Remembering mainframe ASCII printouts (with images of Lincoln, Marilyn, Mickey Mouse, Mona Lisa, Jack B)

By Jack Brummet, Technology Ed.

I took a tour of some large company with a main frame computer sometime in the mid- to late-60's.  We saw the tapes and punchcards, cooling systems, reports, etc.  What really stuck in my mind--and they knew this was a hit with visitors--were the ASCII images they generated programmatically and then printed out on their chain/line printers.  I remember seeing a Marilyn and an Abe Lincoln, among other images.

You don't see these much anymore, now than we can print high definition images.  But, like all good retro technologies, there are people out there keeping it alive.  You can create your own ASCII images using one of several on line image generators.  I created the one of myself on the Ascii art Generator website at http://asciiart.ca/.

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Did Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa actually own a penis?

Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, La Joconde, a/k/a the Mona Lisa, is a 16th-century portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the wealthy Francesco del Giocondo, a local merchant. At least that was what we thought. However, some Italian researchers, specializing in solving art world mysteries, call that hokum.

At a press conference in Rome yesterday, one Silvano Vincenti, the head of the National Historic Commission in Italy, said that the model for the painting now known as The Mona Lisa was, in fact, probably Leonardo da Vinci's boyfriend Gian Giacomo Caprotti (nicknamed “Salai”).   Salai was one of da Vinci’s male apprentices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gian_Giacomo_Caprotti_-_Salai.jpg).

Caprotti started working as a model for da Vinci at the age of 10, and worked for him for more than 20 years.  Silvano Vincenti also talked about many other paintings by da Vinci that look quite similar to the Mona Lisa. 

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