Monday, January 29, 2007

Times They are a Changin'


When I was a cub scout, many long years ago, my troop took a field trip to see a computer. The computer was the pride and joy of a large company in Milwaukee – the "computer" took up an entire building. The scope of the computer was impressive to me, but in reality tracking payroll and inventory were the only capabilities of that machine. The box on or next to your desk is so much more powerful than the computer that had its very own, rather large building. It only takes one to run it where the company’s computer took at least fifty folks. Wonder if your great grandkids will look at a picture of a PC and say “You used that huge clunky old thing?” Then imagine trying to explain a typewriter or writing letters to them.

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11 Comments:

At 10:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

phos,

great pic
of the new mac :)

i visited the 'computer department' of a large, multinational oil company around 1980... two mainframes... and some dumb terminals... disk drives the size of small refrigerators... took up the whole floor of the building

today, your tv remote has more power

/t.

 
At 4:50 PM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

/t.:Like calculators - the first one I ever used looked like a typewriter, a huge clanking monster with little windows on the carriage that would reveal your answer -if you plugged the numbers in correctly. Now you can buy one that can do sine, cosine and tangents on the rack at the supermarket checkout for a couple of bucks and it slides easily into your pocket.

 
At 6:25 PM, Blogger Keshi said...

Phos times sure have changed ha :) Can u rem the disks in 80s...so big LOL!

Keshi.

 
At 6:33 PM, Blogger Little Lamb said...

My have times changed.

 
At 7:31 PM, Blogger Dino said...

I remember in grade school we worked on this russian computer the screen was little and green and we had to learn to create program to drill something in the factory. It took soooo many steps the mainframe of the computer took up a whole room too

 
At 9:15 PM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

Keshi:I can remember the old cromemco. You had to use two disks, one for storage and one for programs becasue there were no hard drives.

LL:You have to run as fast as you can just to keep your place.

DAK: Punchcards - as late as 1983 I still had to learn how to program with punchcards.

 
At 6:04 AM, Blogger Kirsten N. Namskau said...

Hmmm ... I wonder when it all will stop and when it stops, what do we have then??? (Of "developement" I mean.)

 
At 9:56 AM, Blogger Chickie said...

You know what I think is funny? That my 6 year old niece has never played a cassette tape and probably never will. How times change.

 
At 5:25 PM, Blogger nanuk said...

I think an very good test of someone's age is if they know what "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" means.

 
At 9:12 PM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

Kirsten: No end in sight - they are already implanting chips in people for recognition so I suspect in the not too distant future buying an Ipod will require a minor medical procedure...

Chickie: Want to really blow her mind? Tell her about eight tracks and reel-to-reel tape players...

nanuk: We ask people what "Fizzies" are to determine if they are in our generation or not.

 
At 10:00 PM, Blogger The Phosgene Kid said...

LP11: We even had a wire recorder in the basement, forerunner to the tape recorder.

 

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