Wow, can we get into a my first computer thread?
The first computer I actually owned had 16K a cassette tape drive and used the TV as a monitor (Timex/Sinclair). Still it was already a giant step beyond a teletypewriter. My first real computer (as opposed to the toy just mentioned) was a Radio Shack TRS-80 model III circa 1980 or so. It had 2 360mb 5-1/4in floppy and 48kb of RAM (the other 16K were in ROM), you could do real work with it. The first IBM PC came out about a year after I bought the TRS. I have had a series of computers pretty much continuously since then.
The first computer I worked on (a long time before PC or even home-computers came about) had gears and cams instead of electronics. It was the bomb/navigation computer in a RB-47 aircraft and was designed by Sperry/Rand back in the 1940's. Still it was accurate enough to fly a bomber 1/2 way around the world and wind up within 3 miles of the target, and with a navigator on board up dating the position from time to time it was good enough for +/-3 feet.
graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" -----------------------------------
Jens Bladt wrote:
At work, some of my predecessors actually made the demografic projections using a computer, using a printer as a the monitor. Computers like this was used in DK in the late seventies and early eighties. It wasn't rally a home computer - more like a terminal connected to a mainframe at a central data-facility.
Until 1990 I too made the projections using a terminal, but now with a monitor screen. Since then we have udsed what we now know as a PC. I wonder what the next version may look like - a cell phone perhaps - or a wrist watch - or pehaps a fluid in a bottle ???
By the way. My first PC was 60 MB harddrive at a retail price of 6000 USD! And it's really not that long time ago :-) This money would buy me 10 or 20 PC's with 80 GB harddrives and 3 GH processors.
Jens Bladt mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hjem.get2net.dk/bladt
-----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: Shel Belinkoff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sendt: 16. november 2004 17:23 Til: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Emne: Home Computer Prediction From 1954
This may produce a few grins:
http://home.earthlink.net/~my-pics/54-computer.jpg
Shel
