Clueless Youth Struggle With Old Technology & Stuff We Grew Up With

[bill_g]

There is nothing like the machine gun staccato of a room full of experienced typists at +50wpm. It's an amazing sound.

I have a computer keyboard based on the old PS2 keyboard with the buckling springs. It is louder than the others that use membranes.

Yeah. In the early days of PC's all keyboards had audible haptics. I think they were trying to capture the sound and feel of the manual typewriters to ease the transition of technologies. It happened fast, and there were people that thought typewriters were better. But hey, you know, we inject noise in phone lines so people aren't uncomfortable during the silent periods of a call. In fact, it was called comfort noise.

[Volkonski]

This brings up another memory.

After grad school and starting my first job on Long Island I decided to take some business courses in the evening at Hofstra University including accounting. By then 4 function calculators had become common amongst college students.

I did not have one. I still finished the accounting final before everyone else and got an almost perfect score. Part of this was due to mental arithmetic tricks my maternal grandmother (BS psychology and MS biochemistry Boston University about 1915) had taught me. She also baked the most amazing date-filled cookies and knitted all my scarves and mittens.

[Rolodex]

An organist/choir director colleague of mine had a Christmas gathering for his youth choristers (and parents of course) at his place. Apparently, the most popular activities for the kids were trying out his collection of typewriters. It is interesting that he collects old typewriters since, given his young age, I doubt he had much experience typing papers or other things on typewriters (except maybe some small stuff like labels for his dad's business while growing up).

I guess I am not the only organist with a fondness for old typewriters. If I had more space, I might have a collection myself.

He also gives names to the ones in his collection. The old manual one I have had only been called one thing in the past (f****** POS), usually when keys/levers would stick, the paper would not go in straight, the paper would slip out of alignment, the ribbon would get all messed up..., etc. Now Microsoft Word gets that name. I did not remove annoyances, I just traded manual ones for digital ones. Okay, having a program like EndNote that organizes and inserts footnotes, and the bibliography while also learning how to trick Word into putting them on the correct page is way better than how it had to be done on a typewriter.

I took typing in high school (early 70s). There were about 3 IBM Selectric and the rest were old-timey manuals. I am a pianist (and played even more back in my hs days), so I think my fingers had more individual strength than other students. I could type super fast - the only issue was that I didn't know when I'd made a mistake since all the keys sounded alike. LOL One of my college jobs was typing index cards for the debate team and my other was accompanying voice and instrumental students for their recitals. Earned my big 75¢/hour with my fingers! I took my portable electric typewriter to college and thought I was so fancy.

We also used a slide rule for chemistry class in high school. The "must have" item when calculators showed up was a Bomar Brain!

[Dr. Ken]

It occurred to me today that it was 40 years ago that we bought our first computer - a Commodore 64. It was 1984.

By the way, it’s still in my basement.

I as well had a commodore 64. I learned to program on it as a kid. Kinda regret that I sold it when I graduated high school and moved away.

[tek]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

I TAUGHT a class on using a slide rule in 7th grade!
This would have been about 1971, pocket calculators were not an option.

[johnpcapitalist]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

I just missed that era, though I did know how to use a slide rule. I still have some old ones my dad used in college (Caltech, class of 1954) and some specialized ones from aerospace for weight/balance, fuel consumption, etc.

I was in 10th grade in 1975, so high-end pocket calculators were just starting to happen. Geeks like me carried programmable pocket calculators purchased at great expense, and we learned programming on those before we could get access to "real" computers at the local junior college.

1975 is when the Altair was first introduced and Microsoft started up in the back of a Quonset hut in Albuquerque. Because we were too broke to afford an Altair (and because you had to solder the damned things together), we went with pocket calculators.

I had an HP-65, which stored programs and data on strips of magnetic tape that you could run through an internal card reader. I carried it proudly on my belt in a custom leather case. We never needed these in math classes, but we spent time at lunch and after school writing programs to do various things. The HP-65 cost $800 in 1975, which is about $4,500 in today's money.

HP-65 programmable calculator.jpg (79.25 KiB) Viewed 729 times

The next year, I helped a friend build an IMSAI 8080, an Altair clone. It had 4 kilobytes of RAM, and you could laboriously enter programs via front panel switches, or you could attempt to store them on paper tape or on analog cassette tape on a cheap tape deck. That was always fun because the cheap tape deck would often stretch the tape and you could no longer successfully read the program.

[qbawl]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

Class of '64. I most certainly did.

[bill_g]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

Class of '64. I most certainly did.

Oh. Back in the day when the first student in the room was required to bang the rocks to make fire. The second one would then roll out the clay for the tablets to be used in that day's lesson.

[qbawl]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

Class of '64. I most certainly did.

Oh. Back in the day when the first student in the room was required to bang the rocks to make fire. The second one would then roll out the clay for the tablets to be used in that day's lesson.

What's this "fire" thing of which you speak?

[Reddog]

Brings back memories, I had similar experiences. I learned to type on old upright typewriters. I took typing in high school on selectrics. Only kid faster than me actually played piano. I can see how playing piano translates into typing.

Calculators were out of my family’s budget, they also weren’t allowed in class anyway. I started taking chemistry in college, and they were allowed, but weren’t helpful doing stoichiometry calculations. The test problems were generally easily done in the head.

Later I took electronics, I had a C64 by that time. In DC Circuits I made a Basic program to do Gauss-Jordan Eliminations for network analysis. It helped to check my answers, and made my approach to solving problems better. Of course I couldn’t use that on tests. Matrix problems could take pages to show work.

To me calculators were pointless in Calculus. My class was all proofs for the most part.

In AC Circuits I had an HP that could do Polar-Rectangular conversions and math with complex numbers. I still have my HPs. The best thing about them is RPN. I actually thought I had one stolen once. It got returned because the guy couldn’t figure out how to use it. (Same with trackballs, nobody would steal one of them).

[johnpcapitalist]

Hark! Is that the clattering of a quartet of gentlemen from one of England's northern counties settling into our forum?

[bill_g]

Class of '64. I most certainly did.

Oh. Back in the day when the first student in the room was required to bang the rocks to make fire. The second one would then roll out the clay for the tablets to be used in that day's lesson.

What's this "fire" thing of which you speak?

Take my word for it, it's quite remarkable.

[Sam the Centipede]

Slightly off-topic: I read or heard someone making the incidental point that wheels could be of little interest until animals were coerced into haulage duty. Humans pulling carts, absent metalled roads wouldn't be much fun: easier to carry the impedimenta on one's back or head than handle the extra weight of a heavy cart.

But get those oxen used for ploughing/plowing onto draught duty: suddenly wheels have their multiplying effect on load capacity.

Alternative hypotheses are probably available.

[neonzx]

It occurred to me today that it was 40 years ago that we bought our first computer - a Commodore 64. It was 1984.

By the way, it’s still in my basement.

Mine is boxed in my Uncle's basement. A friend's dad back in the day put a switch on it to overclock the CPU. I could probably get a pretty penny for that custom job.

[bill_g]

We had a Trash80 with the cassette drive.

[Reddog]

Just curious if anyone ever had, or used a Curta (coffee grinder) calculator?

[qbawl]

It occurred to me today that it was 40 years ago that we bought our first computer - a Commodore 64. It was 1984.

By the way, it’s still in my basement.

Mine is boxed in my Uncle's basement. A friend's dad back in the day put a switch on it to overclock the CPU. I could probably get a pretty penny for that custom job.

I have an Apple ][+ circa 1982 sitting in my garage as we key.

[northland10]

Just curious if anyone ever had, or used a Curta (coffee grinder) calculator?

Um, for this one, I am the clueless youth.

[Reddog]

Actually, me too, also. There was an article in smithsonian, or possibly Scientific American, several years ago. Fascinating piece of equipment, with a compelling history. Apparently it was designed in a concentration camp by a survivor.
Lots articles about it. The mechanism fascinates me. All the talk of slide rules brought it to mind. It gave exact answers to several significant digits, whereas slide rules approximated.



eta: It occurs to me that it’s analogous to Luke’s first post in this thread. If you handed me one, it would take me a while to figure out how to use it.

[bill_g]

Somebody stayed up nights to figure that out.

[realist]

How many of us learned how to use a slide rule in high school?

Class of '64. I most certainly did.

Learned in junior high, 6th grade.

And for funsies, our math teacher (was the same 5th through 8th) taught us how to use an abacus.

[jez]

Random thought of the day:

The saying "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" (or something to that effect) isn't entirely accurate anymore. There probably aren't too many analog clocks around.

Also, first computer was a TI-99/4a. Then we got a Tandy 1000 TL/2 (1984/85). My dad used that computer for literally decades before he finally switched to a Windows based one. But still loaded the Tandy software (Deskmate) because all of his car lists for the dealership were there.

Ahh, those were the days of 20 MB hard drives. I have word documents larger than that now.

[bill_g]

I just threw out a bunch of WordPerfect floppies Mrs had squirreled away. 5" and 3.5". I know we don't have a computer that could run them anymore, and haven't for years.

[Luke]

We have a new winner.

Luke Johnson @Orly_licious 55s
Brace yourself: Jimmy Kimmel sent crew to the field and MOST young people did NOT know how to... address & send a postal letter! Watch -- they gave them envelopes & stamps. Couldn't do it. They can rage on X, but can't send a letter to Grandma.

One girl is going to HARVARD.

The whole monologue is funny, he talks about a MAGA robot named Kari Lake, and shows a typical Roseanne message. They can't address an envelope but:

In a video shared from the event, Barr—who was a proud Democrat until 2008—pleaded with everyone and apparently no one in particular to “please drop out of college because it’s going to ruin your lives.” Explaining that colleges “don’t teach you nothing good” (except, maybe, proper grammar), Barr promised to help anyone who dropped out of school and reached out to her. “E-mail me or Twitter me or whatever you call me and I’ll help you with your life,” she said. “But you’ve got to get out of college ‘cause it isn’t nothing but devil-worshipping, baby blood-drinking Democrat donors.”

[keith]

I just threw out a bunch of WordPerfect floppies Mrs had squirreled away. 5" and 3.5". I know we don't have a computer that could run them anymore, and haven't for years.

Lotsa personal details and financial data and stuff on those documents of course...