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YES, I’M A BOOMER however, that was the case before the present use of the term.  In the fifth grade I thought joining the school band would be interesting.  Not being confident of being able to justify an expensive instrument purchase to my parents, I found that the school supplied the percussion instruments.  That being an obvious solution I began taking lessons, working my way through the triangle, snare drum, cymbals and in high school, settling on the bass drum.  Taking my teen frustrations out on my instrument, I was very aggressive in punishing the drum.  I broke drum heads regularly (once just minutes before going on to the football field for our half time show) and the Band Teacher, Hollis, and I settled on a 50/50 split in purchasing replacements.  One of my classmates, Jerry, coined my nickname of “Boomer”, thus the source of a portion of my Domain name.  I chose “cyberboomer” referencing my re-occuring experiences with computers.  I put this blog together to provide a contrast of the “good ole days” vs. modern computing and yes, I agree, we didn’t always see the big picture and make the best decisions but we also weren’t always provided with a large variety of good options either.  Haveagoodun

BEFORE THE BEGINNING (date of last entry, 4/24/2020)

I’m my initial year in High School in the 1960’s, seventh grade, a grand experiment was conducted in the teaching of math.  Called “New Math”, the concepts of sets, sub sets, Venn diagrams, math involving different base systems, etc. was incorporated into the curriculum.  Unfortunately, due to the speed of the modification, not enough teachers with the requisite training were available and my teacher was one of them.  She expressed regret at the lack of training and the more advanced students in the class attempted to decode the instructional material.  I failed to grasp the concepts with great success but having an interest in anything related to the function of that new fangled digital computer, I did, with the help of my good friend Glenn, grasp base two notation and math fairly well.  I also requested for one of my Christmas gifts, a plastic, mechanical, extremely basic, computer which, again, with the help of Glenn, we found would perform some very basic computations (in binary).  Semi success achieved!

GETTING MY FEET WET

In the late 1960’s, a Data Processing course was offered in our High School.  I must admit that while the opportunity to again learn something about the functioning of something remotely like a computer was certainly a draw, I did notice that the Data Processing classroom possessed something lacking in all the other classrooms, air conditioning.  The glorified Accounting Machine, the IBM 402, functioned much better in a low humidity and cool environment.  Here in the south, where it was normal in the Summer to sit at your desk and feel sweat running down the inside of your upper arms and the sides of your abdomen, from the perspiration springs in your arm pits, the natural environment does not favor the function or longevity of complex, tight tolerance, electro-mechanical devices.  In a practical application of our newly found data processing skills, we in the class ran the report cards every six weeks.  Now I won’t connect the custom of the head football coach to award strokes with a paddle to jocks who didn’t maintain a “C” or better in each subject  (one stroke for a “D” and two for an “F”) with the occasional error in generating the report cards, even though coincidence  might seem to favor errors in the report cards of those jocks who did not maintain good relationships with we geeks.

HOW DOES “DATA PROCESSING” RELATE

You may be questioning the relationship of “data processing” to the functioning of a computer.  They basically are the same process.  The restrictions of utilizing an accounting machine with the storage and data manipulation taking place physically on paper media promoted a systemic view when I was able to program an actual computer.  All the requirements for computer processing were there, although restricted by the paper media, 80 bytes of data per card initially and later 96 bytes of data in the IBM System 3.  Doesn’t sound like an impressive improvement but it allows 20% more data per file.  Realize that this system was the primary method of data organization for many businesses and was the system in place in the early space program of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  NASA contractors, such as General Electric, had groups of card punch machines and operators, called “Keypunch Shops”, where the data on forms completed by hand was recorded on “punch cards”.  After the data was entered the resulting cards and forms were passed to a similar machine called a “Verifier”, where the data was reentered to check the accuracy of the initial entries.  This also helped in the case of the hand entered data’s legibility being questionable, two guesses being equal was better than one.  If the data was found to be incorrect, the card was reproduced with the correct data and the group submitted to the down stream processes for mechanical sorting and report generation.  Also realize that there were humans who’s job title was “Computer”, who were performing space flight orbital calculations used in the early days of the space program.  With today’s digital devices it is hard sometimes to realize how basic methodology was used in many technical achievements of the past.

FALSE SECURITY

One benefit of performing data processing for the High School, besides the practical experience, was the perception that a student with a “punch card” in hand was on official business and was to have access to all of the facility.  Most of us who performed the processing would keep an 80 column punch card folded in our pocket, ready to put to use when we needed to go somewhere out of our area.  Just pull it out of your pocket, straighten it out a bit and hold it conspicuously in your hand (if held in the middle the crease was harder to notice by those who knew the normal appearance).  I wasn’t brave enough to actually put it to the ultimate test by leaving the school but suspect other braver or foolhardy souls were up to the task.  This was the days before campus violence was a concern, people regularly drove their pickup trucks (it is the south) to school with their shotguns or rifles in the gun rack mounted in the back windshield.  I don’t recall anyone seriously wishing harm by gunfire on anyone else and with all the civil rights activities in progress, there was ample friction if one were looking for such.  Things were much quieter than the national news media made it out to be, but even then they had an audience to appease.

IMPRESSIVE FACILITY TOUR

My mother’s first real job was in data entry, working for a NASA contractor during the early space program and as a result she, and by default, I had enhanced access to the basic technology involved.  She later worked for Sperry Univac and at my urging arranged for a couple of my friends and I to tour the Computational Laboratory (Complab) on the Marshall Space Flight grounds.  The Complab had three Univac 1108’s combined in a system which (among other things more mundane) conducted the countdown checkout for whatever rocket was in the process of launching.  In Huston, Texas, there was five 1108’s in a similar, larger arrangement who flew the bird as soon as it lifted off the launch pad.  With liftoff, the Marshall Center facility would begin data reduction from the flight.  Rumor had it that within a few minutes the system was severely behind, playing catch up for several days.  My friends and I marveled at the size of the system, rows of cabinets, large drum storage units, seven high speed printers in a row and to know there was thirty six terminals attached and scattered over the Marshall Center was amazing.  It looked like something from the popular science fiction movies being produced depicting a computer takeover of humanity.  If I performed the math correctly, I determined that the cell phone from a fruit company had several times the computing capability of either of these computer assemblies.

A REAL COMPUTER AT LAST

In 1970 I enrolled in the local junior college, majoring in Computer Science.  The machine of choice was an IBM 1401,  the first transistorized, mainframe commercial computer, which came with 16K of core storage ram, two disk drives, a 600 line per minute printer and a combination  (Hollerith) card reader/punch.  It isn’t obvious now but in these days “punch cards” were an important form of storage and often the main form of storage since non volatile memory was not common and mass storage was expensive.  I later worked for one organization that retained a backup stash of all the punch cards ever produced.  There was a large stack of boxes of cards kept in a non climate controlled storage warehouse with other unrelated products.  I can only imagine what would happen if they ever needed to re-enter the paper cards into the system after being stacked in a humid warehouse for an extended period of time but I suppose it did provide a bit of reassurance or at a least an opportunity to claim they did their best to preserve the data.

When you started up a mainframe there was no startup instructions in it’s memory.  In order to initiate the processing of instructions the hardware was permanently wired to read the data in the first punch card in the card reader and install the instructions to a specific area of the RAM.  The processor would then execute this set of instructions to initiate execution of the instructions (program/software) immediately following.  Since this initial card actually started the computers operation from a totally blank memory content, it was called a “Bootstrap Loader” from the term “picking one’s self up by the boot straps, i.e., starting from nothing” and the process of waking the system was called “Booting Up”.

IBM had a policy of very generous rental rates to educational institutions in order to increase preference for their equipment among the newly trained in the fledgling computer business.  Our instructor began by setting up a company which made widgets, run by Mr. Graybeard, for whom we were to program all the pieces of software necessary to allow the company to function and over the next three quarters we, under a development schedule, programmed the required software.  My buddy Kim and I also attempted to produce some applications which we felt had potential for profit, rudimentary, customizable, pop art pieces for which we. without success attempted to stimulate a  market.  The local high school had a class who spent one day a week experiencing the digital computer world by working with a language called Fortran (formula/translation).  The compiler for Fortran was sourced in a large card deck which was loaded to a disk pack (the size of a small wash basin) and the programs were compiled from that disk.  Kim and I undertook to create a version of the compiler with less technical, more  humorous error messages bordering on the asinine.  The compiler was a critical success for a couple of weeks until the novelty wore off.

Now I made a critical mistake due to my short sightedness by stopping my Junior College education.  I did not see the advent of micro-computers and their availability to transform the world.  A large main frame computer at this time had 100 kilo-bites of ram and this limited its capability, it was hugely expensive and the support facility was extensive.  Just did not see the advent of micro-computers at all.

Another error in judgement was in part due to my overconfidence.  My major was Computer Science and minor was Art.  My instructor gave the class evaluation tests to rank the students potential for excelling as programmers (coders).  The testing indicated that my potential was average and my instructor suggested he could help me get a scholarship to a four year institution with the intent of combining computers and graphics.  I declined and now wonder what that could have led to considering the huge developments in that area.  With any effort, I would have been on the cutting edge of computer graphics by default.

https://youtu.be/JaRzExHoUl0

NOT PROGRAMMING, OPERATING

My next episode in the digital computer environment was operating IBM 360 computer mainframes, with a whopping 64K of core storage ram, in the banking industry.  Prior to computers accounts were maintained manually with ledgers, bank pass books and writing utensils.  Even though all transactions were still accomplished utilizing pieces of paper, the ability to read the paper transactions directly into a computer and have the computer perform all the updates was a real improvement.  I am sure the reduction in opportunity for humans to accidentally or deliberately create leakage of funds was also a great incentive for the adoption of computer systems.   At the end of the day, each teller would encode in the lower right corner of each paper transaction, codes which would indicate whether it was a credit or debit and the amount of the transaction.  The encoding machine would generate a tape which would be compared to the adding machine tape the teller generated as the day progressed in order to verify that at least the total of the transactions was the same.  The bundles of transactions, with the tape attached by a rubber band, was shipped to the computer processing center by courier.  Just as a side note, one of the couriers had a son named Charlie Hodge who for those who are not familiar with the start of Rock and Roll, was one of the first guitarists for a fellow named Elvis Presley (just had to put that in).

The bundles were separated by specially encoded cards, sent through a Magnetic Character Reader  and the transactions recorded on magnetic tape.  Accounting personnel would compare the resulting printout totals and the manually totaled items that could not be read by the machine with the total on the encoding machine tape for accuracy.  If the totals did not correspond a merry chase was initiated for the offending error generating item(s).  Sometimes hours would be spent addressing a few cents of outage but since these accounting personnel were earning entry level wages for semi skilled, monotonous work, there was little cost involved.  Occasionally, in a fit of desperation (we worked six nights a week and if everything went well, Saturday night was still salvageable), a corresponding error would “occur”, always to be discovered later in the week by real accountants with the authority to wash it out of the system.  The physical checks themselves were sorted on the magnetic character reader so they could be delivered to a large room, containing electronic rotating file cabinets and stored by account number to be returned to the account holder with their monthly statement.  There would be some items returned in paper carriers due to the inability of the MCR to read all the digits and needing the numbers reprinted manually.  Occasionally a long lost transaction would be found in the machine and periodically a transaction with a staple would find it’s way into the system, causing a jam and the shredding of dozens of items.  On one occasion a novice MCR operator failed to properly clean the machine prior to starting the entry run.  Multiple incorrect reads led to a very long eight hours of additional effort and huge delay in the exit of items going to the Federal Reserve banks.

A JOKE GONE POTENTIALLY WRONG

Banks in the 1970 accumulated and stored customer’s written checks and returned the originals with the monthly statement.  In order to economize that laborious process, the checks were run through magnetic character readers repeatedly to sort the items into account number order and returned to the bank of origination.  The way this functioned was the checks were run through the reader initially and the customer bank items were separated from the transit items, other banks items, which were packaged for transport to the regional Federal Reserve Bank by courier.  After all the items were accounted for and the days receipts balanced, the customer’s checks were run through the magnetic character readers repeatedly to sort the physical documents, which were packaged for return to our customer’s (23 banks, 19 were owned by the organization which owned our data processing facility and 4 were correspondent banks contracting their services).  This process was time consuming, dull and easily mishandled.  We had two IBM 1419 magnetic character readers, very loud machines in a relatively confined room and during the sorting process there were portable racks filled with trays of items, tens of thousands of items.  On one night of levity, I was running one 1419 and another employee was running the other.  The noise level was so high that standing next to each other and shouting to communicate barely did the job.  I am loading items into my reader when I noticed an odd noise, kind of a popping sound and I looked around expecting to find a mechanical cause.  I instead noticed smoke but also I could hear the popping much more distinctly.  Glancing at the glass windows separating our little world from Accounting I could see the faces of the balancing crew pressed to the glass and a lot of apparent (but not audible) laughter.  I then realized that the crew had thrown a lit pack of firecrackers into the room and were reacting to the apparent lack of reaction to them.  The team member running the other 1419 apparently never realized there was an issue.  I later learned that the crew’s enjoyment was tempered by the fear that a violent reaction might have resulted in a “bull in a china shop” and  in a huge number of sorted items winding up spilled on the floor.  It was somewhat satisfying that they realized the downside of their practical joke.

COMPUTER ECONOMICS AND SOFTWARE INFLUENCES

In the early days of commercial digital computer main frames, the computer was the more expensive investment and the programmer (or coder) was the less expensive part of the puzzle.  A huge mainframe might have RAM memory totaling 1/2 MB., the programmer was required to use all the techniques at hand to conserve both RAM and magnetic media storage.  Typical disk storage media weighed multiple pounds and the capacity was measured in the hundreds of MB.  Conserving  this resource often led to an anticipated issue such as the millennium bug (from conserving storage by truncating the year notation in a date to two digits) and the unanticipated problem resulting from the truncation of the identification number encoded in a data entry batch separation card without realizing the truncated number was identical to the truncated transit routing of a Norwegian bank, thus causing the computer to incorrectly total batches of transactions when a transaction on that bank was read.  The millennium bug potential was realized in the 70’s but very few people anticipated that 1970’s software would still be running or influencing computing at the turn of the century.

MORE THAN A FOPA

As a bank holding company facility in a world of primitive hardware by today’s standards, we ran a variety of software applications.  At one of my previous positions we ran shipping lists for a grocery company’s transportation department.  At this facility we ran an occasional, probably monthly, state Medicaid report.  We had two IBM360 mainframes, both had 64K of ram however the 360/22 had only one selector channel while the 360/30 had two, allowing it to send and receive data to the peripherals at the same (or close to the same) time.  This made it the faster system to perform data sorting.  The two systems each had four tape drives for mass storage and shared eight disc drives.  These disk drives utilized removable media, basically a stack of about six platters with magnetic surface coating and multiple read/write heads which were projected above and below each surface.  The disk assemblies weighed several pounds, had plastic covers which were installed as part of the removal process and were surprisingly limited in capacity relative to todays standard.  We had a cabinet with sliding drawers which was used to store recording media not in use (the discs were mostly for manipulating data, tape for long time storage).  We were always careful in placing the discs into the cabinet due to their expense and we were warned about a characteristic of the cabinet in which a quickly placed disc with an energetic drawer push would sometimes set off a chain reaction.  The pushed drawer would close and bounce open and the weight of its contents would cause the cabinet to lean slightly to the front.  A second drawer would slowly open, tilting the cabinet a bit more, encouraging the remaining drawers to open, the weight of all the drawers and discs would cause the cabinet to flip face first into the floor, damaging the discs in most cases.

Now back to the Medicaid run, which included a large (by the standards of the day) sort.  We would shut down the 360/22, put a “scratch” or work disc in place of its Operating System disc (for maximum disc storage for the sort), load a data tape containing the data for sorting and a “scratch” tape for the data after it was sorted.  The sort usually required three to four hours to complete, so after starting the run my co-operator and I adjourned to the dark early AM parking lot to wait for the computer to do its work.  Before boom boxes, musical entertainment usually came from automotive sound systems, so we settled in for a lively discussion of the news of the day while enjoying the music of the middle 1970’s.  A couple of hours into the sort we observed the arrival of another operator, one whom was not a production operator but handled the compiling of programs and thus was not as familiar as we with the details of system characteristics.  As we continued our entertainment we suddenly looked at each other in realization that he might try to restart the 360/22.  The two computers shared a disc controller and when both systems were up and running would co-operate but if one system was restarted it would have no manners and yank the disc controller away from the running computer causing havoc.  We hustled through the building side door just in time to see him punch the power button on the 360/22 with his thumb.  Of course it did not start up having no Operating System Disc and the constantly blinking lights on the 360/30 were no longer blinking.  We played dumb (not a real stretch) and came up with a bogus issue for the non start of the 360/22.  When he left the computer room we quickly restored everything to its normal arrangement, returned the data tape to the vault and never spoke of the event again.

SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS

Several commonalities with these IBM computer systems included the lack of any operator interface utilizing a video component.  If the system had an interface, other than a large collection of dials and buttons, it was a glorified IBM Selectric typewriter, which could print 10 characters per second.  One of the bank programmers decided to output data on customers meeting certain criteria to the operator interface,  not usually a problem but occasionally the program listed an unusually large number of accounts.  While only printing the names and account numbers, maybe 50 characters, the Selectric would space the whole length of the unit.  The total width of the unit was about 132 characters so each data set required 13 seconds to print and with the print buffer being small, the whole computer was often waiting on the operator interface.  Another commonality was that the primary programming language was usually Assembler, which was just a step above Machine language.  When using Assembler, the housekeeping duties were enormous in that every detail, right or wrong, was pretty much under the direct control of the programmer.  Symbolic languages were just beginning to make an appearance, mainly due to machine resources being scarce and expensive.

POLLUTING THE ATMOSPHERE

I worked for a bank holding company who’s computer center processed data for 23 banks, most were of the same organization, however several were correspondent banks who paid for the service.  Basically they were paying their competitors to process their data, a somewhat potentially insecure arrangement.  This arrangement resulted in the necessity to operate six days a week with a smaller group of banks on Saturday.  I worked the back shift for a while on Saturdays when there was little attention of upper management.  Close tolerances, particularly on the disc drive flying heads (the read/write heads were supported above the recording media by a cushion of air generated by the disc pack’s rotation) dictated that any additional particulate matter (as in tobacco smoke) in the atmosphere of the computer room was frowned upon.  Casting caution to the wind considering the lack of management attention normal to the weekend operation, there was frequently cigars and Boone’s Farm  “Strawberry Hill” wine secreted into the computer room.  In those days everything was printed on paper to be distributed the following morning and thus there was about three cases of paper consumed per night.  By slicing the bottom from the box housing a case of paper, a perfect method of concealment was created by placing the contraband under the box positioned back into the stack of full cases.  A minor irritation of the back shift was a result of being stopped by the police on my way home (Saturday processing fewer banks often allowed an early am. departure).  My explanation for an early Sunday morning journey home from work at the bank was met with skepticism on more than one occasion.

PROGRAMMER (CODER) ISSUES

The first Symbolic language I encountered was Univac (Sperry Rand) Report Program Generator (RPG), where the programmer (coder) described the incoming data and the desired report to be produced and the computer created the software to accomplish the task.  On the human side of the programmer or coder hired to manipulate the software of this system, whose name was Tommy (few females seemed interested, or perhaps encouraged to train in the field) and he and I had the same classes at our local Junior College.  The primary difference in our careers at this point was that he had remained in school and I had, after totally failing to see the advent of micro computers, dropped my studies and found employment operating mainframes.  A second trait particular to Tommy was that he was a messy eater and when we went to lunch together, he would wear a raincoat to deflect spillage, depending on the type of food we selected.  He wasn’t particularly careless in his consumption, he just had a lack of coordination which contributed to the necessity of extensive protection of his casual wardrobe.

SPERRY/UNIVAC SYSTEM

In between three IBM 360 systems at two banks, I had the opportunity to operate their main competing systems, the Univac 9000 series.  The Univac 9000 series ram was in increments of 8 K to a max of 36 K and instead of core storage it used a plated wire memory.  The original disk storage system was a single plate packaged in a plastic housing with ruby pads to maintain the correct magnetic head spacing.  The printer used an oscillating bar with  a top speed of 300 lines per minute and a propensity to vibrate the whole computer since it was one unified piece of hardware, with the exception of the disk drive.

HARDWARE CHANGES

Another system I encountered was the IBM 1130 which was designed to replace the 300 series systems.  I had limited experience with the system but two characteristics I remember distinctly was that the internal disk drive disk pack, when removed, was reminiscent of a glorified toilet seat.  The second characteristic was described to me by an IBM Customer Engineer (CE for short) named Bob.  The 1130 was initially prone to intermittent RAM memory glitches and the review of the assembly process identified the culprit.  Apparently at the point where the RAM memory system assembly was complete, two mounting holes were drilled in the frame of the assembly.  Some of the resulting metal chips were escaping into the assembly and later caused the glitches.  The procedure to correct the issue, as described by the Bob, was to remove the memory assembly, turn it over and smack it against the floor several times with gusto.  He said customers who witnessed the repair were generally puzzled and unimpressed.

THE HEAT IS ON

The old mainframe computers generated a lot of heat and required air conditioning.  As I previously stated, growing up in the south, I had an appreciation of working in a dry, cool environment, especially since at this time air conditioning was relatively scarce in other than retail facilities.  Ceiling fans were usually the alternative to expensive environmental control equipment.  One stormy spring, I stood on top of the building housing the computer systems and watched a tornado pass a couple of miles to the west.  It was impressive watching it approach a chemical plant which had a tall burn off tower in constant use.  I don’t know if the low pressure of the tornado was pulling the flammables out of the tower at an accelerated rate or if the plant operators knowing that the tornado was approaching were dumping everything possible or both, but the normal 30′ flame was now huge and lighting up the clouds with an orange glow.  In passing, the tornado knocked down power lines supplying the city and the computer center.  A generator was rented due to the extended power outage, however it was sized to power the computers but not the air conditioning.  The uncontrolled heat caused intermittent electrical glitches requiring months to eliminate.  Live and learn.

WANNABE

While working for the bank holding company, I am not sure if I fell victim to Delusions of Grandeur or severe overconfidence, however I renewed my friendship with a friend from High School named Larry.  He had business acumen to start, along with some partners, a store called “Sights and Sounds” which stocked a large assortment of 60’s and 70’s pop culture items such as posters, clothing, of course incense and a large collection of cutting edge music on LP’s.  Larry and I discussed the business potential of mainframe computers and loosely developed a business plan we thought would appeal to banks and other businesses.  Larry had a business relationship with the president of our local bank and approached him to give us a chance to present our vision.  He agreed, Larry set up an appointment and I proceeded to assemble cost estimates (this is where the delusions come in, I had no experience with accounting, cash flow, capital expenditures, documentation of the plan, programming or operation of the Sperry/Univac hardware we were proposing or legal concerns).  The day of the presentation, Horace allowed us to use the conference room and brought along some additional bank personnel to hear our delusion.  We had envisioned that the bank would be so enamored with our brilliant plan that they would immediately drop their relationship with my employer and fund our project.  At the end of the spiel, Horace thanked us and explained that they were contractually bound to my employer, but if in the future conditions became such that our plan would work to their advantage they would be in touch.  We thanked them for their time and went away, i suspect both of us were relieved that we did not make a convincing proposal and were not bound to deliver the system.   On the flip side, I take pride that the system we proposed was very similar to what is being used today with the exception of technologies such as small optical character readers and printers.  All entries would be made manually on terminals, however that was indirectly being performed on paper under the process of the day.

MOVING ON UP,  I THINK?

Later in my checkered career I found myself working for a university as a grease monkey on a NHTSA sponsored research project investigating the automobile repair industry.  As the story goes the government agency decided there needed to be a research program related to the repair industry relative to cost, accuracy and honesty of the shops themselves.  One of our government officials, upon finding out about the project, pointed out that the four original sites of the project were all in states which had vehicle inspection laws and if they wanted to accurately quantify the industry they needed a site in a non inspection state.  We became the fifth site.  I started out as a vehicle inspector but after an extended term and with some political intrigue among the projects upper management, i found myself performing the projects statistical analysis.  This later developed into a return to recovering data from the huge quantity of files, in folders, in cabinets and missed in the original data entry.  I had a clerk that took a printout of the projects participants and their cars which were in the project.  She would compare the printout to the files to isolate vehicles which were omitted in the entry for a variety of causes.  I would utilize a card punch machine to re-key the data in order to recover it.  This effort helped us to reach our goals of year, make and model numbers.

The university had an agreement with Sperry Univac where they provided a building and utilities for an 1106 mainframe in exchange for a portion of the machines computing time.  The balance of the time was sold to manufacturers who remotely communicated over data grade telephone lines.  The room had a nice glass front which i took was designed to display the facility to all that entered the front door of the Research Institute.  It was impressive particularly in its day, with all the tape drives and high speed printers.

The first personal computer I saw was just a medium size black box with double throw toggle switches on the front which were utilized to both address memory positions and program that position.  No keyboard or display, the owners favorite game was based on the prediction of which indicator light was next to be lighted based on an algorithm.

The first personal scientific calculator was almost the size of a brick, had a digital display only and was in a commons area attached to a counter top by a security device.  My initial impression was that it was not an inexpensive device intended for the common math student.

I will continue with this fascinating(?) narration of my early experience with digital computing as more bits and pieces bubble to the forefront of my mind.  I hope some of this has been interesting.  Haveagoodun

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