It only took 20 years to change the world

I know many of you saw the Super Bowl ad. But this gives you a little more than you saw in the ad.



What did YOU know about the internet in 1994?

I got on eBay in 97.  Before that I used the internet only to read a vintage arcade game buy and sell "newsgroup" on Usenet.
And before that,  a friend and I got on a bulletin board called "Sportsnet" to buy/sell baseball cards.  That was in 1990.

Who remembers Usenet and "newsgroups"?  For those who don't,  that was the first example of "social media/internet message boards."

First computer use was punch cards at PJC. Internet was 1997 with AOL and the rest is history.

SheWrites wrote:

First computer use was punch cards at PJC.     Internet was 1997 with AOL and the rest is history.

The first time I ever saw a computer was kind of ironic for me.
I got hold of a couple of old pinball machines when I was in high school.
And that turned into a lifelong occupation/avocation.

In my senior year in high school I went to the Pensacola Junior College Science Fair. And I was VERY surprised to see one entry being called a "computer" (this was 1967) which plays tic-tac-toe against a human & MADE FROM AN OLD PINBALL MACHINE".

Someone had stripped the guts out of a 50's pinball machine which consists of relays and stepper switches and the like and used those parts to design a crude electromechanical computer.
If you're familiar with the electromechanical computer Alan Turing invented to crack the WW2 German Enigma Code Machine (the subject of the movie "The Imitation Game"), then envision a smaller version of essentially the same technology.

The first time I ever used a computer was in 2000, and I had no idea what was going on. I didn't actually start using email and the internet until a year later.

I am probably the last of the people who got through college without using the internet and email.

That was a really funny YouTube, Bob...

riceme wrote:

That was a really funny YouTube, Bob...

Couric and Gumbel never even imagined that The Today Show would one day change it's whole set and add what they call an "orange room" to the side of it. If you watch The Today Show you know the orange room is devoted exclusively to the internet and social media.

In 1979 or 1980, we bought our first computer... An Atari 800 XL, with a whopping 48K RAM.  It cost us $2,500.  It booted off a 5 & 1/2" floppy, and sent video to the television.  Christine was a computer consultant at the Small Business Development Center at the time.

Before Windows, everything worked off DOS command prompts.  When the Internet came available, still no Windows, we used text-based search engines called Veronica, Archie, and Gopher.  Gopher was my favorite.

I had a mainframe terminal at my desk at work in the early 1990's.  On second thought, I think it was in the late 1980's.

And yes, Bob.  I remember dialing in to bulletin boards before the Internet.

The first office computer I worked around had it's own main frame room and we did backup on these large pizza sized "disks" that fit into a round and flat can. Seems that was around 1983 and it was purchased through BC/BS of FL. I can only shake my head at how much easier my work would have been with today's technology. Oh wait...I'm sure my job does not exist any longer. Doctors dictate notes and computers type them. I don't understand the editing on that. My doc would be talking, speak loudly to someone coming in the office "Hey, how 'bout those Tigers!" Does the computer edit? What about those dirty jokes he would tell me on the dictaphone???

That Atari came with 18K memory and we added two 16K expansion cartridges, as I recall, but I cannot find those numbers on the net for that machine.

Our modem was a 300-baud screamer.

Bob has acquired some of the really-ancient Altair computers.

My first computer experiences were mechanical synchro/servo computers all analog that guided our missiles off the ship. Often when we fired them one or two of the synchros would oscillate and we dampened them with our fingers so the missile wouldn't wobble in flight. A digital replacement was brought onboard around 1970. When I worked at NASA 1974 we had PDP 8s and 16s that were about the best available. We loaded the boot programs on with paper punch tape and the operating programs the same way. We went to the moon on some pretty sketchy gear....when I think what state of the art was back then.

I had a Burroughs B10 computer system on my desk at work sometime way back... 1980's probably.



It was pretty neat. It was comprised of book-sized "slices" that aligned up against each other side-by-side and each slice plugged into the bus that ran along the bottom. It's power supply was the cube-type thingies that plug into the wall. If you plugged too many slices for the current power supply, you simply plugged in another cube and hooked it to the system. You could plug as many slices (hard drives, floppy drives, modems, etc. into it that you wanted... as long as your desk was wide enough, lol.

The OS was proprietary, but you could get a PC slice that emulated the IBM PC.

On the mainframe terminal, I had a program called Reflections.  It would allow me to key-log my commands and I could save them as a script.  The terminal was at my desk and the computer was in Tallahassee.

In the morning, when I logged on, I would run a recorded script and it would go out and get all kinds of news, weather, office memos, and other info that I needed for the day.  What a time-saver!

Working at the seven-story Chappie James Building downtown in the 1990's, I remember one lady I had never seen before, come into my office and whisper "I hear you have pictures", like I was selling dope or something.  (I guess it was hurricane season.)

I would post hurricane tracks outside my office.  (Once, I took a pic of a hurricane way out in the Atlantic and 'shopped it into the Gulf of Mexico, heh, heh.)

I had an old Polaroid picture of the earth taken from the ATS7 satellite I carried till it washed out....it was taken from 25000 miles in space. Back then it was cool. We were at a very remote tracking station and I had a wonderful time working there with brainiacs and wild-men....they had contests who could blow the biggest hole in the side of the hill below the lab with "devices" made from the cardboard rolls that the recording paper rolled off of. We had a lot of spare time between satellite passes. Oh and the funny thing ..I was the safety officer.

Now that needs to be written about and added to NASA history books. But, I know, what happens in the satellite office stays in the satellite office...

This was the facility...back then before the US created terrorists for fun and profit folks weren't so damned up tight.....

I worked at this end....

Beautiful scenery! Where is this or would you have to kill us if you tell??

Rosman NC near brevard N C south of Asheville.

Gorgeous area. We lived in Anderson SC and traveled up that way often. Never knew that was there!

NASA closed that facility and turned it over to the spooks. I became a field engineer for a medical company and used to service all the hospitals for about 300 miles around Brevard.  Andersen memorial was one of them. I enjoyed driving the mountain roads.

Thar's spooks in them thar hills?

We lived in Anderson from the summer of 1991 until winter 1992. Clemson.

Yeah supposedly the CIA or one of them spy orgs used it They may still be for all I know. I loved the carolinas. Left in 76 for pensacola. Always wonder how different my life would have been if I had turned the transfer down.

Yep, we question the what if's.

I had an IBM the the Navy bought for all submarines for medical use only.. I read the parts about entering data and saving it on the 5.5" floppies.. It was soooo slow that I could type "Hello" and then print and finish a whole cigarette before the printer finished the second l.. After 6 weeks of entering supply and health record data, they sent me to school to learn how to use it.. It was myself and 15 or so others in the 1 week class.. The first thing was setting them up, then a smoke break.. 1 idiot instructor deleted ALL of the data from the puter and floppies during the break.. We were furious..... The idiot that deleted everything was lucky he ended up being sent on leave until being transferred to Japan 2 weeks later..

Why did you all know about computers and the internet so long before me? Is it because I grew up in the middle of nowhere, then went to college in the middle of nowhere?? I think I'm quite a bit younger than most of you... it seems kind of strange.