Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I started my programming career in the late 1960s programming a 1.5 million dollar computer that took up half the floor in a building that took up a full city block in downtown Houston. This was years before computers had screens.
My first ereading was done on an HP 95LX, an 11 ounce computer with a mono screen and no light that ran on 2 AA batteries and could run MS-DOS software. It had a speaker that could only buzz a bit. It's screen was very low resolution but I could read on it. There were no ebooks to buy and wouldn't be for years to come.
These days I read on a Samsung Galaxy S5 (and on a Kindle) that has probably 10,000 times the speed and probably more than a million times the capacity of that first computer and has an amazing screen as well. Reading on it is a snap. So is listening to books or watching videos.
The first one cost 1.5 million. The 95LX cost about $600. This Galaxy S5 was $200 brand new from Pure Talk a couple of months ago.
Yes things have gotten better. 
Barry |
I remember the IBM 7000 series from my (very) youth. They used 3 of these types (maybe 7070 or 7090 with maybe a 4 in the last digit to calculate orbits. They used 3 machines so they could vote on the most optimal (or correct). ((Those were the days!!!)
Anyway, they used a lot of 7040's at Universities and when I went, I had a friend, a grad student, who worked in the computer "lab." His boss came to him one day and said that he was tired of conducting tours of the great new school computer and all there was was a big blue box to show which was kind of a disappointment to most. Nothing exciting for the general public.
Anyway he asked my friend to design a "fake" (that word again) interface that would impress. So my friend got a bunch of lights, nixie tubes and other cute type displays and installed them on a panel for a large control cabinet that he put right next to the IBM. He put in some circuitry to cut things on and off in pleasing and sometimes erratic patterns. It was very impressive.
That friend and one other from that time, an instructor, both later went to work for NSA. (no such agency)