As you sit in front of your computer - ponder the past

[packman]

More (Christ, it doesn't seem like that long ago) photos of office sized computers:


http://flashbak.com/when-vintage-business-machines-dwarfed-the-workers-62845/

[duncang]

1. I loved my ibm with the 5 1/4 drive. And it actually had a hard drive!!!

Better then the two 5 1/4 drives one of my coworkers had. No hard drive in his.

[struggle4progress]

2. Decks of Hollerith cards!

Somehow I never pulled a straight flush

[B2G]

5. I dropped a huge stack of them during finals week.

Almost failed my damn statistics final.

[hunter]

7. My first college computer class was Fortran.

We used punched cards and the programs were run overnight.

There was no instant gratification.

You'd pick up your printout and cards in the morning, and if your program hadn't compiled or produced the output you expected, you'd repeat the process.

Most of the people in my class wrote programs by hand on special, expensive coding sheets. A lot of them couldn't type well enough to get all their cards done in their allotted time at the keypunch so they either asked someone they knew to punch the cards, or they paid someone to punch the cards. Fortunately my mom had made me take typing in middle school (a girl's class according to all the middle school bullies) but it served me very well in college.

After BSD was released I started living in the computer labs, almost literally. That's how I met my first serious girlfriend. She came up to me, tapped my shoulder, and said "You need to eat."

[trof]

8. 'Do not bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate.'

[Iggo]

3. Howcome they're not wearing sweaters?

Last edited Fri Sep 30, 2016, 02:10 PM - Edit history (1)

I remember those rooms being very cold.

[Egnever]

4. It wasn't that long ago.

I know people that worked the old punch cards. One of my clients tells me his story every time I see him when he dropped the punch card tray and had to spend hours putting them back in order.

[ananda]

6. I remember those very big computers.

When I first started teaching, we had this computer tech
who had us do our grades so he could put them in this
big machine on punched cards.

Of course, it evolved after that, but at the time, I thought
that was amazing.

[lpbk2713]

9. Watch where you walk.

Those floor tiles may be lifted out.

[trof]

10. I worked at the FAA, Boston ATCC in the early 80s.

Two sub-basements were wall-to-wall computers and a huge staff of techs.

[Victor_c3]

11. A modern cellphone has more power than all of NASA in 1969

Interesting article.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/A-modern-smartphone-or-a-vintage-supercomputer-which-is-more-powerful_id57149