Ha, I took Fortran 50 years ago in junior college!
MOD NOTE: This thread has been split from another topic.
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It must say something when nothing in that picture was in my house when I was growing up. Yes, we had a telephone, but not a rotary dial. Yes, we had a computer, but without a floppy drive.
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This was WAAY before floppy drives! (but that was the only picture I could find quickly with a coupler). Back then the computer we dialed into was somewhere else. ETA: here’s what it looked like. It’s described as “ancient” 
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I’ve worked as a software engineer my whole life and have never heard of a coupler! I guess you learn something new on CC every day 
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Me neither and I have been in technology and data most of my career.
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children
Maybe it had a different name? But that’s my memory of what this thing was called and the photo came up when I searched, soooo…
I put that image in google lens. It is indeed a coupler. Our HS had a special elective class on Weds. and I chose the computer class, and this was how we connected to the computer!
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Those modems with acoustic couplers where you plug the phone handset into were mostly used in the 1950s-1970s and had 110-1200 baud (bits per second) speeds.
Floppy disks started in the 1970s, first in 8", then 5.25", then 3.5".
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So… before I was born 
I have seen (and used) floppy disks though. Although, not the 8” ones.
As I said— children!!!
When I was writing my dissertation, I still had to use IBM punch cards to run the data. Then as I was almost finished, they finally got dumb terminals in the department, but we’d have to pick up the printouts at the med school library printer.
My dissertation was typed on an IBM selectric typewriter because the one person in town who had the “new fangled” wang word processer did not know how to do the APA formatting guidelines to type it.
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We had a computer as big as a desk that we dialed into using a coupler (1979-80).
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I was referring to the drive in the Radio Shack computer on the left. Although technically it was likely sold at a Tandy store in the UK or northern Europe or Australia based on the physical appearance of the telephone.
Anyway, I was today years old when I learned what a coupler is.
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Rotary phones did pulse dialing. In pulse dialing, rapidly pressing and releasing the hangup hook N times dialed N (except that 10 rapid presses and releases dialed 0). So, to dial 5551212, you could do:
..... ..... ..... . .. . ..Where each period was a press and release of the hangup hook, and a space was a pause.
Note that this was also why high population areas got short area codes like 212, 213, 312, but low population areas got long area codes like 808. At the time, area codes had 0 or 1 as the second digit, while the phone number second digit was not 0 or 1. Later, it became required to dial 1 before an area code.
When tone dialing first appeared, it was marketed as a premium feature that cost extra for phone service (even though it was probably cheaper for the phone company). Some push button phones had a switch to do tone or pulse dialing.
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We still have TRS 80 computer in this house. Fortunately the rest of the old stuff has gone off to electronics recycling.
I also used IBM punch cards but for my masters thesis. And I did all the statistics by hand…using a (at the time) expensive calculator. And the thing was also typed on an IBM Selectric, but not by me! I hired someone to do that! My typewriter was a manual Olivetti Underwood.
Do we need a thread on “old technology”?
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Well, while we are on this tangent, I didn’t type my own dissertation. I hired someone to do it. It was 116 pgs long, IIRC. But the IBM electric had that fun ball at the top with the letters and it would quickly rotate around to type the letter. It was fun to watch. You had to change out the balls for different fonts.
I don’t remember the whole thing Phone tone stuff but that’s interesting and fun to read about. I do remember the switch to push button phones.
We had one of those Tandy computers that my DH built many years ago. It’s long been trashed.
- OK, raise your hand if you had a Hayes dial up modem!
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We most definitely had a dial up modem…but not a Hayes.
Our TRS 80 is a model 4…and was “portable”…but really was called a luggable. Weighed a lot.
It was the first “real” computer we had.
Raise your hand if you had a Timex Sinclair 
.
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CC needs to take a field trip to the computer museum in Mountain View
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Actually…raise your hand if you even know what a Timex Sinclair is…and how it ran!
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I had to Google that (as well as TRS 80).
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