# 40 years ago



## kweinert (Aug 21, 2019)

I finally ran across that old advert that I've saved for all this time:





As a comparison the largest SD card has 10,000 time more capacity, is 1/12th the cost, and is much, much smaller. It might weigh a bit less as well.

There's another item on this page - a dual 300/1200 baud modem for only $399.95.

This is from May 1979 BYTE magazine.

Reactions: Way Cool 4


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## Tony (Aug 21, 2019)

Wow......

Reactions: Agree 1


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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 21, 2019)

I heard someone say that if automobile technology advanced like computer technology over the years, a Mercedes would only cost $10 today.

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## Mike1950 (Aug 21, 2019)

dad bought a radio shack pocket calculator in 67- he had to put it together. about 8 x 4x1.25-big pockets. it added- subtract-multiply and divided. $80

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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 22, 2019)

Mike1950 said:


> dad bought a radio shack pocket calculator in 67- he had to put it together. about 8 x 4x1.25-big pockets. it added- subtract-multiply and divided. $80


That's when I was using a Jason slide rule in my engineering classes at U of Tenn. It didn't even add or subtract but did a heck of a job with every other calculation. My first serious calculator was a HP-80 that DuPont bought for $800. I still have that slide rule in its leather sheath that would hook on my belt. That was some sight - seeing all those engineers with 14 inch long slide rules hooked to our belts like revolvers in western movies.

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## Mike1950 (Aug 22, 2019)

FranklinWorkshops said:


> That's when I was using a Jason slide rule in my engineering classes at U of Tenn. It didn't even add or subtract but did a heck of a job with every other calculation. My first serious calculator was a HP-80 that DuPont bought for $800. I still have that slide rule in its leather sheath that would hook on my belt. That was some sight - seeing all those engineers with 14 inch long slide rules hooked to our belts like revolvers in western movies.


I still have dad's slide rule


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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 22, 2019)

Very few people and no students would know how to use one these days. It was a critical tool for engineers in the 1960s space program. Am I the only one on WB who has used one?

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## Mike1950 (Aug 22, 2019)

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Very few people and no students would know how to use one these days. It was a critical tool for engineers in the 1960s space program. Am I the only one on WB who has used one?


learned to use in 60's most these pups would not know what one was.....


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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 22, 2019)

Mike1950 said:


> learned to use in 60's most these pups would not know what one was.....


Agree that most everyone here has never seen one. K&E and Jason were the two most popular brands. Here is a photo of a K&E.

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## kweinert (Aug 22, 2019)

I have used one. At this point in time I'll admit that my skills would be pretty rusty.

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## Mike1950 (Aug 22, 2019)

kweinert said:


> I have used one. At this point in time I'll admit that my skills would be pretty rusty.


mine would be less than rusty...


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## Wildthings (Aug 22, 2019)

My dad taught me how to use his K&E rule!!


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## Gdurfey (Aug 22, 2019)

I have several of my dad's but never really got proficient with any of them. I have wanted to make a shadow box hall table and display them. Sure wished I had kept his drafting set; I abused it and scattered the different pieces; had the case for a long time. My dad helped design gasoline plants back in the late 40s and 50s and bring them online to production; without a degree. Can't even imagine the work he did.......

So, y'all remember the big "multiplying" machines?? I can't remember what they were called; it was an adding machine on steroids. Dad walked in with one (much to my mom's chagrin) because the office (Texaco office in Midland) was getting rid of them and he salvaged one from the trash can........

Thanks Ken, Mike, and Larry, needed a good cry this morning........wow I miss my dad......amazing the little things that will set the emotions off sometimes....combined with the frustrations of work.

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## Gdurfey (Aug 22, 2019)

wow, can't remember........something like this........

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## Gdurfey (Aug 22, 2019)

@kweinert , Ken, I remember back in 1993 (my first time in CO, down here at Peterson) bought a 300 meg hard drive to upgrade my computer. Waited for prices to come down to $1 a meg. Now I have 2 1-terabyte drives in my home computer (don't need that much, but they were cheap).


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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 22, 2019)

Garry, I actually used adding machines like those when I started with DuPont in 1970. Noisy hunks of heavy steel. We affectionately called them boat anchors. In the late 1980s, we were moving offices and had to clean out some old storage closets. I found one, plugged it in and it still worked at designed. It was made by Friden and looked like this one:

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## Gdurfey (Aug 22, 2019)

Larry, that is the one!!!!!!!! How did you know???????????? I kept thinking the one I was looking for had the "carriage" on top and no handle; that is it. 

Dad retired from Texaco in 1976, and this thing made the move to Arkansas I know. And then when they downsized it of course went the way of the auction/junk pile......

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## NeilYeag (Aug 23, 2019)

FranklinWorkshops said:


> That's when I was using a Jason slide rule in my engineering classes at U of Tenn. It didn't even add or subtract but did a heck of a job with every other calculation. My first serious calculator was a HP-80 that DuPont bought for $800. I still have that slide rule in its leather sheath that would hook on my belt. That was some sight - seeing all those engineers with 14 inch long slide rules hooked to our belts like revolvers in western movies.



Larry when I was in Engineering School at Purdue, it was the same thing. Very early in calculators, Hewlett Packard remember? But no one was permitted to use them. Freshman class everyone took a class in slide rules. I had a beauty! An old one from my father from his Engineering school days,,, with a beautiful leather case, and over the years I lost it. 

The best memory to me was going to the computer lab, and entering all of your punch cards and then submitting them for the overnight run. Would spend hours working half the night at the lab, finish the project, run the cards through the validation and find out you had a syntax code error some where, and had to go back through all of the code, redo, re print the cards. AH I M old!

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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 23, 2019)

NeilYeag said:


> Larry when I was in Engineering School at Purdue, it was the same thing. Very early in calculators, Hewlett Packard remember? But no one was permitted to use them. Freshman class everyone took a class in slide rules. I had a beauty! An old one from my father from his Engineering school days,,, with a beautiful leather case, and over the years I lost it.
> 
> The best memory to me was going to the computer lab, and entering all of your punch cards and then submitting them for the overnight run. Would spend hours working half the night at the lab, finish the project, run the cards through the validation and find out you had a syntax code error some where, and had to go back through all of the code, redo, re print the cards. AH I M old!



Same here. I remember the key punch machines and Fortran IV and being criticized for creating a "do loop" causing the computers to run on and on spitting out many lbs of the perf green and white striped paper. Carrying a box of 1000 cards I punched myself to the compiler was routine. These youngsters today have no idea what the early days of computing was like. And the size of the computers was impressive. It took a very large room with tons of air conditioning to hold the computing power that we have on our cheap laptops now. At UT, we had Bunker-Ramo, Digital and IBM mega monsters. Good memories of learning a totally new way of engineering design.

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## Mike Hill (Aug 23, 2019)

Didn't like that Reverse Polish input for the HP's - so got me a Texas Instruments - Hey I was in Texas - had to stay with the Texas stuff. TI probably hired every EE that Texas A&M produced. Started college with a TI 18 and 2 K&E slide rules. (BTW - one looks real geeky with a leather cased slide rule hanging off your belt, particularly if the belt was a white latigo stitched tooled leather belt with one of those big rodeo belt buckles and some hippie kickers and a Stetson - well, at least that is what people told me!). When my profs started letting us use calculators - I went to a TI-30. Now, I'd have to google up instructions for the slide rules - which I have not the heart to throw away and still have. Lots of late nights punching cards in Fortran. Man, that brings back some oddly foggy memories! Some of my dorm mates seemed to really enjoy opening my box of cards and putting them in another order. That worked so well the next time you ran them through! That was back in the day, we ran CPM schedules by hand. Could be 1,000's and 1,000's of calcs by hand and paper. And if one was wrong - you had to redo a whole bunch of them. Oh well, at least someone paid me to do it! First place I worked, did not have a computer, but was putting a system in. Second place had a DEC with a DECmate and an external drive (they all were then) that top loaded 14" platters. Third place had an IBM 36 mainframe. While at the third place I built about 2 million sf for a developer that leased it to IBM so they could assemble the IBM XT - then the IBM AT following. If I remember, the first IBM personal computer was the IBM 5150 and sold for almost $20,000 in 1981. The company bought an XT for the head of accounting. After the AT came out, they bought him an AT and I got the XT - my first computer on my desk. All the fellow employees - laughed at me about the "toy" I had on my desk. That is until I "wrote" a spreadsheet program for estimating. It saved countless hours of mindless work on a calculator! The first year of two, they did not trust it, and I had to run my calcs by hand and by computer to prove it was doing as it was supposed to. And it took the company about 10 years to trust the computer for the bid-day computations - which was a VERY simple spreadsheet process. Construction doesn't change very fast!

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## kweinert (Aug 23, 2019)

I did some work with actual punch cards, more work with virtual ones.

I was working and going to school and was using the work system for doing homework. After about a week I got a call from the data center wanting to know if I needed the cards. I asked "What cards?" Turns out that when the job came back from the main data center it was punching cards. I said I didn't need them and they told me what line to add to my JCL to stop that.

And I remember programming in FORTRAN, passing in the address of a constant to a function and then changing it. 

Good times, a long time ago.

I've probably said this before, but the first computer I programmed I did so by flipping the toggle switches on the front panel to input the 1s and 0s, loading the program a byte at a time.

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## Gdurfey (Aug 23, 2019)

@Mike Hill , Mike, you an Aggie????????? I was there during the transition from cards. Our first class required cards, the next we used the remote monitors. Really didn't understand what I was doing back in college until I landed at Lowry AFB where they were still running the massive IBM 360s (I think) and an IBM 4440 (or something like that). They were still water cooled.......water and electricity; what a combination!!! That was in 1991 and they kept those at least another 7 or so years I think. Had to scrounge parts off of second source retailers. Did just enough Fortran to get myself in trouble; mostly existing programs with variable inputs to run. I do remember in college running a couple of passes of a aerodynamics program trying to get some data out of it. Didn't realize I cost the department a couple hundred thousand dollars until later.....I had no idea!!!!!!

thanks for the trip down memory lane. It is neat to see what my guys are running now. I am an AF middle manager with a 90 person software team supporting AF space ground systems with software changes, operating system upgrades, and of course the now ever present cyber protection stuff. They are making us so hack proof we are going back to soup cans and string......

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## Mike Hill (Aug 23, 2019)

Yup - 1974 to 1978. I think my programming courses were in 76 and 77. I got a B.S. in B.C. and had to take the courses. H. E. Double hockey sticks - I don't think I can even spell FORTRAN (I guess to be specific FORTRAN IV) now! I kept a couple of the punch cards just so I can show the grandkids to prove there was such a thing once. My programming days stopped when the company said I couldn't touch the systems anymore. I guess they were afraid I would mess it all up - which was a very high probability I imagine. Unfortunately only had a couple of courses. It did not make sense the first 6 weeks or so, then it hit me aside the head like a ton of bricks - then it became fun - getting that machine to do what I wanted it to do - well sort of. I wanted to learn Cobol, but got interested in the pretty female type software instead! Just didn't have that much time between hunting, fishing, skiing, and softball for all that! 

At least I did not have to toggle a switch to input a program! Believe me it makes sense, but, wow, that's perseverance and patience!

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## phinds (Aug 23, 2019)

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Agree that most everyone here has never seen one. K&E and Jason were the two most popular brands. Here is a photo of a K&E.
> 
> View attachment 170571


Aw, yours is the wimpy kind. Mine was something like a "log log duplex trig super duper versilog will cook your eggs and fry your bacon" slide rule with several more rows than the one you show. I have no idea why I had 2 of them but I see they have different functions on one side. Haven't used them in about 50 years but I told my son I want one of them with me when I'm creamated. I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer by gum.

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## Mike Hill (Aug 23, 2019)

GT - my boss played linebacker there in the late 60's to early 70's (pre-Rudy and Notre Dame)


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## phinds (Aug 23, 2019)

Mike Hill said:


> GT - my boss played linebacker there in the late 60's to early 70's (pre-Rudy and Notre Dame)


JUST barely after my time there. I remember Tech had a football coach who was widely known throughout the South but I don't follow sports.


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## FranklinWorkshops (Aug 23, 2019)

Mine is exactly like yours shown above, Paul. We edjumacaded enganeers had to have the most complex ones. The picture I showed above was from the internet as my super duper one is in a storage unit. Thanks for posting.

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## Mike Hill (Aug 23, 2019)

phinds said:


> JUST barely after my time there. I remember Tech had a football coach who was widely known throughout the South but I don't follow sports.


That was probably Bobby Dodd - at least that is one of the coaches that he talks about.


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## phinds (Aug 23, 2019)

Mike Hill said:


> That was probably Bobby Dodd - at least that is one of the coaches that he talks about.


Sounds right

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## Johnturner (Aug 24, 2019)

I'm not close to being an engineer (BS in Business) but I have used a slide rule, doubt if I could now. I have my grandfather's K&E someplace.

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## phinds (Aug 24, 2019)

Johnturner said:


> I'm not close to being an engineer (BS in Business) but I have used a slide rule, doubt if I could now. I have my grandfather's K&E someplace.


John, I've always thought the "BS" designation was particularly appropriate for a business degree

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## Johnturner (Aug 24, 2019)

phinds said:


> John, I've always thought the "BS" designation was particularly appropriate for a business degree



You got that right!!

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## Johnturner (Aug 24, 2019)

Went back to school and got a Paralegal Certificate. Thirty years later I'm retired!

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## NeilYeag (Aug 26, 2019)

FranklinWorkshops said:


> Same here. I remember the key punch machines and Fortran IV and being criticized for creating a "do loop" causing the computers to run on and on spitting out many lbs of the perf green and white striped paper. Carrying a box of 1000 cards I punched myself to the compiler was routine. These youngsters today have no idea what the early days of computing was like. And the size of the computers was impressive. It took a very large room with tons of air conditioning to hold the computing power that we have on our cheap laptops now. At UT, we had Bunker-Ramo, Digital and IBM mega monsters. Good memories of learning a totally new way of engineering design.



Gosh I had almost forgotten the Language names. Yes Fortran IV and COBAL. I had a few screw ups like that, put the wrong syntax, should be skip every other line, and coded it to skip every other page! Ended up with a 3 foot stack of bird cage liner. Of course the geeks in the computer center would never (almost) stop a print job, probably because they were to lazy/stoned/ or perhaps asleep!

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## NeilYeag (Aug 26, 2019)

Purdue AE 1970-1923 

My slide rule was the same. I look at that pic now and my eyes gloss over. I found one of my advanced math note books, one times years ago. Differential Equations Course. I opened it up, and I could not remember a thing! Honestly I could not even remember writing those formulas. Looked completely alien to me. 

this kind of stuff

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## Mike Hill (Aug 26, 2019)

phinds said:


> John, I've always thought the "BS" designation was particularly appropriate for a business degree



I've got a B--- S--- degree in Bu-- Cra-! Some of my dormies got ahold of that and gave me my CB handle - The Cow Paddy Daddy! And my Buick was - The Buffalo Chip Mobile! 10-4

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## Mike Hill (Aug 26, 2019)

NeilYeag said:


> Purdue AE 1970-1923
> 
> My slide rule was the same. I look at that pic now and my eyes gloss over. I found one of my advanced math note books, one times years ago. Differential Equations Course. I opened it up, and I could not remember a thing! Honestly I could not even remember writing those formulas. Looked completely alien to me.
> 
> ...


Only time I had to deal with those things was in Calculus - and I threw that book away!

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## rocky1 (Aug 26, 2019)

Y'all are making me feel much younger, I think. Didn't get into the computer thing until DOS. Blew Linux away when I did that, instructor was my kids' age, he was impressed. Told him I grew up on command line programming, I was playing in DOS, when he was playing in diapers. 

Know where you're at on the spreadsheet though Mike. New simplified and improved budget form Rural Development concocted didn't work for anyone that received their RD loans, form wouldn't work at all. Told them I was tired of their chickenshit form, I was putting it in spreadsheet. Gal that was helping figure the problem out gave me one of those, "yeah suuure" looks and said OK. Gave her a copy to try a few days later. The next week she asked if she could share it with the office. Last I heard every office in the upper Midwest was using it. Spent 2 years explaing how their budget form worked when they'd call up and want minor changes made for one reason or another. 

Cut my budget preparation from a day or more, flipping from page to page trying to find errors, to a matter of an hour or two.

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