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DigiBarn Stories: Rich Didday

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Rich and his alter-ego, the "old philosopher"
in Finite State Fantasies

On June 12, 2009 I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Rich Didday, after years of hoping to do so. Rich is the cartoonist and author behind a number of works including one of the most treasured in the Digibarn collection, Finite State Fantasies, a comic book depicting the then new culture of home brewed microcomputing back in 1976. Below please find a conversation with Rich recorded here at the farm when we were going through his life and works, including the original drawings for Finite State Fantasies.


Interview: Rich Didday on his life and times, and creations

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Early artwork for "Fortran for Human"
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Artwork in "Fortran for Humans"
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Rich!
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... and Fortran For Humans (4ed)
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Finite State Fantasies and other books
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10 to the power of 2 things
you should know about personal
computers (in Italian)
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Cover of Finite State
Fantasies
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Original artwork of FSF
(last page)
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Artwork of ESCAPE where
Arnold "escapes" into the
virtual world he coded into
his home brewed S-100 micro
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Rich explaining about ESCAPE
(listen to the audio)

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Letter from Matrix publishers
and back cover of FSF
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Opposing Computer Manufacturers
Battle for Market Supremacy
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Other Didday artwork about
a meditation detector
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Visualizing a 1946 Ford?
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Another project: Infinite Loop
Comics
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A science comic, cool!
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Those odd 1970s large format
copier outputs

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Explaining that the cover of FSF
is inspired by an Intel memory
chip layout

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The BASIC code generated
the back cover of FSF

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The front of Bruce's stained copy
of FSF

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Rich's hand drawing the
robot that puzzles together the
computer hobbyist that creates the
computer that pulls the "s" off
Fantasies, well....?
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Frontice (visions of a levitating
mainframe)
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Backus (back inside cover) in
honor of the Backus who created
FORTRAN
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Pondering the final message
of FSF: "its just another tool, use it,
don't let it use you"
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All these other tools dont change
our lives (inner and outer) as much
as this computer!?
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Sharing Bruce Damer's Global Strategy
board game with Rich
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Bruce's The Comic Strip about how
he put together his Ace comics in the
1970s
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Another board game design
by Bruce
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Rich examining some of Bruce's
virtual world art, circa 1978
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Bruce's world of 1978
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Rich gets a tour of the Digibarn
and meets the Cray-1

See Also


Our dedicated pages on Finite State Fantasies

Rich Didday's comic book of the hobbyist microcomputer era - 1976

Back to Digibarn Stories

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