]
13. "VT100," Wikipedia, 18 April 2017. [return]
14. "Digital Equipment Corporation: VAX," Wikipedia, 10 March 2014. [return]
15. "File:Vax11-780.jpg," Wikipedia, 17 December 2008. [return]
16. "VAX: History," Wikipedia, 12 July 2017. [return]
Posted 18 September 2017. Updated 7 October 2023.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment