“The only constant is the increasing rate of change” – Anon
I recently had the opportunity to talk to a group of fifth class boys at my old school. This was to contribute to their project on the history of the school. My visit involved sharing with them what the school was like when I attended, more than 50 years earlier.
They weren’t surprised when I told them there were no computers in our time.
They were a little more surprised to learn that there was not yet television in Australia when I was their age. Black & white TV arrived in time for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956. It eventually made it to our house late 1961.
The boys seemed intrigued that we used to write with stick pens, dipped in ink wells located in each desk. We could progress to a fountain pen when we mastered the nib on a stick pen.
My first encounter with a computer was at Sydney University. The University’s second computer was installed and commissioned during my third year. Like the first, the new computer occupied rather large air-conditioned space in the School of Physics. As third year students, we were able to take a vacation course to learn to write a programme for the new computer.
The first computer to arrive in our work place was an HP9825a ‘Programmable Calculator’. It had a 32 character scrolling LED dot matrix display, magnetic tape cartridge storage and produced output on paper tape. The read write memory was a princely 22,238 bytes! [Yes, bytes, not megabytes]. While it was purchased for a specific purpose in another department, I identified a use for it in forecasting and learnt to programme and use it (in my own time, of course). This was about 1976.
Photo source http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com
Footnote. This is not intended as an authoritative treatise on the development of computers. Rather it is a journey with an evolving scientist’s contact and experience with computers.
