Monday, August 20, 2012

The Computer Age .... 1985.


I have this Time-Life book called Computer Basics.

It was published in 1985.

This was Vol. 1 of a series to explain a marvelous new device - a personal home computer.

I didn't have a computer yet. My first one was bought in 1994.

My device had slots for two floppy disks, 51/4 inch and 3.5 inch.

Computers were not networked back then so these disks were used to transfer data you had saved. A patient friend was teaching me how to use DOS and I asked him about something called a Window.

He laughed and said it was just a fad.

The Time-Life book explained the electronic camera pictured above. Notice the film advance lever in the upper left. A true digital camera was still years away.

I liked the idea of computers as soon as I heard about them.

My first job at the Post and Courier involved using a computer to answer queries people made by phone. We called it InfoLine.

Our slogan back in 1998 was "You can't be at your computer all the time, but you always can get to a phone." Pretty catchy, huh?

The book said that it all was based on "ones and zeroes" and showed Armstrong's 1969 message sent from machine to machine to earth saying "That's one small step for a man..."

What triggered all this was noting I had four(4) VCRs sitting in my basement shop.

Upstairs I counted four more.

Two were VCR/DVD combo machines.

Progress.

(Click on the scanned photos for more detail.

I should note these should be credited to Time-Life.

I hereby credit that source.

They probably can track what I did.

With a computer.

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1 Comments:

At Thu Dec 27, 09:57:00 AM , Blogger Unknown said...

The following is a reprint of that statement of purpose for the 1985 symposium: what is kies air

 

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