On Thu, Jun 6, 2024 at 1:38 PM Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> If you buy a bus and start driving it yourself everywhere, for your > own exclusive use, it doesn't somehow magically stop being a bus. It's > still a bus, just a bus being used for personal transport. I am not so sure... After all 'bus' is a contraction of 'omnibus' which, according to Flanders and Swann means 'To or for, by with or from everybody'. More seriosly, a bus is a vehicle that anyone may travel on. I know a couple of people who own old London buses. They tell me that you need a different driving licence (and probably insurance) if you carry fare-paying passengers. They can drive their vehcles to classic car shows etc. They can carry people for free (at said person's own risk). But they can't charge fares. Said vehicles remain Routemasters, Regents,etc but may well legally not be buses. Incidentally, a neighbour asked me for comments on a question which had appeared on the 'Reader's Questions' page of a UK national newspaper : 'Which was the first handheld computer?' My thoughts are : Balancing a PDP11/05 on one hand and operating the front panel with the other doesn't count :-) It has to be able to run a user program. So non-programmable calculators, Curtas, slide rules, etc don't count. If it has to run what is normally accepted as a computer programming language and handle text then something like the Sharp PC1210 or PC1211 would seem t be a reasonable answer. If machines that only handle numbers count, then a reasonable answer is the Sumlock 324, which pre-dates the HP65 by a couple of weeks. -tony
