Page \2/The Battalion/Monday, January 20, 1986
Dallas woman's computer dream
‘Smdrt house’ makes the livin’ easy
Associated Press
DALLAS — When Portia Isaac
son wants a glass of water in the hud
dle of the night, instead of groping
for a light switch; the lights look fhr
her.
If the temperature control system
for her swimming pool is out of
whack, her pool calls for its own ser
vicing. A computer tells her video
tape recorder to tape her favorite
television programs.
Isaacson’s white stucco home is a
$2 million “smart house” that sees,
talks, feels and listens via a computer
software brain that she and co-work
ers designed.
The house, she says, is an ambi
tious experiment in technology that
goes beyond the standard household
appliances and conveniences now
available for most homes.
“I became impatient for this type
of home, so when I came into a bit of
money, I just built it,” said Isaacson,
43, a computer scientist and co
founder of Future Computing Inc.
“What we’ve really built here is a-
kind of laboratory to expefimeht'
with what is the best way to do cer
tain things,” she said.
Through the sale of her personal
computer marketing research firm,
•' Future Computing, to McGraw-Hill
publishifig Company, Isaacson was
able to assemble her super high-tech
home.
Inside are at least 11 computers,
22 television screens and eight miles
of snaking hidden wire that links
them all together.
The lighting system automatically
senses a person’s movements
throughout the home and illumi
nates his or her path. The lights also
are a security system, surprising in
truders with their automatic bright
ening, she said.
If; the computer can’t correct a
failed automatic temperature con
trol system for the pool, it calls a
swimming pool firm and uses its syn
thesized voice to ask for servicing,
said Don Bynum, president of Isaac
son’s new firm, Intellysis Corp.
'Eventually the computer also will
be able to issue a security code for
'iC the serviceman that will be working
' bn the system, eliminating the need
.. for someone to be at the home to re-
\ ceive him, Bynum said.
“I thought by now you could go
out and buy what I have built here.
But you can’t,” Isaacson said. The
individual components all exist, she
said, but there’s nothing to make
them work together.
At least until now.
Isaacson has launched her pri
vately held company to market the
software and interfacing — hard
ware that connects computer com
ponents — she designed.
The company will sell its products
to home builders and other busi
nesses already putting intelligent
systems in the home, instead of sell
ing directly to the consumer, she
said.
Currently, the firm is participat
ing in a project sponsored by the Na
tional Association of Home Builders
to streamline the technology of the
“smart house” system.
In the meantime, Isaacson is liv
ing in what one electronics magazine
calls an electronic engineer’s dream
house.
The phones are custom-built with
six lines — three normal phone lines
and two that literally put at her fin
gertips a variety of functions, includ
ing opening doors, changing tele
vision channels or switching on one
of a multitude of entertainment
components in the house. The sixth
line currently is not in use.
An entry way wall that had been
earmarked for a large painting now
is filled with enough high-tech
equipment to stock a few houses —
19 electronic components, including
four speakers, three televisions, a
compact disk player, stereo equip
ment and other components.
The equipment is set in a custom-
designed frame of anodized metal
ringed by recessed lights, blending
with the home’s decor of granite
countertops and sleek furniture.
“I’ve been real irritated at the way
technology looks in the home,”
Isaacson said. “The state of the art
normally is to have a TV and a VCR
and wires hanging out.
“You can have lots of technology
and have it look like approaching art
or sculpture in the home,” she said.
“Not only is it hot offensive, it’s a de
sign centerpiece.”
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Fire didn’t finish rare book dealer’s business
Associated Press
AUSTIN —John Jenkins’ hands
trembled as he looked at the con
tents of. an envelope handed to him
as he stood among hundreds of
thousands of blackened books at his
rare book and publishing business.
A moment later his wife, Mau
reen, wearing a face mask for pro
tection against smoke, walked into a
charred storage area and Jenkins
asked, “Did you see this?”
“What is this?” she asked. <■
“It’s a sales commission,” he said.
In the envelope was a check to
Jenkins for $100,000.
“Are you serious?” Mrs. Jenkins
asked.
“That’s going to clean our books,”
Jenkins said.
“God, I can’t believe it,” his wife
said.
“Is there someone up there
looking over us?” Jenkins asked. : y-
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Jenkins an
swered, “but let me go See if I cah
put it in the bank.”
Jenkins and his wife were “walk-:
ing out the door” to eat Christmas
Eve dinner with some friends., when
he got a call that fire was shbdtihg
out of his Quonset hut-type building
off Interstate 35 South. ’ “
“Six o’clock is when all the clocks
went out. The fire department was
here before 6:15, and I was here
about 6:30,” Jenkins said in an inter
view in his smoke-damaged office..
According to fire officials, the blaze
started when an extension cord to a
space heater overheated.
“The fire department, to whom I
Owe an undying debt of gratitude.
“No matter how much
money I am willing to
spend. I’d never be able to
get more than 3,000 or
4,000 of them (the books)
back. ....”
- John Jenkins, book
dealer.
agreed when I got out here not to
soak the building, which is a normal
process,” Jenkins said. “That would
nave ruined beyond salvage all of
the. books. Instead they agreed, at
«bhie extra risk to them, to just put
the water on the flames.”
• Nevertheless, plastic telephones
and light covers — “even the
(smoke) alarms were plastic-coated”
burned and mixed with other
chemicals to create what Jenkins
called a “grimy soot.” He said the
oily grime was unlike anything he
had seen in buying books at hun
dreds of fire sales throughout the
country.
“The smoke permeated every
thing,” he said. “It got inside the
drawers in our filing cabinets, in be
tween the sheets of paper in the ma-
nila folders in the filing cabinets.”
Smoke even seeped into two walk-
in vaults through electrical ducts.
Jenkins estimates he had 1.5 mil
lion items — volumes, manuscripts,
pamphlets — and that 500,000 were
destroyed. Another 500,000 were
ruined “beyond the feasibility of re
storation” and about 500,000 were
salvageable, he said.
The building and about 20 per
cent of the book loss were covered by
insurance, and the damage was in
“the millions of dollars,” he said.
What he had, Jenkins claims, was
a book stock on every state and
“maybe 500 other fields” that were
“I’m going to go from be
ing a big shot to a little
shot. ”
—John Jenkins.
larger than all other dealers’ stocks
combined.
He said one newspaper headline
called the fire a “global disaster,”
and he added, “In a minor sense,
that’s true, because every book here,
all 1.5 million of these items, even
tually would have wound up in a re
search library somewhere, where
they would be available for use for
the next 2,000 years.”
Jenkins’ 15,000-volume Texana
collection “is gone in terms of the
general stock.”
“No matter how much money I
am willing to spend, I’d never be
able to get more than 3,000 or 4,000
of them back, because they will
never be on the market again,” he
said.
But all the rare Texana was either
in the vault or at Jenkins’ home,
where he is working on a special
Texas Sesquicentennial catalog.
Items worth $200 were placed in the
vaults, he said.
“I’m going to go from being a big
shot to a little shot,” Jenkins said.
“But I don’t want to poor-mouth
myself completely, because all of the
unique and extremely rare things
were saved, so I still have the largest
stock of rare Texana (in the vaults).”
Jenkins plans to move 200 tons of
books to a rented warehouse, and es
timated that he will spend “in excess
of $1 million” over perhaps 20 years
cleaning soot-covered books.
“There’s still several millions of
dollars worth of books in the vault,”
he said. “It’s the cream from every
thing else. It’s the part that I would
have wanted to save, so I was very
lucky.”
Inter-V arsity
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When: Tuesday, Jan. 21
Where: MSC Ballroom
Jesus said, “1 have
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Meet with Northrop
Aircraft Division
Monday,
February 17, 1986.
At Northrop Aircraft Divi
sion, our challenge involves
examining the fundamental
characteristics of future
military requirements and
then exploring potential
applications of new and
existing technologies to meet
those requirements. Meeting
this challenge has resulted in
designing, developing and
producing some of the
world’s most reliable aircraft
and airborne systems. Pro
ducts which include the F-20
Tigershark, the F/A-18, the
F-5 series, and the 747
fuselage.
If you’re thinking about your
career after college, consider
making our challengesyouis.
Northrop Aircraft Division
will be on your campus,
Monday, February 17,1986.
Check with your Placement
Office for more details.
PROOF OF U.S. CITIZEN
SHIP REQUIRED. Northrop
is an Equal Opportunity
Employer M/F/H/V.
Post Oak Villge
Hwy 30, College Station
409/693-2020
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Aircraft Division
Aircraft Group