 |
 |
My PD daddy started working with computers in the 1950s on a Bendix G-15. He took all four of us kids to work with him one day and asked that we try to remember what we were seeing. The entire day was so unusual for me that I do, indeed, remember the upright freezer of a computer, towering above me, with unfathomable buttons on its front. I also remember being impressed that all the men there (you know, men in suits who were the icons of being right up there with God in power, to little kids) were so reverential about the machine that I really thought they might start bowing down in front of it. It had an astonishing 2K memory, 1K of which was taken up by an interpretive routine. He could read binary (says it wasn't fun) and learned several other computer languages during his years of programming and analyzing systems. He was known as a very tight programmer, which I assume does not mean "uptight" because he's a honey. Now, at 73, he lies in bed when sleepless, programming in his head. When he gets up, he goes to his laptop and programs with his fingers. This leaves me ready access to the PC for reading my PD email. Most days he "types" at least as well as I, and as long as he can hit more correct keys than mistake keys, he'll be a happy PWP. Maybe he could program all the furniture in the future home to vibrate slightly so they'll never have to be dusted (shades of Max Schulman [sp]!). Deanne Charlton (CG) [log in to unmask]