This is very relatable, as I was born just a couple years after you. My first computer encounter was in my BASIC course on Apple IIe PCs, at age 16. I also think I played a game similar to Lunar Lander back in the mid-eighties.
I'm a little older than you, but I grew up similarly with the technology of the day, radio, a record player, and B & W TV. At least we had cable TV, one of the earliest in the USA. That was the only way to watch TV nestled in a valley in the hard coal region of PA.
My interest though was and still is radio even thought I was fascinated by typewriters and my Granddad's mechanical adding machine.
Do your remember analog computers?
My first exposure to a real computer was in college, a big monster of a mainframe and punch cards.
Dad's dissertation used punch cards for his data analysis and we had long boxes of those cards kicking around the house as scrap paper for telephone messages for years. They were terrible for writing and drawing because they were FULL OF HOLES but we economized. I took a BASIC class in junior high (probably 1981). "Class" is an ambitious description; I only learned to make a computer repeat a sentence over and over again in an infinite loop ('GOTO 10"). I immediately used this skill on a demo TRS-80 in front of the Radio Shack at the mall and felt like the hacker in "Wargames." First computer actually in my life was the hulking beige PC clone we had at home by probably 1985, upon which I was hornswaggled to write copy for the yearbook even though I was not yearbook staff. Brought a correcting electric typewriter to college in 1987 but wrote my first college paper on my RA's Apple II. I transcribed it from a hand-scribbled draft. The shearing whine of a dot matrix printer is unforgettable. I took a two-year leave after frosh year and when I returned there wasn't a typewriter in sight. Everyone had svelte beige Macintoshes. The revolution happened while I was away.
Perhaps of interest to many readers of this blog: "The UNITYPER accepted user inputs on a keyboard of a modified Remington typewriter, then wrote that data onto a metal magnetic tape using an integral tape drive. The UNITYPER II was an input device for the UNIVAC II." (Wikipedia, "UNITYPER") https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_739255
Thanks for these memories! Punch cards were around in my youth too, turning up in many contexts, usually as scrap paper. This technology goes back to the roots of IBM in the 1890 census, and still farther back to player pianos and the Jacquard loom. Probably most young people today would be baffled at the very idea that computers could be run on stacks of paper.
"Shearing whine" is a perfect description of the sound of a dot-matrix printer. How would you describe the sound of a modem connecting to AOL?
A screaming comes across the sky? This article is technical (it is, after all, from "Popular Mechanics") but looks interesting for after my coffee starts working. What I remember most about that sound is how I--and any human--could sense in advance from variations in that sound if there was going to be an issue with the connection, if it wasn't going through, if it was slow even. I do not really remember what could go wrong with dial-up. But I was attuned almost bodily to the sound, and could "read" it. This seems an interesting aspect of our sensory life generally: how many places have we attuned to our lives in these subtle ways? Can you hear when the washing machine is on its last cycle, or when the printer at work is on its last page? I think you can! https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a29611456/internet-dialup-modem-sounds/
This is very relatable, as I was born just a couple years after you. My first computer encounter was in my BASIC course on Apple IIe PCs, at age 16. I also think I played a game similar to Lunar Lander back in the mid-eighties.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little older than you, but I grew up similarly with the technology of the day, radio, a record player, and B & W TV. At least we had cable TV, one of the earliest in the USA. That was the only way to watch TV nestled in a valley in the hard coal region of PA.
ReplyDeleteMy interest though was and still is radio even thought I was fascinated by typewriters and my Granddad's mechanical adding machine.
Do your remember analog computers?
My first exposure to a real computer was in college, a big monster of a mainframe and punch cards.
Dad's dissertation used punch cards for his data analysis and we had long boxes of those cards kicking around the house as scrap paper for telephone messages for years. They were terrible for writing and drawing because they were FULL OF HOLES but we economized. I took a BASIC class in junior high (probably 1981). "Class" is an ambitious description; I only learned to make a computer repeat a sentence over and over again in an infinite loop ('GOTO 10"). I immediately used this skill on a demo TRS-80 in front of the Radio Shack at the mall and felt like the hacker in "Wargames." First computer actually in my life was the hulking beige PC clone we had at home by probably 1985, upon which I was hornswaggled to write copy for the yearbook even though I was not yearbook staff. Brought a correcting electric typewriter to college in 1987 but wrote my first college paper on my RA's Apple II. I transcribed it from a hand-scribbled draft. The shearing whine of a dot matrix printer is unforgettable. I took a two-year leave after frosh year and when I returned there wasn't a typewriter in sight. Everyone had svelte beige Macintoshes. The revolution happened while I was away.
ReplyDeletePerhaps of interest to many readers of this blog: "The UNITYPER accepted user inputs on a keyboard of a modified Remington typewriter, then wrote that data onto a metal magnetic tape using an integral tape drive. The UNITYPER II was an input device for the UNIVAC II." (Wikipedia, "UNITYPER") https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_739255
DeleteThanks for these memories! Punch cards were around in my youth too, turning up in many contexts, usually as scrap paper. This technology goes back to the roots of IBM in the 1890 census, and still farther back to player pianos and the Jacquard loom. Probably most young people today would be baffled at the very idea that computers could be run on stacks of paper.
Delete"Shearing whine" is a perfect description of the sound of a dot-matrix printer. How would you describe the sound of a modem connecting to AOL?
A screaming comes across the sky? This article is technical (it is, after all, from "Popular Mechanics") but looks interesting for after my coffee starts working. What I remember most about that sound is how I--and any human--could sense in advance from variations in that sound if there was going to be an issue with the connection, if it wasn't going through, if it was slow even. I do not really remember what could go wrong with dial-up. But I was attuned almost bodily to the sound, and could "read" it. This seems an interesting aspect of our sensory life generally: how many places have we attuned to our lives in these subtle ways? Can you hear when the washing machine is on its last cycle, or when the printer at work is on its last page? I think you can! https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a29611456/internet-dialup-modem-sounds/
Delete