Computers I've Used
Ancient
Old
Recent |
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Japanese soroban (abacus). First used
about AD 200. The photos
show the number 573. The counters above the bar = 5; below the bar = 1 each.
Up until the early 1960's, skilled users of this device could calculate
faster than a person with a standard mechanical office calculator. |
 Part of a
Jacquard loom (invented 1804). Punched cards the size of one side of this part (about two
feet long) were connected together side-to-side to make "programs" for the
woven pattern. This part would rotate, with the cone-shaped pins at each end making the cards
register perfectly. This worked so well to replace humans that anti-machine
riots ensued. |
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My first computer - a "Geniac"
from the mid-1950s.
It was made of masonite and cheap light bulbs, but actually worked as a
binary calculating machine. |
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I got a chance to "use"
this IBM card-sorter when I was about 10, (1963) thanks to a relative who had one
in her office in NYC. |
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A "Nixie tube" numeric display. Banks
of these would be set next to each other to provide for large numbers to be
displayed. It's a neon-gas tube -- the selected digit 0-9 would be bright
orange. All 10 digits are stacked on top of each other. |
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Nixie tubes got hot and used a LOT of
power, and if you looked at them at an angle, you could see the numbers at
different levels within each tube, making them hard to read. Along came the
7-segment Light Emitting Diode (LED) -- low-power, cool-running, flat, and
so good-looking! |
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Crude, but effective. It took a little
getting used-to to make the J-stroke when carrying the result to the next
place, though. Yanking on the wire bail at the top cleared all to zero.
Batteries not included! ;-)
Great PDF with history and photos of this family of devices. |
 My
favorite K&E "log log duplex" model 4181-3 slide rule, made c. 1954. Both sides were covered with scales. Numeric,
that is, not snake-like. |
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Next (1968) came this
nifty circular slide rule, with a pull-out card jam-packed on both sides
with formulas. |
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My first electronic calculator, a
Rockwell. A real work-horse! |
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The first machine I
used to program in BASIC. A Teletype Model 33 was an input/output device
(keyboard and printer) with the optional ability to store and playback
recorded programs on a paper tape punch/reader, here seen on the left side
of the Teletype. This was in my high school, and in 1970, I used it to
communicate with the school district's single PDP-8 computer, which was
in another town. The B&W photo at left is such a PDP-8.
After high
school, I had no further access to computers for many years.
At left is a piece of paper data tape that I have
labeled for the most common characters. |
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Data General Eclipse S/120 minicomputer, on which I learned to program the scripting language part of its AOS operating system at GDT. |