Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice is listed as an educational software for math

Hi :)
First time i went up to Manchester the university had just completed building a huge building that 
had been designed to fit the latest best machine of the day.  

Unfortunately by the time the building work was done a better machine was small enough to fit on 
one of the desks in one of the rooms.  I'm not quite sure if that says more about the speed of 
computer development or the slowness of English builders!  
Regards from
Tom :)  


--- On Thu, 24/5/12, webmaster-Kracked_P_P <webmaster@krackedpress.com> wrote:

From: webmaster-Kracked_P_P <webmaster@krackedpress.com>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: LibreOffice is listed as an educational software for math
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Thursday, 24 May, 2012, 19:30

On 05/24/2012 12:14 PM, Joep L. Blom wrote:
> On 24-05-12 16:06, Tony Sumner wrote:
> > On May 24, 2012, Jay Lozier wrote:
> >
> > > This trip down memory lane makes one feeil old. Anyone remember
> > > teletypes with punched tape?
> >
> > Of course. My favourite paper tape story. At AEE, Winfrith, we did
> > serious computing on the IBM704 at Risley in Lancashire. We would type
> > the program onto paper tape and run it though a teletype to send it by
> > phone to Risley. At their end they would punch it out and to check that
> > it was ok they would send it back. At the Winfrith end we then had the
> > original tape and a copy and we would hold these up to the light to
> > check for errors. If there were none we'd phone Risley and say yes ok
> > go ahead.  This was a communication protocol, yes? Later we installed a
> > punched card system so we could put the program on cards and fly them
> > to Risley by plane.
> >
> > Tony
> I assume you never worked with the folded papertape used with the DEC PDP-8! coded in ASCII. 
> Years before we used an  Electrologica X-1 with papertape coded in EBSDIC!You could edit the 
> tapes with a manual punch and nontransparent sellotape. We thought punched cards were 
> old-fashioned!.
> Joep
DEC PDP 11 and similar was most of my main-frame and mini-main-frame work back in the 80's and 
early 90's.  I used  IBM main-frames in the late 70's bunch cards and dumb terminals in then in 
late 90's with terminals dumb and smart.  In the mid 70's I used a teletype style printer/terminal 
connected via phone to a computer 50+ miles way, for my first coding experience, then went to punch 
cards before I ever got to use a dumb terminal CRT display and text editor to type in and edit 
program code for COBOL, FORTRAN, BASIC, RPG-II/III, Assembly, and a few other languages.   Now 
people use PCs with "smart" color coded editors to help them code, edit, and debug their programs.

I wrote an RPG-III coding editor so it would be easier to line up the cryptic codes in their proper 
columns.  It was well received at that place that used RPG-II/III.  It took half the time to type 
in the programs in the dumb terminals.

I started my computer work experience when most computers I had "terminal" access to, or had to 
load tapes for, were bigger than all my apartment rooms combined, and then some.  I worked a 
terminal with one that used more floor space than a basketball court.  I remember when a college 
put up a Bulletin Board System [via phone modems] that had a brand new 10 MEG of drive space and 
the people could not think of why it needed so much space to store files.  10 MEG was too large to 
imagine using.  Those were the days when floppies were floppy.

---

Well we really went off thread topic with this one.

As I stated in the original post, it was interesting that LO was listed under free Math software.

Now it seems we are talking about the "grand old days" of computers before they could fit on a desk.

I still know many people who do not have the money to buy a computer or if they have one be able to 
get online with broadband.  In the '50 it was thought there was no need for more than 50 to 100 
computers in the whole USA.  Now there are millions of them in the USA, with people like me having 
several desktops/laptops running side by side when needed.  Then add their smart phones, tablet 
phones, and the wifi reader/tablet non-phones that people [and kids] thing are a requirement it 
their lives.  Well, this generation does not appreciate what their fathers and grandfathers had to 
deal with when they were working with computers in those early years when the smallest computer was 
the size of a stove or refrigerator.


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