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Sparkle · 12-13-2012, 06:03 PM

Interesting Topic!

My father was an electrical engineer with General Electric in the 70s; he was fascinated with computers and he turned the unfinished basement in their first house into his computer building workshop. It looked like NASA clips from the 60s down there -- the whole room filled with enormous metal boxes, with bleeping round graphed glass screens, and big dials and lots switches, and open circuit boards and wires spewing everywhere. And with no discernible purpose! I always wondered what the hell those machines "did". It was all a bit mad scientist, I'd not have been surprised to have found steaming beakers with green boiling liquids attached by big rubber tubes to some of those contraptions.

But his passion and curiosity got him transferred to GE's business computer division in the early 80s, developing hardware, and doing early system operation software coding. Then he took over the extra bedroom with actual personal computers and stacks of coding books.

We had some of the earliest home computers on the market
the VIC 20 and later a Commodore 64 and a 128. And those old printers that punched out rolls and rolls of paper with the perforated edges!

My sister and I played games on them, in the odd half hour here and there that my father wasn't in front of them.

My father was a pretty unpleasant person and a terrible parent. (for many many reasons having nothing to do with computers) But he was obsessed with computers and spent pretty much every waking moment working on them, both at work and at home. He approached parenting as though it were a computer engineering problem and was genuinely perplexed when we didn't respond as we "should" - perplexed was followed by frustrated followed by enraged - usually in short order. He literally compared us to computers, disfavor-ably.

We had a tumultuous relationship and I was left with a HUGE distaste for computers.

I used them in high school and college, first to learn "keyboarding" and later for the most basic word processing of papers and presentations. While some students had personal computers, they were still pretty rare, I used computers in communal study spaces and the library.

Of course by the time I was working in an office environment in 96ish there was a computer on every desk. It is funny to think about how clunky, one-directional and archaic they seem now.

I didn't get my own personal computer until 1998, the rest is...from that point on, history.

12-13-2012, 06:03 PM	#8
Sparkle Senior Member How Do You Identify?: Femme Preferred Pronoun?: She, please Relationship Status: Loved Up Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Western MA Posts: 2,183 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 9,001 Thanked 6,554 Times in 1,553 Posts Rep Power: 21474853	Interesting Topic! My father was an electrical engineer with General Electric in the 70s; he was fascinated with computers and he turned the unfinished basement in their first house into his computer building workshop. It looked like NASA clips from the 60s down there -- the whole room filled with enormous metal boxes, with bleeping round graphed glass screens, and big dials and lots switches, and open circuit boards and wires spewing everywhere. And with no discernible purpose! I always wondered what the hell those machines "did". It was all a bit mad scientist, I'd not have been surprised to have found steaming beakers with green boiling liquids attached by big rubber tubes to some of those contraptions. But his passion and curiosity got him transferred to GE's business computer division in the early 80s, developing hardware, and doing early system operation software coding. Then he took over the extra bedroom with actual personal computers and stacks of coding books. We had some of the earliest home computers on the market the VIC 20 and later a Commodore 64 and a 128. And those old printers that punched out rolls and rolls of paper with the perforated edges! My sister and I played games on them, in the odd half hour here and there that my father wasn't in front of them. My father was a pretty unpleasant person and a terrible parent. (for many many reasons having nothing to do with computers) But he was obsessed with computers and spent pretty much every waking moment working on them, both at work and at home. He approached parenting as though it were a computer engineering problem and was genuinely perplexed when we didn't respond as we "should" - perplexed was followed by frustrated followed by enraged - usually in short order. He literally compared us to computers, disfavor-ably. We had a tumultuous relationship and I was left with a HUGE distaste for computers. I used them in high school and college, first to learn "keyboarding" and later for the most basic word processing of papers and presentations. While some students had personal computers, they were still pretty rare, I used computers in communal study spaces and the library. Of course by the time I was working in an office environment in 96ish there was a computer on every desk. It is funny to think about how clunky, one-directional and archaic they seem now. I didn't get my own personal computer until 1998, the rest is...from that point on, history. __________________ I am made of stars