Not my personal property, but the first computer I really worked on was a DECSystem 10, running TOPS-10 operating system. Kind of PDP11. Late 1970’s. TENEX Shell? Programming in FORTRAN. VT52 and VT100 text terminals. DECwriter printing terminal (132 chars wide. Monochrome vector graphics on Tektronix 4014 storage tube display, with thermal paper hardcopy unit.
Have you ever tried text/file editing on a printing-only terminal - use TECO (Text Editor and COrrector). Or maybe with SOS: Son Of Stopgap. Really, that was a text editor.
Old conventiona for storage: log in with Programmer-Project Number (PPN) + password. PPN looks like [143266, 127001]. Filenames 6 character + 3 for extension. No subdirectories. Full filespec looked like DSKA:[143266,127001]FILNAM.EXT. Not case-sensitive.
Word processing was even possible with runoff.
Texas Instruments SilentWriter as a portable terminal to work from home. Looked like a portable typewriter with rubber cups to put the receiver of your telephone in. Speed about 110 baud. 300 baud if you were very lucky. Printed on thermal paper, so you always have few rolls of paper available. Expensive! But happy to use it, because you could work at home in the weekends, eliminaties hours of communting to do a five minute check progress of a large batch job.
I cannot claim that I really had a good understanding then of how the computer worked. It was a tool on which you ran the necessary applications. What we now see as severe limitations was then regarded as just normal. Learned more about it later. But the experiences from then gives you perspective, and makes you more aware of what has changed. Sometimes experience from the past can be misleading: you may focus on compact, efficient code even when resources are abundantly available; other factors are more important now.
When I use modern ICT tools (Mac, iPhone, internet, iPad, Homekit, WiFi) I do understand how it works (at least the principles, not all details), but it leaves me still with a feeling of using magic — in the sense of Arthur C. Clarke’s statement: “Any sufficiently advanced form of technology is undistinguishable from magic”.
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Not my personal property, but the first computer I really worked on was a DECSystem 10, running TOPS-10 operating system. Kind of PDP11. Late 1970’s. TENEX Shell? Programming in FORTRAN. VT52 and VT100 text terminals. DECwriter printing terminal (132 chars wide. Monochrome vector graphics on Tektronix 4014 storage tube display, with thermal paper hardcopy unit.
Have you ever tried text/file editing on a printing-only terminal - use TECO (Text Editor and COrrector). Or maybe with SOS: Son Of Stopgap. Really, that was a text editor.
Old conventiona for storage: log in with Programmer-Project Number (PPN) + password. PPN looks like [143266, 127001]. Filenames 6 character + 3 for extension. No subdirectories. Full filespec looked like DSKA:[143266,127001]FILNAM.EXT. Not case-sensitive.
Word processing was even possible with runoff.
Texas Instruments SilentWriter as a portable terminal to work from home. Looked like a portable typewriter with rubber cups to put the receiver of your telephone in. Speed about 110 baud. 300 baud if you were very lucky. Printed on thermal paper, so you always have few rolls of paper available. Expensive! But happy to use it, because you could work at home in the weekends, eliminaties hours of communting to do a five minute check progress of a large batch job.
think that those who saw the early times of computers must have acquired a nice background to a better understanding what exactly is a computer
I cannot claim that I really had a good understanding then of how the computer worked. It was a tool on which you ran the necessary applications. What we now see as severe limitations was then regarded as just normal. Learned more about it later. But the experiences from then gives you perspective, and makes you more aware of what has changed. Sometimes experience from the past can be misleading: you may focus on compact, efficient code even when resources are abundantly available; other factors are more important now.
When I use modern ICT tools (Mac, iPhone, internet, iPad, Homekit, WiFi) I do understand how it works (at least the principles, not all details), but it leaves me still with a feeling of using magic — in the sense of Arthur C. Clarke’s statement: “Any sufficiently advanced form of technology is undistinguishable from magic”.