I was first in my class to have a calculator and when I started work (as a mere child) in the early 80s computer programs were loaded manually from reels of tape with holes in. The 'computer' was actually just a terminal linked by a modem to the bank's national computer centre. I worked there on the staff help desk after panic set in when they introduced terminals with screens! The actual computers took whole rooms to house the sort of memory you now get in the average mobile phone.
(An avant garde friend had an early mobile phone as big as his head - and that was pretty big! When he went to the bar we'd run out to the telephone box and call him to ask for crisps.)Our home's first remote control device was for a video recorder, but was attached by a lead! I used to carry around a cassette recorder (pictured above) before the Sony Walkman, and can vividly remember the first time I heard a CD - Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega.
Apart from a brief foray with a Commodore 64 and flirtation with an Amstrad wordprocessor, I first saw a home PC in about 1990, but as late as 1995 at the local newspaper we sent stories via an Olivetti keyboard and modem. At the printer, stories were quite literally 'cut' and 'pasted' onto mockups and the lines between them were put on manually using teeny tiny rolls of sticky tape with a line down the middle.
By 1996 I had a PC (a 256 with 4MB memory) and an email address - but I only knew 2 other people with emails! You couldn't imagine in those days that one day you'd own something like an iPad. It is not only music player and recorder, calculator, word processor, camera, means of communication, publishing device and video player. It's also camera, movie studio, orchestra, art studio, reference library and GPS. I've just been using Facetime (Skype for iPads) to talk to a friend working in Azerbaijan. And it used to take 6 months for a letter to reach my missionary uncle in deepest Congo but he has a satellite powered laptop now and I can wave to him on Google Earth... up to a point.
Care to share some of your 'old tech' stories - what was your most exciting new gadget in the 'old days'?
You've just reminded me. When I started work at University of Southampton, all email was via Telnet, on a blue screen. During lunch breaks, there was a polite queuing system to use the Elonex 386 for internet access. Number one search engine...Alta Vista! And, I remember opinion being sharply divided over Netscape. Just five short years on, and we were attending seminars in London, discussing the viabilty of WAP phones and how this level of internet connectivity would impact on HE students. Now, as you say, our lives have been transformed by iPads, and Androids. Anyone who says we're not living in exciting times, must surely be sleeping.
ReplyDeleteDon't be shy, 'M' - this was all when you worked for M15 wasn't it? ;-)
DeleteWhen on holiday the other week, I began playing with the retro radio in the cottage, and was transported back to a time of Radio 2, Terry Wogan and Killer Queen. Upon hearing the manual tuning whistles and whines, my daughter shrieked " It's just like one of those radios during the war."
ReplyDeleteOne day she'll be saying to her kids: I remember iPods ... Not like those little pills you have now!
DeleteI well remember being transfixed for hours by my first Sinclair Calculator. If iPhones had been around then my head would have exploded.
ReplyDelete'Set iPhone to 'stun'!'
DeleteAh yes cassette players, and then portable CD players, but I remember reel to reels in the early 60s. I have a recording of my granddad (who died in 1970) and me aged eighteen, made on one of those. I later converted it cassette and now have it on CD. I've always been a lover of gadgets and my family were early adopters of computer technology. Our first computer at home was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the 80s; some of the best games on that! In the classroom, as a teacher, I introduced BBC Micros (Acorn) and the programs for those were loaded using cassette tapes.
ReplyDeleteI don't think my grandad could have mastered the technology - he always cut people's heads off when he took photos... Erm, not literally!
DeleteRemember when you had to write the code to play 'tennis' with two cursors and a full stop? Ah those were the days... And yet, these are the days also
I remember when Pong was the latest craze. My brother and I played it all the time. I also remember getting my first Atari system. Oh the wasted hours...
ReplyDeleteI was never much into games, except Sim City ... The game of choice for closet town planners. And I just got it for iPad *blushes*
DeleteI remember when I was in the Lower Sixth and first saw a cassette tape. Flimsy little thing, I thought, it'll never catch on.
ReplyDeleteAha! That's what they said about Betamax ....
ReplyDeleteOur first computer was a TRS-80 (Radio Shack) It used a tape recorder to SAVE data. I still remember typing 'C Load' or 'C Save'.
ReplyDeleteSheer torture. I almost swore off computers after that one. And then Apple came out with the SE 30. My faith was restored.
If I only knew then what it would spawn.
... and remember pencils? ;-)
DeleteAh, I remember remote controls with leads! They don't seem as remote now as they did at the time. My Mum was a computer programmer and tells stories about room-sized computers using punch-cards and the like. We had a BBC Micro at home, and she wrote games for us. And they all took ages to load up on cassettes that made a strange droning noise, and usually crashed halfway through. Then an Amstrad word-processor as well, which seemed like magic. I was only a child but I used to beg my Dad to let me type his documents for fun, just to see the magic of letters appearing on a screen and being able to delete them again.
ReplyDeleteThat must be where all this began... he urge to print words on a page! I remember watching a scary film, eating popcorn in the dark with the 'remote on a lead' full stretch... the dog bounds in, trips over the wire, makes me jump out of my skin and sends the popcorn flying... what larks!
DeleteI think we are blooming lucky that the technology all took off when it did, or we would have missed the boat and described all gadgets as 'new fangled things'. I remember a tennis game I used to have. The players were just two white rectangles and the tennis ball was a white pixel. You needed to turn the knobs to hit the ball. Riveting!
ReplyDeleteThat was THE most exciting thing to do in 1983!
DeleteWhen I was at secretarial college learning typing, there were 12 of us in the class, 10 manual typewriters, and 2 electronic typewriters. We had to have a rota for the electronic ones (they were BEASTS of machines) and, my my if the rota got mixed up and you thought you'd missed your turn!
ReplyDeleteHad a go on a typewriter again recently... you had to be pretty strong to keep hammering away on one of those didn't you?
DeleteSuch wonderful memories. A sega system which loaded by cassette. Spending hours programming a new game only to get one bit of code wrong and having to start all over again. Seeing a computer just twice before I left school. Renting a PC four months in the late 1990s. Buying my first laptop around ten years ago.
ReplyDeleteSee what fun I would have missed if I hadn't blogged today! Awesome post.
Thanks, Ellie - glad it sparked a few memories!
DeleteI used to have one of those cassette recorders! Wow, that takes me back.
ReplyDeleteI had a thing about Richard Burton and used to carry one of these in my satchel all day so I could play his voice on my War of the Worlds cassette! *blushes*. Thanks for visiting! 8-)
DeleteLOL! Great post. I did my first MP3 download this year. Really entering the 21st Century!
ReplyDeleteI remember getting an answering machine because we were trying to sell a car and kept missing potential buyers. It felt like we'd caught fish in our net the first time we listened to all the messages! Lovely to see you on my blog yesterday :O)x
Thanks for returning the visit! I still struggle to programme the DVD recorder!
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