Those Were The Days

“A Walk Through Time”

While my wife shopped in the mall I wandered around just passing time. My meandering brought me to the electronic section and the many varieties of computers, laptops, Ipads plus a bevy of miscellaneous communication devices, amazing inventions that boggle the mind, my mind anyway.                                                                                                                                         

Do you know what a PDP 8E is? It was forty five years ago and I thought I did. Our company purchased a new computer system and as a member of management I was expected to know what the “new-fangled very, very expensive contraption” was all about. We had to build a special room that could never exceed fifty degrees Fahrenheit, a room at least thirty feet long and twelve feet wide to accommodate the spinning discs and whirly gigs that literally filled the room and made no sense to me. In the seventies computer people had a language all their own and they threw around words I had never heard before, megabytes, gigabytes, a language they were aware sounded alien to most people but a language they also knew set them apart from “us” non-computer people. It became them against us and since it was us paying the bills it became my task to learn ‘computerese’.   

My first lesson included acquiring a book that spoke the strange computer language but at least had hand drawn pictures as to the various meanings. As a Director in our company and also Operations Manager I felt somewhat lost and kept thinking about the old joke where the head of a wandering band said, “Tell me where we are going so I can lead you.” Well I guess I learned enough so the computer company could no longer charge us for things we never received but as I seemed to emerge from the darkness into the world of computer light I was  unceremoniously informed all my PDP 8E knowledge was for naught because, ….yes you guessed it, that model was obsolete.                                                                                                                                       

I watched in dismay as all the computer equipment in the cold room was dismantled and replaced by a system ten times better than our original computer and ten times smaller as well. Gratefully the poor girl who endured the cold making punch cards to be inserted into the computer no longer had to wear a sweater to work and I too had an epiphany. I hired a computer expert, his job was to assist me in learning not only the everyday computer language  but also teach me the basics so I could grow from there into this new world of computers, a decision that kept me in good stead computer wise throughout my entire career.                                                                             

Today I am still in awe some computers can be held in the palm of one’s hand, so small yet can accomplish more than my infamous PDP 8E that addled my brain way back in 1975.

When my wife asked how I had passed the time while she shopped I simply smiled and said, “Walking down memory lane Hon, walking down memory lane.”     

By: Russ Sanders
epigram@nexicom.net