Do you remember before computers?

Daniel,

You are an OLD dude! The last time I used punch cards I was in junior high. We prepared our cards and then mailed them to the State university. Someone there (without folding, mangling or spindling the cards) fed them into the card reader. We would hook up to the computer via a modem (100 baud, I believe) and find out whether our programs ran!

My high school didn't have such things as access to computers!

By college we had just what you recalled. We had three mini-computers, each about the size of a filing cabinet, and we had about three dumb terminals linked to each computer (or so I seem to remember).

It was many years later when I bought my first computer. It was an AT-clone (80286) with 512K of RAM and a GIGANTIC 10Meg Seagate hard drive. To think that we would not have to load a program via floppy disks each time we wanted to do something . . . Wow!

What memories!

 

Sure, and some here don't remember a time before cell phones and GPS and MP3 players and IMing...

I was an electronics hobbyist at age 8 in 1971. I saw, and participated in the "PC revolution" that started about 1975. Remember encyclopedia pictures of 1950's and 1960's computers that filled rooms and knew I wanted to work in that field. So now I'm a software engineer doing embedded Linux network security boxes.


I haven't figured out yet just how many computers are in a Prius. For most people, they are invisible (until you get a fault code and need diagnosis).

That's how it should be IMO. Computers should be mostly invisible. Like "Just get in and drive, never mind the MFD".

 

I miss the days before computers and cell phones, and I am in the computer business.

Still waiting for my 2008 Prius ordered on May 6th. The dealer says I will have it in about eight or ten more weeks, but I am not so sure I will ever see it. Does anybody have any insight into the actual availability of new Prii?

 

In my pre-teen years I used the Commodore VC20. When I was 12, my dad bought me a IBM compatible XT with a whopping 8MHz 8088 chip. And it all went downhill from there.
Now I take care of Storage Area Networks. At least it pays a decent salary.

The most annoying part of my life right now are cell phones. You just cannot get a normal cell phone anymore, it's now a little computer with camera, internet, yadda yadda etc etc and it crashes just like Windoze on a daily basis when you're in the middle of an important call. One day I know I will throw the cell phone under the train because eventually it will piss me off just too much to push me over the edge.

Thomas

 

Wow! With the early results just coming in, it appears more than half of our PCers are pre-computer!

This is hard for me to believe, as computers (in the modern sense?) were a big part of the space race (late '50s and early '60s) and were involved in many activities before then. This means that at least half of those responding didn't just grow up watching the Fonz on TV, but actually hung out with him.

 

I Hate to admit this but Im 57. I lived on the 128 Belt in Mass. Back then we were considered a prime target from the Russian nukes bacause of all the military production plants and think tanks. No we didnt have a bomb shelter but alll the public buildings had civil defense nucular fallout shelter signs.

And I do remember duck and cover like that was going to stop a nucular blast from tearing the skin off of us!

 

Very first computer I saw: Something at the Boston Museum of Science where you could play tic-tac-toe with it. I thought, "This is the coolest thing in the world!"

First personal computer I used: A TRS-80 floor model when I was in junior high school. Taught myself BASIC on that thing.

First computer I took a class in: A minicomputer (a Wang) we used punch cards and FORTRAN in High School.

First email I sent: In 1980 in my freshman year in college, a campus-wide email system for the mainframe the computer department used (a CDC Cyber 730 or 750) a friend of mine wrote. The same year I also used the first real-time chat over a computer on the same mainframe another friend of mine wrote.

First song I downloaded over the Internet: in 1993, "Moments of Pleasure" by Kate Bush, just before her album "The Red Shoes" came out. This was before MP3s were invented; it was an au file.

First web page I made: My personal home page (now long gone) in December, 1994.

 

I had a strange experience when I went back to college after 17 years. I was in the library, and couldn't figure out what was wrong. It took me about ten minutes to realize all the card catalogs were gone, and had been replaced by computers.

I saw a great play about this a few years ago. It was called Defiled. Jason Alexander from Seinfeld fame played the lead. He was a librarian and fought the replacement of his beloved card catalogs with computers. He claimed that the card catalog was much more efficient than a computer for finding what you needed in the library. Peter Falk from Columbo fame played a police investigator. In the end, the librarian blows up the library.

 

Life before computers? Hey, my memory's good, but not that good. Typing essays for school was much easier with a computer, because I could just fix the mistake and print it again, instead of having to retype the whole page. (and make different mistakes) Our family had one of the first Apples, and I remember the IBM PC being released while I was in university. (Were they really $10,000, or is that my imagination?) When I was in high school, I paid $25 for a calculator that did only the most basic functions, and would now be regarded as a dumb brick. I used to do income taxes with a pencil and an eraser, doing the sums by hand. Now I don't even have to print them - even the filing is electronic.

 

Before the computer there was the SLIDE RULE, the ubiquitious "slip stick,"
beloved of engineers, scientists, and geeks young and old. In some of the
footage of John Glenns first flight, the flight engineers can be seen using
them -- Uh, lets see now, the decimal point goes where?

For pure whiz-bang wonderfulness, you could get a circular rule. Very fine.

For speed-of-light digital computing there was the abacus, which for no
apparent reason my dad taught us how to do.

My dad worked for AT&T. When I was in grade school he would tell stories
of the computer that filed the entire basement of a building that filled a city block.

I think AT&T was heavy into the development of transistors. My first
transistor radio -- simulated "leatherette" case --was red, white control
knobs, no speaker, single ear piece, a whopping 3 transistors -- and Alan
King's Christmas spoof on The 12 Nights of Christmas; "...and a Ja-pan-ese
tran-sis-tor Ray-dee-oh."

How about "Transistor Sister" for a catchy little tune? Bobby Darrin?

Edit: Oops! Nope, Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon.

Here's a cover by Robb Storme:

 

I think I'm right on the edge....I remember computers in the later grades of elementary school. We got an IBM with an 8088 when I was in middle school, I think. I do remember typing a report in 5th grade on my mom's typewriter, although there were word processors at the time, we just didn't have one.

I don't know what I'd do without the Internet, now!

 

The first computer I saw/used was a Control Data 3200. It was the size of a room, mass storage was 2 1/2" mag tape drives and a single disk drive. If memory serves me correctly, the disk drive had a capacity of 840K, but that was per pack, it had interchangeable 14" disk packs. It did have a pretty nice line printer, it could spit out 1200 lines per min. no graphics. The I/O consoule used an IBM Selectric that had interface to the mainframe.

My first PC that I built was a Southwest Technical Products 6800. It came kit form, meaning a few bags of parts and a bunch of bare circuit boards.

 

Yes they were. My grandfather worked for Western Electric before (and just after) divestiture and was involved with some projects along those lines.

I was born in '69, so I just barely make it into the realm of a world before home computers.

My dad used to work at the computer center for a hospital and would occasionally take my sister & me in on weekends and let us play on the punch card machines.

 

I think my first computer was 128gb or something, still have it too....dial up was the most amazing thing. I think that was back in 1995 so not as far back as ya'll here

 

My first transistor radio was white with red fins shaped like a V2 rocket and there was a rod in the nose cone that you raised up to tune it! My first computer was a C64. Learned DOS on that baby with a program for R/A & Dec. to find stars. It was a lot more fun back then.

 

My first memories of a computer are the Commodore 64 as well. I wrote (copied) a program once to make a balloon fly across the screen. I was absolutely thrilled. Ah, for the simple pleasures of youth.

 

The biggest advance ---- banning smoking from the office.
The biggest setback ---- spam (and the windows operating system)

 

How many decimal places of Pi at that point?

 

As a university student I worked with remote dumb terminals tied to a distant main frame. Then IBM produced very large word processing work stations with large single-sided floppy drives. First home computer - a Macintosh Plus with 4k of RAM.