Long ago in a place far away I took a computer course to learn Fortran. I was convinced that I needed it for my physics degree. I groused about all this other stuff they were trying to teach me, different computer languages, Touring machines, computers in general. Funny how valuable that proved to be.
The instructor was a Electical Engineering post doc. Friends majoring in EE told me that he had just finished wiring up a computer full of transistors the size of 2 giant blackboards used in the classroom... then some physicist developed integrated circuit chips, all the transistors in one tiny chip. Regards, Bob S. On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Daniel J. Matyola <danmaty...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yes, I also worked with computers that had punch cards in the 1960s. > Dull Boring work. > > As I result, I lost my chance to get in on the ground floor. My four > math courses in college were with John Kemeny, then head of the Math > Department, and later President, of Dartmouth College. He told us he > was working on a computer programing language, and was seeking student > volunteers. Our response was that we didn't want to get involved with > computers that gave you paper cuts, and anyway, we had our slide > rules; who needed computers? Kemeny went on to develop BASIC, which > was (and perhaps still is) patented by the college. It took 20 years > before I finally became involved with computers; by that time, BASIC > had gone through numerous iterations and improvements. > > Dan Matyola > http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola > >> On Aug 25, 2012, at 20:10 , John Sessoms wrote: >> >>> From: "Daniel J. Matyola" >>> >>>> My first computer was an Apple ][. Great computer. I loved it. I >>>> learned Basic, Pascal, Assembler and even a bit of machine language >>>> programing on it. It certainly wasn't "plug -and-play," but it was >>>> designed for computer hobbyists, and most of them loved it. >>>> >>>> Dan Matyola >>> >>> My "first" computer was an IBM System 360. I learned to place the cards in >>> the card reader "Face down & nine edge first, AND DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE >>> KID!" > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
