"It's Alive"!

A blatantly, self-serving, unauthorized,
autobiography of noted kinetic artist,

R. Bruce Salinger

The Creative Spark

  I grew up in Southern California in the 60's which for you youngsters was a time when our country completely lost its collective mind. And, always a dedicated follower of fashion, my father completely lost his mind as well. He was diagnosed with a form of mental illness labeled "manic-depression", later to be re-labeled "bi-polar" disease. As bi-polar disease it has become a resumé enhancement for the celebrity class but in those days it was highly stigmatized and therefore was something that one didn't talk about in polite elementary school society. Because my father had become dangerous, my mother divided her time between going to work and hiding us in various locations around our town.

   As a result, I grew up shy and reclusive but still retaining my love of all things mechanical. My first computer was a Bendix G-15, a $60,000, tube type, drum memory, teletype machine procured by the Industrial Arts Electronics instructor for our High School. It featured 2k of memory and sounded like a commercial washing machine. When the teacher told me that it had "output registers" to interface to the outside world, the vacuum tubes in my brain switched and I began to see how I might be able to animate a robot. I would just have to wait until I could afford a $60,000 computer (in 1960 dollars) or until the price of a "personal" computer came down.

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