I learned Algol W and programmed on a DECwriter>PDP-11>punch machine>deck of cards>card reader. Remember hauling around the wide tractor-feed copy of your program and that box of cards? And the chads? It was a lot of fun to fill a bag with chads, slip the open end under someone’s door, and jump on the bag. Good times. (Thank goodness the vacuum cleaner had been invented by then.)
I was a pretty good programmer. As an English major, I understood the importance of correct syntax and punctuation.
Tidbit: Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, hung around the Michigan computer center while I was there and was part of DH’s group. Much later, I became a certified Sun instructor and sys admin.
My dad had a Telex machine in his office until the early 80s. They used it to communicate with their HQ in Europe. I remember being fascinated by that thing when I was in elementary school.
And so do many government agencies. They won’t sent or accept email attachments. Only fax. Just yesterday I spoke with someone from a disability office who was looking for records on a patient. They would only send the form by mail or fax.
And as for the early copiers, when researching/writing a paper my senior year of HS I had to make copies at the library on that awful Paper that easily burnt. Copies were 25 cents apiece.
Yep - we still use fax machines from time to time. Some contractors only use them. We did finally take our fax number off of our business cards 2 years ago.
And remember that awful noise when you called someone and you were using their fax number! Very loud! Some people switched between their landlines and fax using the same number, and sometimes forgot to switch back to landline.
We did that a long time ago as I think we used our home printer to fax. At work, we used the photocopier to fax. That annoying connection noise though is what told you if it connected, besides the confirmation sheet, but early faxes I don’t recall getting confirmation, just hearing the tone change.
Fax is considered secure. Before automatic tax transfer on the FAFSA, students/parents would often have to submit tax transcripts to me. It would take forever by mail, so I would suggest that they ask for them to be faxed. The person requesting had to be on the phone when the fax was requested, and they had to verbally verify that they had received it. That sure made it difficult! (This was before home printers could receive faxes. I would have the person come to my office to handle the fax process. So I guess fax-to-printer is a good technology improvement.)
My late husband still had the IBM punch cards from his dissertation until a few years ago (he received his doctorate from Harvard in 1978). They were in a box in our garage. My D (she’s 35) who was helping us clean out a storage unit didn’t have a clue!!
And the old original version of correction tape that came in rectangles and in different colors that you’d use to correct a typo on a typewriter. (had yellow and pink for carbon copies of things) (I think I used “ko-rec-type”.) The typewriter erasers also existed (round wheel thing with a brush) but often tore the paper.
I was an undergrad assistant assigned to a professor in my department. He asked me to keypunch his data for a study he was doing. This had to be done at the computer center at a key punch machine. I carried boxes of those cards back and forth, and my worst fear was I was going to drop the box! There would have been no way to just put them back in the boxes in the correct order.
Yes. And the Xerox company was trying to discourage that in order to avoid its trademark becoming a generic term that loses trademark protection.
Somewhat related, the Rogue game had a monster that disguised itself as some other object, like a treasure chest. When the player approaches, it reveals itself as a monster and attacks. That monster’s name was Xeroc, presumably a play on Xerox, since the monster makes an apparent copy of something else.
There were 500 cards in each box, IIRC. I’m having trouble thinking about how diagonal lines on cards would have been done. But hey, if it worked for someone, terrific.
I was excited when my electric typewriter at work had correction tape built in!
I actually still have it. Hooked it up to our tv a few years ago and my kids were SO confused. Now they remind me that I was entertained by Pong and can’t be trusted to judge what “fun” is.
