Period Computers

[jocelyn plummer]

How fascinating, Jocelyn, to perhaps have such a pioneer for an ancestor

I'm so completely c*** at maths and anything to do with science that it's highly unlikely, but I will delve around a bit further.

 

[MatthewC]

I remember my Father taking me into his bank (well, not his bank, you understand) on a saturday morning and letting me play with his calculator, which was a mechanical work or art that worked like a one-armed bandit.

That sounds like the adding machine my dad had in the sixties/seventies to do the wages on for his ten employees.

Then, when they invented the Sinclair ZX-80 (in the late 70s?), he actually programmed one to do the tax and NI calculations, and print off each payslip on a little printer that used silver colour paper about two inches wide on a roll. He is the only person I know who put a ZX-80 to productive use!

 

[Moo]

In the mid-sixties, in the tourist shop in Moscow, the smartly-uniformed lady cashiers were each equipped with an abacus on which they would check the cash-machines' calculations.

 

[Penners]

when they invented the Sinclair ZX-80 (in the late 70s?), he actually programmed one to do the tax and NI calculations, and print off each payslip on a little printer that used silver colour paper about two inches wide on a roll. He is the only person I know who put a ZX-80 to productive use!

Sorry, but your dad wasn't the one and only.

I bought a ZX-80 when I had my own small business making furnishing accessories for Habitat and others. I wrote a Basic programme that enabled me to enter the quantity of each product that we planned to manufacture each month. It would then print out (yes, on that silver heat-sensitive paper) the quantity of wood, lacquer, screws, cartons, etc. that I needed to buy for that manufacturing programme. It saved me hours of work, although a fair amount of that saved time was often taken up with getting the bl@@dy programme to load successfully from the cassette tape recorder.

 

[Flyfisher]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Those old cassette interfaces were not that reliable were they? I had an Apple II microcomputer around that time, which also used a cassette interface for program storage and it was infuriating. But I had some fun modifying it for use as a "Radio Teletype" controller for use on amateur radio bands. Such leading-edge technology allowed me to send real-time text messages over a distance of up to about 50 miles on VHF radio frequencies. A complete waste of time compared to the telephone of course, but interesting technology that gave me a good grounding for later professional work.

I eventually acquired a floppy disk drive for the Apple and it was a revelation. It stored about 105KB, not even enough for a poor digital photo these days, on a 5.25-inch literally floppy magnetic disk, but it was lightning fast and reliable compared with cassette tapes and, of course, allowed random access, which was a great step forward. That's another whole technology that has come and gone in our lifetime.

 

[Feltwell]

Around 1970 I can remember one of our sales force coming into the office and proudly showing us his electronic calculator. It had a red LED display and could add, subtract, multiply and divide. I cost him nearly £70!

As a small boy, circa 1976, I can remember being allowed to take apart the now-redundant adding up machines from my father's office. I was fascinated by all the cogs and mechanisms that made it work. My dad, in a flash of inspiration of how to keep me fully occupied and out of his hair for a few hours, told me he wanted all the nuts, bolts and screws saving from each machine for his shed. It worked, it took me hours!

I also remember he had one of the red LED, mains powered calculators that he loved to confuse people with. He got it from Saudi Arabia - the display was in roman numerals, but the keys were all in Arabic!

As for cassettes - yes, many frustrating hours spent trying to get a C15 to upload to a Dragon 32, BBC B and ZX Spectrum....

 

[Nigel Watts]

My father, who had been a radar officer in the second world war, made himself a TV set out of two surplus Lancaster bomber radar receivers - one for the vision and one for the sound - plus various other bits he made himself. He used to rig it up once a year to watch Wimbledon. The screen was about three inches in diameter and the whole rig took up most of his workshop. After he retired in 1980 he dumped the whole lot in the tip. A childhood friend of his who also enjoyed mucking about with electronics was captured by the Japanese in the war and made a radio from scratch in the PoW camp on which he was able to pick up broadcasts from the allies. Such improvisation seems inconceivable today.

 

[Penners]

That's another whole technology that has come and gone in our lifetime.

Yes, floppy discs have completely come and gone. The same might be true of recording tape. I don't know whether reel-to-reel originated before I was born, but the "cartridge" use of it, in two formats of audio and two formats of video, certainly seems to have come and gone.

Does anyone still use it?

 

[philpjuk100]

My father, who had been a radar officer in the second world war, made himself a TV set out of two surplus Lancaster bomber radar receivers - one for the vision and one for the sound - plus various other bits he made himself. He used to rig it up once a year to watch Wimbledon. The screen was about three inches in diameter and the whole rig took up most of his workshop. After he retired in 1980 he dumped the whole lot in the tip. A childhood friend of his who also enjoyed mucking about with electronics was captured by the Japanese in the war and made a radio from scratch in the PoW camp on which he was able to pick up broadcasts from the allies. Such improvisation seems inconceivable today.

Yep my dad worked on radar for metrovic during the last war and built tellys from surplus parts and old oscilloscopes,he spent hours watching the test card in a mirror trying to get the circles circular! it never had a case just a dexion frame and my mum was forbiden to dust it! he borrowed a large crt for the coronation and all the neibours came round.Happy days! phil

 

[Penners]

built tellys from surplus parts and old oscilloscopes

That lends a whole new meaning to the phrase "in those days we made our own entertainment". :wink:

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, floppy discs have completely come and gone. The same might be true of recording tape. I don't know whether reel-to-reel originated before I was born, but the "cartridge" use of it, in two formats of audio and two formats of video, certainly seems to have come and gone.

Does anyone still use it?

I still use a digital camcorder that records onto miniDV tape cassettes. I know it sounds positively prehistoric these days but I only bought it new in 2002, so it's younger than both my cars! The MiniDV tape format is now effectively obsolete in the sense that it's no longer being designed into new equipment (as far as I'm aware) yet it was only launched in the mid-1990s. The DV video format is still (I think) used in some professional video applications so it may not be completely obsolete quite yet, but it's certainly on the way out. I wonder if this could be a contender for the "technology with the shortest commercial lifetime" award, even though it took the video world by storm when first introduced?

 

[MatthewC]

when they invented the Sinclair ZX-80 (in the late 70s?), he actually programmed one to do the tax and NI calculations, and print off each payslip on a little printer that used silver colour paper about two inches wide on a roll. He is the only person I know who put a ZX-80 to productive use!

Sorry, but your dad wasn't the one and only.

I bought a ZX-80 when I had my own small business making furnishing accessories for Habitat and others. I wrote a Basic programme that enabled me to enter the quantity of each product that we planned to manufacture each month. It would then print out (yes, on that silver heat-sensitive paper) the quantity of wood, lacquer, screws, cartons, etc. that I needed to buy for that manufacturing programme. It saved me hours of work, although a fair amount of that saved time was often taken up with getting the bl@@dy programme to load successfully from the cassette tape recorder.

Now I know of two people who put a ZX-80 to productive use!

 

[MatthewC]

Around 1970 I can remember one of our sales force coming into the office and proudly showing us his electronic calculator. It had a red LED display and could add, subtract, multiply and divide. It cost him nearly £70!

When I was an university in 1973, there was a chap who had spent, I think, £135 on an HP-135. He was not allowed to use it in the final exams on the grounds that it gave him an unfair advantage and, being so expensive, we could not all be expected to buy one. Slide rules ruled!