Chapter 1 Page 5
Desperation and perspiration combined their mighty forces and caused audacious actions to come into play.
Charlie went to the electronics parts suppliers who he had dealt with during the Storer Studios days and pledged to pay them as soon as payment was received from his customer. Those who couldn’t or wouldn’t go along with that arrangement, he paid with his American Express card and prayed that he would get paid before the bill became overdue. For the major component, the computer itself, he borrowed a demonstrator from Hewlett Packard and hoped that they wouldn’t ask for it back before he installed it and received payment for the system.
Lack of funding or not, the system was beginning to take shape in the basement of Charlie’s house. Gene would appear after working all day at Lockheed and stay until late at night designing and assembling the electronics. Charlie and George worked with him to build cables, control panels, cabinets and power supplies. As the night ended, Gene would race home to get ready for his day job. Charlie’s children remarked that Gene was like a vampire since he showed up at dark, went directly to the basement and left just before daylight. Despite all this, through the pall of solder smoke and the seemingly endless rolls of computer paper and punched tape, it began to look like they were actually going to make it happen.
All the hard work was paying off. The Cinetron gang worked day and night; programming, designing and building the first commercial computer animation control system. Although the work was going as fast as possible, this was all new ground being broken so progress was not moving along as fast as the bills were piling up. At last, it was time to bite the bullet and take the system to New York even though there were still quite a few loose ends.
In this undertaking, loose ends were inevitable; this system had never actually run on an animation stand and it was being installed on equipment that the guys had never laid eyes on. None of this mattered, the die was cast and late in the evening the system along with tools, spare parts and luggage were crammed into Charlie’s wife Pattye’s station wagon. The next morning Charlie and George set out for Manhattan and late that evening they arrived at their destination: West 45 th street between 6 th and 5 th avenues: The Optical House.
George went in and called up to the 13 th floor while Charlie stayed with the car. In a few minutes, several of the guys from the Optical House came down with George and everything eventually found its way upstairs to the camera room.
The real fun was just about to start.