Do you remember before computers?

Ah, the analog life.... Slot car track (nothing like the car racing games of today), where you had to 'control' your car (if you took a corner too fast, the car flew off the track and if it hit something hard, disintegrated). I wonder if there will be a re-emergence of an analog life? Scalectrix seems to be prospering with their 1/32 scale slot car sets.

 

Well, a few years ago I bought some vintage watches because I was tired of constantly having to buy new batteries or searching through my jewelry box for a watch that was still working. Much easier to just wind it up. I don't need swiss accuracy. I also bought a travel alarm you wind up for the same reason.

Remember when a camera worked without batteries?

I never played with slot cars, my brother did. But I still have my train. I never got to play with it much growing up as my Dad and my brother dominated usage and I didn't get it into my personal possession until I was in my twenties. I still get it out at Christmas to set up around the tree.

 

I think I got it right, Daniel. I'm a 2. As I noted before, I was able to use a teletype connected to a mainframe (via a 100 baud modem) before I even went to college. I proudly carried my electric typewriter and onion skin paper to college, but by the time I graduated I had moved from Fortran and COBOL to basic Basic and the use of the filing-cabinet-sized "minicomputers."

My take: If you can't remember a time when prime-time TV shows started with a big "In Color" splash and you wondered what that would look like, then either you are too young or grew up with parents who were rich or wild first-adopters. "Too young," that is, to say you are a 2, much less a 1.

 

I answered with the first choice because my memory was of no commercial computers - sure there were some of those building sized machines owned by the military, but nothing available for commercial usage.

All my schooling was using a slide rule (still have one or two around the house), and my introduction to computers only started when I went to university. Calculators started to become available during my last years in high school, but were banned from any exam - slide rules and trig tables only allowed. There were no specific IT courses, my first involvement with a computer was as part of my Applied Maths course at uni.

In 1988, I was in Boston for a conference and had a day to visit the then new Computer museum. Got a shock when I saw the IBM 1401 - the first commercially produced computer. Claimed at that time that I was not that old, but this was the new computer that the university purchased halfway through my course. Still reckon that I am not that old .

I am just amazed at how fast the whole sector has changed. Developing software has been my job for most of my working life, but these days, I doubt that very few people would be able to read machine code or debug a program from a printed memory dump, but that was what you had to do in the early days.

 

Even though I didn't have hands-on experience with computers until the mid-70s, I knew they existed. Unless you vividly remember the year 1951, if you picked the first choice you picked wrong. Read and learn.

 

I answered correctly. It says when computers in the modern sense. The average person wasn't privy to some of the early computers.

I remember Pete and Gladys and the Honeymooners.

I took a class in college where I had to do the punch cards. Never did get it to run.

I learned to use a slide rule, not a calculator.

I wound my watch every morning.

I learned to type on a manual Royal.

But that didn't prevent me from adopting new technology as it became affordable.

I saved my money and bought a portable cassette tape recorder in the early 70s to take with me to visit my relatives back east. My parents thought it was a waste of money as they had a perfectly good reel to reel. I recorded my Grandfather playing the accordian. It's the only recording we have. Last year I burned it on a CD for my Dad for Father's day. The second time he played it I left the room to give him privacy.

 

Yup. Me too (except I don't remember Pete and Gladys).

My funny story about CDs. In the mid 70s, CDs were coming out, but they cost about a billion bucks then. I was being given a sales pitch about how you can't scratch a CD, and he gave me a CD to scratch on the asphalt of the parking lot. I flipped the CD over and very quickly scratched the label side real good. The sales guy wasn't happy at all!

 

You still have a train? Cool. Me too. Computers have had a big influence on the hobby: digital control, operating signal systems, sound chips to mimic actual locomotives...slot cars, though, have pretty much been supplanted by very realistic racing simulations.

 

I don't miss that part of programming in the least.

 

Yep. It was purchased in 1954 when I was going to be Steven. So I never actually got to play with it. It uses a transformer and I have to make sure the tracks are polished clean. I think it's an American Flyer. Gauge is L or M. Much bigger than you'd think. I used the Hallmark Sarah Plain and Tall houses they were giving out years ago to decorate the tracks and make a little "town". I have the engine and coal car pair for power, a few freight cars, an open car and a caboose. I think the caboose lights up. The engine has a headlight too. Supposedly you could put a pellet in the engine for smoke but not sure if my model does that. I don't think whatever it is is available any more anyway. The doors slide back and forth on the freight cars. I have enough curved and straight track to go make a nice large circle around the Christmas tree. When my Mother called to ask me if I wanted the train because if I didn't she was getting rid of it I was over there in a shot. That year I bought an engineer's hat and a wooden whistle. I wear them and toot the whistle when I set it up for Christmas. Making up for lost time. Of course, I don't do this with anyone else around. I am 53 after all. Making up for lost time I guess.

 

It's been a long time since I heard about that computer. The building I worked in at my first real job was "Q7", because the building was built to house it. There were three power lines (as in the big metal tower version) coming into Santa Monica, and two of them stopped at the Q7. They had just turned the Q7 off when I arrived there. The Q7 building was the only one in the complex that was air conditioned. Computers get air conditioning. Humans get whatever the weather throws at you.

Wasn't it the Q-7 that detected the moon attacking us?:spy: It came up over the horizon exactly where we were watching for the Ruskies to attack. The computer said "attack in progress":scared:. The bombers were in the air when some humans decided something wasn't quite right and they called off the counterattack:blink:.


In high school there was a guy who built a tic-tac-toe machine using relays. I think the clock cycle was about one per second, and it took several seconds to calculate the machine's next move. It won him first place in the science contest.

In college I took a class that addressed the issue of computer usage in the company. Could a computer replace a human? Could it run the entire firm? What things would have to be reserved for humans? Could it hold its liquor? Would it cheat? My class project was a cluster analysis of the stock prices of 100 firms over a period of about 2 months. I had to type in the data from the stock pages of the local newspaper. Big revelation was that the market moved as a whole much more than there were any sectors like cars, utilities, etc. There was one stock that had an inverse relationship to the rest of the market, for no reason I ever figured out. Kinda like QID versus QLD in today's market.

Ok, did I earn my stone chisel?

 

I DO remember Art Linkletter and the UNIVAC, which is why I said I don't remember a time before computers.

I was a college freshman in 1966, and I took a FORTRAN class my second semester - my first actual work with a computer.

I also remember PROJECT MAC, which developed the idea of 'timesharing', allowing multiple dumb terminals to share a mainframe computer, but I only had one class where we were allowed to use it - the rest was punched cards with overnight turnaround for the results. I had one class where we had to write a portion of a compiler/interpreter using PL/1 on punch cards that way - very few people were able to complete the assignment because of the 'one a day' approach.

 

How exciting is this... someone remembers slot cars. I however never forgot them and since 1979, have been the editor publisher of Scale Auto Racing News, the only surviving Slot Car Magazine in the world devoted to all scales of slot car racing. Which still lives today in all it's analog glory. You can check the Raceway listings online to see if there is one still operating in your area at: Slot Car Racing | Scale Auto Racing News
BTW.. It's only natural that a fan of electric slot cars would own Prius....jf

 

I started with the Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 Model I Level II. It had a cassette recorder for storage, 4K of RAM, and eventually expanded it to 16K. I learned BASIC and Assembly. I remember lots of contests to writee the most useful one-line programs.

 

Steam is pretty dirty as it has to burn something to make the steam. Modern electric engines (while still using some fuel) are pretty clean compared to historic trains.

A six foot circle is about how much track I've got, but it's not attached to a board; I have to assemble it every year. And sand the tracks. It's pretty big and the train has no problems. My train is electric and runs off a transformer. The tracks must be rust free for contact. I only have two rails, not three like some so it really looks like a miniature train. The pellets were put in the smoke stack to make smoke in some models. I don't remember my train ever doing that so suspect it is a cheaper model incapable of smoke.

There are larger model trains you can set up in your yard. I don't know if they're electric, steam or some sort of combustible. People landscape their yards in miniature for them. Really great.

Then there are some slightly bigger where you can ride on the engine and pull miniature cars like a big kid. And some slightly larger than that you can ride IN. We have one in Balboa Park next to the Zoo and I rode one in Stuttgart, Germany.

Personally, I think trains are coming back. They are really cost effective for moving freight and people. And a time compromise between cars and planes, both of which are going to become very expensive. I think we're going to see a lot more track laid across the U.S. in the coming years (to replace lines that were torn up by cheap gas.)

I'd consider trains analog transportation.

I also have an analog stove. It's gas and has no electric ignition pilot light and does not self-clean. It's an O'Keefe and Merritt from the 50s. The stove and the furnace are the only appliances with a constant pilot light now. The stove keeps the kitchen a minimum temperature since the heat from the house doesn't reach there.

The water heater is now a tankless. It is plugged in and uses electricity to light the pilot. Perhaps I should have gotten a model where the pilot will light from just the flow of water. But with the PV on the roof, I figure at some point I can always go off grid if really necessary. In 20-30 years when it has to be replaced, we'll see what the current situation is.

I also have several analog clocks running on electricity in the house including a Kit Kat clock. The alarm clock is digital.

There were a couple of movies featuring huge, room-filling computers. One was with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn. Another was with Doris Day. The Day one featured punch cards. The Hepburn/Tracey one actually had a keyboard. I remember those movies. That's when the public was really made aware of computers, not in the 30s and 40s.

I used to watch Sky King on our second hand black and white TV.

 

Somewhere in my fathers house (mother passed in 2003) are two train sets that were christmas 'presents' for me in 1961 & 1962. After I opened the gift boxes, then my father got bitten by the train bug and things grew from there. From a simple 6' circle track, the track supply expanded to fill a 20 x 20 room (two 8 x 8 tables were joined together for an 8 x 16 train table); multiple switches, and, and, and. I remember about having to polish the rails to maximize conductivity as well. The way that we would figure out which section of track needed polishing was to run the engine at slow speed until it stopped. We would polish the last 12 inches from where it stopped and then start it up again. If I recall, track 'maintenance' was a once a month event.

You might be surprised. There is a robust trading community for the older train sets. Also, Neil Young purchased American Flyer (actually, he purchased Lionel; but I think Lionel owns American Flyer) some years ago and is helping it re-invent itself.

The level of detail on the older cars is part of the reason there is a collectors community.

I don't know if it is making up for lost time so much as it is a response to the digital world. My efforts to mod my Prius (handling and braking improvements) are another example of a response to the digital world.

 

At one time, there was a 'working' train service in the area around Ft. Bragg/Willits in Northern California. It was called the Skunk Railroad. They had steam-powered and diesel-electric engines. One summer when we were visiting my grandparents in Greenbrae, my grandfather, father and I got up at something like 4:00 a.m to drive up to Ft. Bragg to ride the Skunk trains. It was a trip and a half. The route at the time was something like 50 miles of track. It was a real train ride - the train would get up to something like 30 mph, then pull into a stop, unload cargo/mail/passengers and then start out for the next stop. When we went through a tunnel, the conductor went through each car to make sure the windows were closed (otherwise we would have been gassed out from the smoke from the engine). It was a real experience. Don't know if they are still in business at present, however.

 

Correct. The "blockhouse" was a 4 story thickly reinforced windowless concrete structure. I guess the purpose was to withstand nearby nuclear blast effect

Amazing how much cooling capacity they needed just to cool off the vacuum tubes and rotating drum storage. The 3 MW of onsite diesel generation was there for the 120 tons of air conditioning and the computer

It was a huge effort but was actually obsolete before the buildings were finished. By the time it was fully operational in 1964, IBM had already moved on to the solid state S/340. The same processing power could be housed in a section of one floor, not an entire building

 

I remember before computers. Heck, I remember before calculators! When I started at Engineering school we used slide rules.

One of our school projects was an electronic calculator. It was huge, the logic gates where implemented using discrete diodes and transistors, the input was a rotary phone dial, and we had a two-digit vacuum tube display for output.

I've always been fascinated by computers, I still am. Been working as a software engineer for the past 20 years, I guess I'm just a perennial geek. :madgrin:


(which is why I love my Prius)