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Remember the first computer you were introduced to in school and instructed its uses?


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Mine was a slide rule!

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In junior college, it was Burroughs mainframe, BASIC language with lines of code on Hollerith punch cards, output on the big green-bar fan-fold paper.

 

The people actually running the computer wore white lab coats. Program punch cards and printouts were passed through a door to the room.

 

At the time, the IBM PCwith dual floppy drives and 640K of memory was retailing for about $5,000. You could say it had a color monitor if a choice of green or amber phosphor counted as color.

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You guys are REALLY making me feel old.

My desk had an ink well slot, with an ink bottle, filled from a larger bottle by the teachers and we had JUST transitioned over from quill to straight pens. 

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11 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

You guys are REALLY making me feel old.

My desk had an ink well slot, with an ink bottle, filled from a larger bottle by the teachers and we had JUST transitioned over from quill to straight pens. 

Same here, except that we had plain steel tipped pens and filling the ink wells was a perk for any of the boys in class the teacher wanted to reward for good behavior. Then there was the milk, and graham crackers...

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They didn't trust us with the large ink bottles.

Did you have to melt the wax/rust preventer off the new pen nibs by putting them in your mouth, so the ink would stay on when you dipped it in the ink well? 

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Had to learn how to use an Abacus 

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30 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

They didn't trust us with the large ink bottles.

Did you have to melt the wax/rust preventer off the new pen nibs by putting them in your mouth, so the ink would stay on when you dipped it in the ink well? 

No, there was a little bottle of solvent kept in the same cabinet as the ink and supplies.  Have no memory of what it was, nor how it smelled sixty odd years on.

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2 hours ago, Warden Callaway said:

My first tablet was a Big Chief.  

 

Mine too.  Those things were great!  With paper so coarse it had wood chips in it.  I can still remember the fragrance, and then there was that HUGE soft core pencil, or a crayon.  :lol:

 

89 1950's ideas | childhood memories, the good old days, 1950s

 

And by sixth grade the infamous Pee Chee folders....

 

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Innocent times.  Sorta.  In-school smallpox vaccinations, hurt-like-hell polio shots, and A-bomb drills.  :wacko:

 

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In the mid 1980's I was Manager over and engineering group on the B-2 Stealth Bomber. We converted from drafting tables and drafting machines to CAD (computer aided design). I had a lot of older engineers who said they just couldn't do it and retired of left the company. Lots of change since then and the "Luddites" have mostly left the scene.

I still have a slide rule, but I'll bet I really would have trouble trying to use it! LO!

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Back on computers, my first personal experience was when my Wife brought home an IBM XT and set it up on the desk in our office.  Probably '84. It sat there for a bit, then I figured out how to use Lotus 123 and WordPerfect.  I managed a good sized area and seven folks so there was a great deal of paperwork, much of it "emergencies".  The darn thing was absolute magic and made my job a snap.  Some time later, the company I worked for issued computers, and a bit later "Reorganized" out a bunch of well compensated employees.  I was good at my job, but I am convinced I was not one of the ones let go because I was ahead of the curve on computers.  Glad of it, but it tracked me into computer work for the last years of my career. Didn't care for that much, but the pay was good and most of the time i worked out of my home office.

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41 minutes ago, Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474 said:

You guys are REALLY making me feel old.

My desk had an ink well slot, with an ink bottle, filled from a larger bottle by the teachers and we had JUST transitioned over from quill to straight pens. 

Never actually used quill pens but we were taught how to "trim" them with  single edged razor blade (IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL) and the ink wells were filled by a student who got "merits" for good work or good conduct and filled the glass wells as a perk. 

 

 As to the pencil computers, our "refresh" was bolted on the end of the teachers desk and had a hand crank on one end.   The "delete" said Pink Pearl one one side.  "Print" was done manually on white paper with blue or dark gray horizontal guidelines.  The font was on the wall over the black board, printed on green cards in white letters.

 

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In the Chicago public schools in the 40's & early 50's, I recall ink wells in the desks, but don't remember ever using them. I do remember that ball point pens were verboten because the early ones leaked!  We did use fountain pens and had to have a bottle of ink to refill them.  Used sliderules in aerospace jobs through the '80's, although the "stress" guys used computers with NASTRANS programs.  One program I was on had an IBM-PC (maybe an XT) for the program manager's secretary to use.  If we needed word processing, we had to write it out longhand, take it up to the word processor unit, get it back the next couple of days (unless on a priority, in which case one day turnaround), proofread it, then send it back upstairs for revision.  Got to be such a pain, I bought an Apple II+ and a 9-pin Epson printer, and brought it in to work (non-classified program).  Chief systems engineer was an old WWII retread Englishman, who had two fountain pens...one black ink and one red. He'd get all over my case because, "Engineers don't type! You're not a bloody secretary!"  One week when he was out of town, we had a report due to NASA by the end of the week. Suddenly, they called in Monday morning and said they needed it by Tuesday!  Typed it up on my Apple, printed it on the Epson, got the report signed off, sent to repro (20 copies required), sent it out Overnight, and NASA was thrilled. Englishman didn't say much when he found out how I did it. 

 

Previous experience was in college again, when we had to program in FORTRAN IV.  Wrote up the program on paper forms, took it to the computer center, where they punched the cards.  Got the results back about 48 hours later, showing any mistakes, and did it again.  PITA!  Still have my sliderules, although I'm not sure how to use all the functions anymore. 

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46 minutes ago, Big Sage, SASS #49891 Life said:

In the mid 1980's I was Manager over and engineering group on the B-2 Stealth Bomber. We converted from drafting tables and drafting machines to CAD (computer aided design). I had a lot of older engineers who said they just couldn't do it and retired of left the company. Lots of change since then and the "Luddites" have mostly left the scene.

I still have a slide rule, but I'll bet I really would have trouble trying to use it! LO!

A number of years ago I looked up an old high school acquaintance.  Over time he had become a very successful architect and was showing me around his operation.  In one room there were a dozen work stations with two or more computers in each work area.  It was very impressive, clean, well organized, and 100% professional.  To one side was a 12' x 8' room glassed in on three side and with a beautiful walnut wall on the third side fronted by a matching desk.  The desk had a leather top, brass doo- dads all around, and a large telephone.  The rest of the room held a pair of love seat sized sofas, a chair or two, some potted plants, a walnut bookcase stuffed with books,  and a drafting table covered with old style drafting instruments.  

 

Hanging on the wall behind the big desk was a bright red metal box with a glass face.  Inside were a slide rule, a couple of three sided engineering rulers, some triangles, French curves, a large unlined writing pad, a drafting set, some mechanical pencils and a sharpener.

 

The face of the box was labelled in bold white letters "IN CASE OF POWER FAILURE BREAK GLASS".  A small brass hammer hanging on a chain completed the set.

 

This was very impressive and professional looking establishment.

 

I asked about the box he told me it was gift fro his staff for his twentieth year in business, and he had a man come in to further answer my question:

 

"Well, Sir, Mister Reiser selects possible candidates from a lot of colleges all around the country who send folks to him to be interviewed.  These people are those who have shown an interest to work in a small town like ours and who are top students with the skills and aptitude for the job.  When he finds one he thinks might work out he takes him or her over to the big table and gives them some problems to solve without using a computer and plans to be drawn using the old tools.  They are to come back after lunch and get stared.  If they finish by four o'clock he gets into the nitty-gritty and decide whether or not to hire any that are what he feels are right for the job.  There is a 'gotcha' in every problem and they have to find it and find a solution to it.  If you know how to use the tools you should succeed."

 

I asked the kid how he had faired.

 

"I was offered a job at less than I could have made somewhere else, but I'd heard about Mr. Reiser and wanted to work for him.  He gave me a raise after three months and again after six.  I've been here almost six years now and am happy as can be.  I'm making considerably more than any of the people I graduated with, plus the job came with a terrific bonus"  I married a lady he hired about a year after me, so we're getting two grand paychecks now. and we have a pair of potential replacements for when we retire."  This last was said with a yard wide smile.

 

Okay, so my friend was doing what we had learned in school, mostly from our ROTC and math and physics instructors:"  Learn to master the basics before you start looking for shortcuts.  Hire people who can handle the same skills you have learned and mastered, them teach them how to find shortcuts  and improvements on their own.... and don't ever be afraid to learn from your people....and always encourage them to share that knowledge with each other, and always reward success.

 

Ben died nine years ago and left a legacy of "find out how it was done in the past, master the old skills because "if the power fails you may need to carry on in a different way."  Learn everything you can about every facet of the business, and surround yourself with very good, very driven, very imaginative people and treat them well.   You can't fail if you do it all right."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I still have slide rules. and even use them on occasion. Most problems do not require more than a couple decimal places anyway.

 

As to an abacus, I have two hands. Check out Chisanbop:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop

 

"Chisanbop or chisenbop (from Korean chi (ji) finger + sanpŏp (sanbeop) calculation [1]지산법/指算法), sometimes called Fingermath,[2] is an abacus-like finger countingmethod used to perform basic mathematical operations. According to The Complete Book of Chisanbop[3] by Hang Young Pai, chisanbop was created in the 1940s in Koreaby Sung Jin Pai and revised by his son Hang Young Pai, who brought the system to the United States in 1977."

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10th grade (Vista High was a 3 year high school) chemistry class.  Compucorp 025 Educator.  WHY I can remember that I have no idea.  Never got the hang of it.  

 

Screenshot_20221205-111422-961.thumb.png.42beeb44e8f9d1c2a077fd20fbdb1432.png

 

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That was the 1972-73 school year. The "rich kid" in the class, son of a radiologist, got a fancy TI calculator that could add, subtract, multiple, divide, and do square root.  The rest of us made due with slide rules.

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When I was a young fella (about fifty years ago!), I took classes in FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC.  Anyone remember the Timex-Sinclair computer, with built-in BASIC?

 

image.png.8fe9f981e409233478f01a74f3e5be3c.png

 

My first exposure to a “personal computer” was when I worked for a small bank in San Ramon.  The boss proudly brought in his new Osborne 1 ~ “It has the same floppy drives that IBM uses!”

 

I first saw an actual IBM PC on a visit to Visa USA about 1982; the dual-floppy unit sat on a small table in its own room.  They were quite proud of that li’l beast.

 

The boss then decided we needed a bunch of PC’s; he even splurged on one with a 5mb hard drive.  I’d stay after work and tinker with the things for hours; like Rip Snorter above, it put me well ahead of the other staffers.

 

In early 1985 I took a job as a “Methods and Procedures Analyst” with a little company in San Francisco called Bank of America.  There we could order a new IBM PC with either a green or amber CRT monitor (users choice!) and an Epson dot matrix printer for $10 thousand; over $27 thousand in today’s bucks.  Yikes! 

 

My own first computer was an IBM PC Jr.  I loved that thing!  I teamed it with an external second floppy drive, an RGB monitor. and a small dot matrix Epson, and upgraded the RAM from 64k to 640k by literally buying and installing a bag of chips and jumpers.  Two or three years later I sold it to a buddy and bought a “dead” AT clone.  Someone had tried to move it without “parking” the heads, resulting in a fatal head crash on the 10mb hard drive.  I installed a 20mb drive, and my old buddy Bill made the proclamation “You’ll NEVER fill that thing!”  Har!

 

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At this point I honestly don’t think I could remember how many of the little marvels I’ve owned.  Heck... my NOOK has a version of Microsoft Office installed.  And I’m quite frankly amazed (and dismayed) to see what the youngsters do with their telephones!

 

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Our first issue computers were luggable, can't recall the brand, had the orange on black screen.  Never had a problem with the XT, but that combination was hard on the eyes.  If you worked too long, tears would actually flow.  Fortunately they were short lived.  Just to put the processing power back then in perspective, with large Lotus spreadsheets, we would start an update and go to lunch.

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did the punch card thing in teacher certification when I got back from RVN

 

in school we got TRS-80s for the kids

 

did a WHOLE bunch of Oregon Trail with the elves 

 

and SNAKE which was a Radio Shack drawing program

 

FD 100

RT 90

FD 100

RT 9O

FD 100

RT 90

FD 100

 

would give you a square on the screen 100 snake "steps" on a side

 

really more of a programing program than a drawing one

 

 

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The first computer I ever played with was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A back around 1981 or so. The thing had only twice as much memory and processing power as the smart calculators of the time. There was very little I could do on it and even my dad regretted buying it. The Commodore 64 came out just a year later and it was a quantum leap above the TI in terms of capability. And then the x386 came out...

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I was in the first computer lit class at my high school- on Apple IIe's.:blink:

 

There was 2 folks in the school that had Apple II's and one of them was in my Computer Lit class. 

 

That was a good thing since the teacher they chose to teach the class- he was head of the Math department and recognized as the smartest teacher on campus- didn't even know how to turn one on at the time.  Mike would teach him the lesson for tomorrow today and give him homework.:lol:

 

I learned just enough in the class to utterly confuse me a couple years later when I graduated and ended up working with IBM compatible machines.  It took a decade and getting a Windows 95 PC for me to get comfortable with the things.

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5 hours ago, Rip Snorter said:

No, there was a little bottle of solvent kept in the same cabinet as the ink and supplies.  Have no memory of what it was, nor how it smelled sixty odd years on.

Peroxide or Javex??

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5 hours ago, Big Sage, SASS #49891 Life said:

In the mid 1980's I was Manager over and engineering group on the B-2 Stealth Bomber. We converted from drafting tables and drafting machines to CAD (computer aided design). I had a lot of older engineers who said they just couldn't do it and retired of left the company. Lots of change since then and the "Luddites" have mostly left the scene.

I still have a slide rule, but I'll bet I really would have trouble trying to use it! LO!

 

The only time I recall using a slide rule, after I left school, was to help calculate "Economic Order Quantities", a stores operation tool.

I was in Purchasing/Material Management and a member of NIGP, OPBA and PMAC in Canada almost my entire working life.

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Apple II in computer lab at school, the black ones.   At home had a Vic 20, then a comadore 64.   I also remember going to the computer lab with my dad where they had some sort of vax system.  Also punch cards.   By the time I was in college we were using dec alpha and Apple Macs.  

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I recall the first computer I bought. An Amstrad DUAL floppy disk model.

I learned a bit from that.

My employer was an IBM mainframe client and the first desktop unit, at my workplace, was purchased privately, from Radio Shack, by a City employee, for his own use.

That really kicked off their use at the City.

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