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"  If you say something with the right authority, you generally get what you want. This week on Halt and Catch Fire, demands are finally being taken seriously (and great references are being dropped). To further reduce the weight of his portable PC, Gordon (Scott McNairy) suggests that the team at Cardiff Electric replace the usual CRT (cathode ray tube) screen with an LCD (liquid crystal display). LCDs were wildly expensive in the early 1980s; IBM didn&amp;#039;t even use them. But Gordon and Joe (Lee Pace) sweet-talk some reps from a Japanese tech company and secure the LCDs for a discounted rate. Meanwhile, Cameron (Mackenzie Davis), who&amp;#039;s been charged with duplicating IBM&amp;#039;s BIOS operating system, names her baby &amp;quot;Lovelace&amp;quot; after the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. What a great reference! In the mid-1800s, Lovelace, a mathematician, wrote an algorithm for how a general-purpose computer could calculate numbers; it was the first-ever computer program. Deeper into the episode, Joe&amp;#039;s father (John Getz) tells Cameron that she could be &amp;quot;the next Grace Hopper&amp;quot; if she came to work for him at IBM. &amp;quot;Instead,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;you&amp;#039;re on course to become another programmer no one remembers.&amp;quot; Another great reference! Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper programmed computers in the 1950s and coined the phrase &amp;quot;debugging.&amp;quot; Joe hires a gaggle of young software engineers to finish and backup the BIOS. The geeky group brings an exciting energy to the show, and, frankly, gives us the first evidence we&amp;#039;ve seen over Halt&amp;#039;s five-week run that human friendship is possible within this world. Cameron bonds with them over their love of the game Colossal Cave Adventure, demands to become their new manager, and wins the job. On next week&amp;#039;s episode, the Cardiff Electric team assembles its PC prototype. We hope this doesn&amp;#039;t mean the rest of the season will be spent in sales meetings\u2014we&amp;#039;re just starting to have fun in the office. Bonus fun: AMC built a 1983-era simulation of Colossal Cave Adventure, which you can play here. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a10773/halt-and-catch-fire-pc-pioneers-16942536/>