my first computer was a mainframe -- unless you could the sorters and
collators that we programmed in high school but wiring patch boards. in
1967, we were an odd class; half in "distributed education" that is
indentured servants to local bank and insurance cos whilst still in school
and half overachieving geeks who were bound for engineering schools and
who wanted to be near anything that approached a computer. the geek
rewired the electronic office equipment in ways that we claimed allowed
them to become fortune telling devices to the amazement of the poor
shorthand teacher who was stuck with us in class.
at the end of the year, we got to take a stack of cards on which we'd
punched out a simple program in watfor (aka waterloo fortran) down to the
local community college. there they were read into a telephone line
connected reader and processed at the famous research triangle's
tucc (triangle universities computer center). this took hours.
==========================================================================
Paul Jones
"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." Alasdair Gray
http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (919) 962-7600 fax: (919) 962-8071
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