rogelah wrote:I wrote a program for was in 1959
Remember the head of IBM who said he had no idea how any more than 5 or 6 companies could find a use for a computer?
My very first job was at Jordan Marsh in Miami, Fla, decollating the 7 copies of reports that were printed in the Tampa facility and sent via plane to Miami and taxied to the office every Wednesday morning -- separating those copies with carbon paper inbetween each was so dirt that I still hate carbon paper! Then, I had to find the item numbers for those that had lost their IDs by comparing the previous wk's inventory to current wk taking into account what was sold preceding wk...all with the dept mgr haning over my shoulder to get their copies and updated inventories...talk about ancient technology. We were in a room next to the computer room that was kept at 65 degrees -- we thought we'd all freeze and numb fingers were standard. Walking out into Miami heat and humidity was actually pleasant .
A little later, I learned COBOL (and COBOL D and F for diak and tape) as well as FORTRAN programming on a Honeywell System (Model?) 58. Working part-time for Honeywell entitled me to take their education courses for free. back then ya hadda write prgms for speed not pretty so ya left in all sorts of junk in rpts that today would be grounds for firing -- gotta remember almost all computing was done as time-sharing for hundreds of dollars per minute and very few companies actually
owned a computer. In classes, we celebrated who could write prgms with the least steps...I typically won but as a 19 yr old female in classes with degreed mathematicians, no one would hire me ! The Honeywell instructors were so impressed with my skill in that ancient spahetti-style of programming, for months they tried to place me with one of their customers without any success; we gave up and I went on to other things. We weren't allowed near the keypunch machines and had to learn to carry huge collections of Hollerith cards and Lord help ya if ya dropped 'em 'cause no one wanted us near the sorting machines. I still have a few around as souvenirs, that and the graph paper and plastic templates for the data flow diagrams.
When Honeywell celebrated it's 25th year in the computer business, they embedded a 1K chip in acrylic to give to each employee -- still have that, amazing how far we've come.
rogelah wrote:Boy, I'm older that the dirt caught between the cracks in the raised flooring.
Yeah, I suspect there's a few of us from the ancient days of early computing. EDP departments. When computers were finally affordable for companies, they put 'em on the ground floor behind glass walls to show off their toy. Boy, were they surprised when flooding was forecst and everyone was drafted pre-flood to move the beast and all the peripherals to higher floors .
