HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Surrounded by 200 vintage Macintosh computers that helped him generate a gazillion calculations about a gaggle of asteroids, Bill Zielenbach reflected recently on how Steve Jobs earned his reputation as a visionary long before iPods, iPads and iPhones came along.
Zielenbach, a rocket scientist turned printing executive (more about that later) has Jobs and Apple to thank for helping him shed light on a tiny corner of the universe: the asteroid belt that floats between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
Zielenbach just published a paper entitled "Mass Determination Studies of 104 Large Asteroids" which appears in this month's issue of The Astronomical Journal. If the topic seems weighty, you haven't seen Zielenbach's basement in Avon, Conn., and its banks of shelves, groaning under the weight of Apple Macintosh computers, a mix of 7600/120s, Power Mac G-03s and for fun, a row of teal blue all-in-one iMacs.
"Where Steve Jobs fit in, well, the machines were easy to work with and easy to tie together because of the way Jobs thought to design the software," Zielenbach said. "They made it easy for me to do this - some pretty heady scientific stuff."
Jobs, who died Oct. 5 at 56 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, was a hero to a generation that associated him with the iPod, iPad and iPhone. But in a distant galaxy known as the 1980s and 1990s, Jobs' reputation as a visionary was linked to the dawn of personal computers, rainbow-banded apples and Macs, the neat little computers that introduced the mouse, and epitomized the notion of plug-and-play, running right out of the box.
"He did have a good feel for what the customer would like," Zielenbach said. "That was Steve Jobs' genius."
Zielenbach received his doctorate in astronomy in 1969, and then worked at a NASA facility in Pasadena, Cal. for six years before moving to Avon and taking over his father-in-law's printing business, the John W. Gross. Co.
"I went from being a rocket scientist to selling envelopes," he said, laughing.
About 15 years ago, Zielenbach decided to get back into his astronomical sleuthing. When he needed computers he turned to Apple. He had used Macintoshes in the printing business and admired their simplicity. "That's all I ever used. I started programming on them for the business. I started with the Mac and I stayed with the Mac."
"It wasn't my intention to collect Macs but I ended up collecting them for scientific work.I needed a few more computers than the ones I was using at the office," he said with a glint in his eye.
He began buying older Macintoshes on eBay for $10 per pallet, containing about three dozen computers. "I could get these very old computers to run these computations for a song on EBay. It worked out to about 30 cents a computer."
The Macs he couldn't use, the ones that didn't' have enough horsepower, such as the Macintosh 128K and its cousins, known as fishbowls, well he used those as bookends.
Zielenbach's research makes it easier for scientists to predict the route of rogue asteroids, the kind that slam into the earth every million years or so and take out the dinosaurs.
Tracking the habits, or rather the orbits, of asteroids required billions of calculations and the computing power of nearly six dozen Macs. From about 2003 to 2006, they ran day and night, compiling data and racking up $300 a month electricity bills.
"It got hot down there" Zielenbach said.
Now with a couple of Mac minis, about the size of paperback book, "I'm able to do the work of those 70 Macs."
Zielenbach took a few moments on a recent afternoon to pay respects to Jobs.
"A great innovator is gone. I've never met the man, but I certainly think he changed the computer world substantially - he was constantly full of new ideas."
Then he speculated as to what Jobs might have thought of his network, a clowder of Macs lashed together with yards of cable, looping over one another like cooked spaghetti.
"I think it would have warmed his heart to see all these things around. I think he would have been very happy to know his computers were used this way."