Remember the First Time You Used a Computer?

[Guest Starbuck]

A friend asked me yesterday when I first used a computer. I remember WHERE it was (at a publishing company in San Francisco) and WHAT it was (an IBM System/34, a multi-user machine that weighed 700 pounds and cost $100K plus). I can only narrow the WHEN down to either 1980 or 1981. Only those of us who worked on the financial side of the company used it—not the editorial, sales or marketing people—something I remember because I later moved from one side of the company to the other. Another memory: the “old guys” in the company—men in their late 40s and early 50s!—never touched the thing. I think they perceived it as a “clerical” tool, something beneath their executive dignity; if they needed information off the computer, somebody in his/her 20s or 30s generated it and delivered a print-out.

[whipped guy]

Yes, it was September 1975. I had no clue as to what I was going so I gave up in total frustration and walked away from the damn thing. Later that day I heard that all the computers in the department were "down". They were down for the better part of the week. To this day I believe that I caused the problem. I was only assigned to that area for a week never to return. Needless to say I did not touch another computer for years... and I mean YEARS!

[+ sf westcoaster]

December 1957. The company I was working had an IBM 650, a first generation business computer. Looking to add a programmer to their staff they asked a group of us to take a test, which I later learned was testing one's aptitude for programming computers. Apparently I did well and was selected. They sent me to three weeks school at IBM, gave all the manuals, which when stacked together did not come close to an inch of materials.

[+ quoththeraven]

Sometime in junior high, probably in 7th grade, which would put it in the 1968-1969 school year. The math department had arranged for access to the mainframe maintained by the multinational corporation that dominated the local economy (you'd recognize the name, but telling you which company it was would pinpoint the location) for a group of students selected for their math ability. We were asked to write a simple program in BASIC and given some basic (ha) training for doing so. I supplemented this (which, being all aural, wasn't very helpful) by consulting the training materials on BASIC my father (a chemical engineer) had received at a recent seminar run by his employer, the same multinational whose computer we were using.

 

I wrote a program that calculated the squares and square roots of specified numbers. The head of the math department didn't think it would work. He was wrong. I later took a programming course in college (Fortran) and used statistical software packages to engage in social science research. Looking back, perhaps I missed an opportunity, but at the time, I wasn't interested in following my father's footsteps into a technical field. I was more interested in the social sciences and humanities.

[+ Charlie]

In 1966, I was hired by the business office of a major hospital as an administrator, but one of the things they expected me to do was learn how to program their big main frame computer--on my own! My boss understood computers, but he had no time to teach me, and he figured that since I had a master's degree from an Ivy League university, I would be able to figure it out for myself. Wrong!! The keypunch operators and the kid who handled the big discs understood more about it than I did. My best friend was a systems programmer for the NY Stock Exchange, and when I discussed my problems with him, he assured me that I was a hopeless case. I bluffed my way through the job for six months while looking for another job in which I wouldn't have to go near a computer, and then resigned to take a position as a college professor.

 

I didn't touch a computer again until 1984, when my spouse brought home a new machine called a Macintosh, which didn't require me to do anything except turn it on and click on a mouse.

[+ honcho]

in the 1966 school year math students at my high school were given access to the computer at the local technical college.

 

I seem to recall that it was an IBM 1401, but I may be misrembering the model number.

 

 

After her divorce in 1963, my mom went back to school, got a degree in applied math and was writing programs run on a

CDC6600 at the Lovelace foundation (in fortran on punch cards).

 

I remember inadvertently knocking a card deck over and her making me putting them all back in order (consuling a couple

of program listing) 1964-1965 if that counts as 'use"

 

The college I went to had an IBM1130 which I used to do my calculations for freshman physics and chemstry labs. (1968).

[geoffk]

wow you guys go way back.

 

i remember using punch cards in college in 1977,

i had so much trouble with them, thank god this geek kid helped me with my input!

 

but sometime in around 1979, my company acquired an apple and i put this huge spread sheet that was done manually on it.. Damn management was impressed....

[gallahadesquire]

1963

Illinois Institute of Technology

MACHINE LANGUAGE: binary, then octal, then decimal, then assembler.

[+ Gar1eth]

I might have tried a computer before this, but the computer I remember was my 1st was in a little room connected to my 10th grade high school geometry classroom in 1976 when I was 15. My geometry teacher was also the computer math teacher- Mrs. Oates. We had two WANG Computers. Each computer had a cassette drive. And I know we had one - possibly two dot matrix computers. Later when I was a senior, I took the two quarter computer math class and learned BASIC. In college I took the first courses in WAT-5 (a form of FORTRAN) and Pascal. I did ok at the 1st classes learning syntax. But when I tried the second semester- with the more involved problems requiring logical thinking-I failed miserably.

 

Gman

[rvwnsd]

Yes. My mother's employer had a "family day" open house and I got to play with the Wang machine they used for accounting and bookkeeping functions. I believe it was the mid- to late-1970's. The first time I used a computer on a regular basis was in high school in Chicago, circa 1980. It was one of those punch card type computers and we programmed in Fortran.

[+ deej]

My earliest computers were mainframe terminals (both green screen and thermal paper). When I was in high school a lot of us worked part time entering the University's card catalog into the computer. I also remember working on budget numbers which started by putting the telephone handset into an acoustic coupler and dialing the computer's number. If it was busy, you tried again later.

 

My first PC was in 1985 or so. I had a mailing list on 10,000 metal addressograph plates. The mailing machines were constantly breaking down and repair parts had to come from Germany. They brought me a PC and a copy of dBase and said "Your first mailing is in 30 days. Go." I was hooked immediately. (And I made my deadline. But it was a LONG 30 days.)

[TruHart1]

First Computer Experience

 

I first worked in Fortran while I was majoring in Civil Engineering in college, around 1970 or so, basically typing and running punch cards, trying for certain outputs. We did each punch card, checked for errors and then turned our batch of cards into a TA in the computer programming department who then ran the sequence of cards for us overnight, generating a printout which we picked up the next day, if the punch cards had no errors. If there were errors we got the batch of cards back with a big red "ERROR" printed by hand in magic marker on the first card and we had to check out each card for syntax errors after which we went through the whole process once again!

 

In about 1983, at work, we got a couple of brand new IBM PC's. A supervisor asked me to take a look and play around with one. I promptly loaded the recovery floppy and accidently trashed the hard drive set up (I didn't realize it then but I must have reformatted the hard drive!) When IT was called in to check the problem I was banned from doing ANYTHING on the PC's for about 8 months, until they decided to furnish us with some training. I remember how angry the IT guy was with me and how completely stupid I felt!

 

TruHart1

[+ Gar1eth]

My earliest computers were mainframe terminals (both green screen and thermal paper). When I was in high school a lot of us worked part time entering the University's card catalog into the computer. I also remember working on budget numbers which started by putting the telephone handset into an acoustic coupler and dialing the computer's number. If it was busy, you tried again later.

 

My first PC was in 1985 or so. I had a mailing list on 10,000 metal addressograph plates. The mailing machines were constantly breaking down and repair parts had to come from Germany. They brought me a PC and a copy of dBase and said "Your first mailing is in 30 days. Go." I was hooked immediately. (And I made my deadline. But it was a LONG 30 days.)

 

In college we had dummy terminals connected to a mainframe Vax machine. Well there was a 'Show Users' Command which some of us found out. When you entered it, you could see all the screen names of everyone using the computer. If you knew the screen names of some of your fellow classmates, you could 'text' them a message which would show up in their terminal. But you could also text them a blank line. When I took Wat 5 form of Fortran, the terminals sent each line to the main computer immediately. When you texted a blank line to someone, it was sent to their screen immediately and would cause the cursor on whatever line of text they were working on to advance a full line up. It was great for disrupting their program. It was like hitting the Return Key on a typewriter while someone was trying to type a sentence. As a callow collegian, I thought that was hilarious. The next time I took a computer class a few semesters later, they had bought more advanced terminals. The new ones were like whole screen code editors. You could type in the entire program before sending it off to the mainframe. And when you sent a message to someone's terminal, an icon appeared at the bottom of the screen informing you that there was a message waiting. So there was no more sending a blank line to interrupt someone's typing.

 

Gman

[SteveEscort]

Mine was sometime in the early 80's in primary school. It was a BBC computer (they were popular things built by Acorn using the country's state TV provider name for some unknown reason, I never knew why, I can't imagine the American networks creating their own computers for schools).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Micro

[AdamSmith]

1975, one class of 2nd-year high school algebra was offered with FORTRAN. We used a teletype terminal in a little room at school with dial-up connection to a mainframe owned by a local insurance company that rented capacity to school systems throughout the state. All we users had a key to that room and formed a community of protohackers hanging there nights and weekends.

 

Besides storage volumes for your programs, the system had a message forum for discussing coding issues where of course like every forum flame wars broke out both on the subject at hand and occasionally on topics far afield from programming. But as few adults were competent to log in and the few who were got a kick out of the flame wars judging by their occasional comments therein, somehow our online community survived and thrived with zero moderation. Maybe something about the zeitgeist of the '70s...

[+ SimplyAdam]

The beginning of third grade, 1990. (My family had just moved three dirt roads removed from a concrete one with four farms on it. Three more paved roads and we'd arrive at our "Agricultural Elementary School," which had about ten computers.)

 

At the onset of freshman year, 1996, our school still didn't have enough computers for keyboarding class. I learned how to type on an electric typewriter (and still type 80 words a minute to this day - thank you, Mrs. Graber)! By 1997 (when I was 14), we had enough computers for a comprehensive class. I'd hand-write my school reports until senior year. (God, and the first time using the Internet. I was elated to find extensive data on my adolescent idol, Amy Grant. To hell with Encarta!)

 

Remember book-by-book research and legible handwriting? Remember pre-soundbite patience?

 

It's amazing how technology has changed our lives and, day-by-day, increasingly influences how we interact with one another - not to mention the actual wiring of our brains.

 

(If anyone is interested, I wrote about my favorite Christmas gift of all time - my beloved second-hand electric typewriter - at http://www.simplyadam.com/blog/wired-to-wonder. I can still feel its vibration under my fingertips and hear its insistent hum. Hmm...)

[+ MasssageGuy]

My first time using a computer was taking a FORTRAN class in College. It was the day of the IBM Mainframe with punched cards. We had to code our programs on coding sheets and then keypunch them on IBM Cards. 80 Bytes long.

 

Then we submitted them for the Computer Operator to enter via RJE (Remote Job Entry).

 

You then waited for your batch job to run and hung out by the window waiting for the operator to give you your output (i.e. printout). We didn't interact with the Mainframe on a real time basis until "Time Sharing" arrived much later.

 

Working at Bechtel in San Francisco, was my first programming job using real time access to the Mainframe. Most of the time we used acoustic coupled modems running at 300 baud.

 

Needless to say Moore's law is alive and well.

 

Thank goodness I learned to type (on a manual typewriter) in the 7th grade. My only regret is that I should have also learned to play the piano as well as I can type! Can't imaging looking at the keyboard as I'm typing.

[bobchitown]

1977 - punching cards and them walking them over to another building to see if they'd run to completion - they seldom did. Also using a TI silent 700 to communicate with a mainframe - that was exciting. A year or so later using a telephone coupler to transmit messages - orders, actually.

 

Not too long ago I was working with someone to set up a transmission file and the expressed their needs in terms of columns - as in "the invoice date goes in columns 17-30".

[+ honcho]

Slightly off topic, inspired by the reference to Moore's Law, I'd like to share something I read once:

 

"If the automotive industry had made as much progress as the computer industry since the 1950's, a Rolls-Royce would cost $2.50; but the problem would be that it would fit in a match-box".

[Guest]

Ah, I remember playing very primitive printed games at the Lawrence Hall of Science on a teletype:

http://www.epstudiossoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/teletype_asr33.jpg

[nate_sf]

First computer for me to try out was a Commodore PET in the 7th grade. I learned a bit of BASIC and got it to run some simple programs. I was crazy for it, and later that year something called a Timex Sinclair was made available for the masses, but they sold out so I never got one. Apparently they were pretty crappy so maybe just as well.

 

First computer of my very own was an Apple IIC. My parents bought it for me at Macy's of all places. Eventually in grad school I got a hand-me-down Macintoch SE from my sister.

 

Remember book-by-book research and legible handwriting? Remember pre-soundbite patience?

 

I was in grad school in the 90s and there was not much of any research on the internet yet, so yep it was all through books. Grad students were allowed to check out as many books as they wanted for the full semester, so there would be a rush on the best books at the beginning of the semester. However if you really needed something that was checked out you could have it "recalled" and whoever had it had to bring it back. My desk, crowned with my Mac SE, was surrounded by piles and piles of books, each with bookmarks for the relevant parts. So much more labor-intensive than now!

[gallahadesquire]

I remember the RCA 303 at Cranberry-Mellon University in 1968.

 

We'd load a program from tape, and stick a Hollerith card into the teletype.

That made the teletype the rhythm section.

 

We then did a core memory dump and, with an AM transistor radio tuned to the right

station, we could listen to Ravel's BOLERO.

[+ azdr0710]

a couple funny youtubes about early internet....some of this is familiar already, like the Couric/Gumbel exchange....

 

 

the funny recent Super Bowl commercial:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXCW-l8oYw

[tyro]

I think I was in 5th grade. Some Commodore something at school. Green letters on a black screen. My family bought a Commodore 64 for my sister and me. My fondest memories of it are playing Tapper and Frogger on it.

T

[nate_sf]

With all this computer nostalgia, if you haven't seen the show Halt and Catch Fire I'd recommend it. Very fun and well made 1980s period series set in the early days of PC development. It's on AMC, and I think the episodes from the first season can be watched online.