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

[El diablo gringo]

Etch A Sketch

 

Gringo

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

5 hours ago, Sixgun Sheridan said:

 

Holy crap, I remember those. I doodled on mine and had the runners holding burning sticks of dynamite.

1966 Okinawa, I had my first real encounter with abaci (abacues? abacii?  Whatever.).  Little Okinawan school girls doing computer speed calculations in road-side stands selling "stuff" and using home made wood and wire abacuses....and never making and error.  Just watching the speed of their fingers  was an amazing entertainment.

 

The fist real computer I ever saw was an Army NCR 500 Computerized Ordnance Supply Inventory System.  I was a new 2LT assigned to a AD ArtilleryBrigade on Okinawa.  My CO, an old Ordnance Corps Major who would never get another promotion called me in, told me it was to be delivered and installed in the next week and I was his computer expert.  I asked why he thought I was a computer expert.

 

"Because you're the junior Lieutenant in the Brigade and you're the Supply Officer.  There are the instruction manuals.  Learn them."

 

I still don't understand computers, don't trust them, and hate them.  And I'll die hating that Major.... for many more reasons than that single example.

[Dusty Devil Dale]

10 hours ago, Blackwater 53393 said:

Mine was a slide rule!

I was surprised a couple years back when an engineer I was working with had heard of slide-rules, but had never seen one.  When I took my old Pickett over for him to play with, he became fascinated; appreciating the  mathematical principles of logrythm addition and subtraction.  He soon ordered one from someplace on Amazon.  He took it to work to show to the other young engineers who'd never seen one. 

 

I found it amazing that engineers would never have seen one.  

[Injun Ryder, SASS #36201L]

My first PC!

 

I still have my slide rule, TI-59 with a lot of engineering programs on magnetic strips, drafting tools and Etch-A-Sketch all within a few feet of me right now!

[Texas Lizard]

Look how far we have come...My darkroom in the 80s was all but obsolete by the mid 90's...Had a lot of fun there...I kinda miss too...

 

Texas Lizard

[sassnetguy50]

6 hours ago, Trailrider #896 said:

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. 

And when the ballpoint pen leaked ink on the desk the teacher gave several wacks with the yardstick to the knuckles for destruction of school property. 

 

We were allowed ballpoint pens in the 7th grade, I went back to pencils after the second leaking pen.

[J-BAR #18287]

Engineering College at the University of Colorado, 1964-67.  They  tried to teach us how to use analog computers to solve chemical engineering problems (current represented flow rates, capacitance represented storage volumes, voltage represented pump pressure, etc.). I never got the hang of creating the right circuit board to solve the problem.  FORTRAN and punch cards were better; they eliminated the possibility of electrocution.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

Post Versalog was my slipstick.  Never learned to use it very well, though.

 

A local high school was remodeling in SoCal about fifteen years ago and had a teaching model of a Post slide  rule almost five feet long.  It was in beautiful shape and by the time I found out was for sale for a measly $50.00 it was gone.  I have no idea why I wanted it but I was crushed that someone else had it.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Dayumm, this question takes me back a ways.

 

1976, I had a computer in my office. It was a terminal with a microprocessor PDP11 inside it. Before then I had programmed on seven different types of computers plus one that was totally fictional that I designed and was used as a teaching model for years afterward.

 

The company was DEC, Digital Equipment Corporation. Doing oddball, unplanned things was tolerated because they often led to innovations. At that time DEC was the #7 computing company with IBM At the top. In the early 90s the BUNCH  companies were gone and IBM targeted DEC as its major competitor, uhoh.

 

 

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BUNCH = Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, Honeywell