Remember life before computers

My first experience with a Mac .... I used one of these at a job I had back in 1985, working for an international company.
Never thought that I would ever want to own one at home ..
:LOL:


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SeaBreeze said:
In school I had a pencil box and sharpener, in the older grades I had a fountain pen. At home we just had a regular typewriter, Royal, I believe.
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yes me too... pencil box ..sharpener, and although we had ball point pens with the many colours ( remember those)?.. we also had to learn to write using Ink and fountain pen, ink wells were all slotted into our desks in our early years..up until about our 3rd year in secondary school.. before I changed into Business economic class. where the desks had built in typewriters..

Does anyone remember these old typewriter desks... sorry I can't find a picture with one in it...


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our typewriters were ancient old heavy keyed Manual Underwoods..

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I bought my nephew a Brother word processor a long time ago for Christmas and got one for myself. It weighed a ton, and used a CRT and a floppy. It doubled as a typewriter too. I got tired of looking at it so I took it apart and put it out for garbage pickup a little at a time.
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@GAlady, we had one of those early Mac computers, too (got it in 1984, I think). After we bought it, a friend upgraded the RAM (making it what was then called a "fat Mac"). We also found that you couldn't save a document longer than 8 pages! The operating system was on a disk, and to save a document, you had to swap that out with a blank disk (back and forth, back and forth, multiple times.

It also, along with the dot-matrix printer, cost $3500 plus, and this was in 1984. We also were able to buy an external second disk drive ($500) later so we could stop the disk-swapping. So, $3500 plus $500 plus our tech friend's (free) assistance. That's an awful lot of money for 1984.

We switched to what were called, in those days, IBM clones. And had the Mac documents converted to ... whatever was the IBM clone document format at the time. And never looked back.
 
Life before computers for me, was doing full-charge accounting, with a mountain of books.
I worked for a construction company and my days were filled with transferring figures to ledgers..
I remember it was long and tedious.

When computers first came on the horizon and I interviewed for a new job, I was asked if I understood accounting..
Why, yes .. I did ... BUT the darn computer program they were using was totally new to me. 😀
(I think QuickBooks was one of the first)
 
I still use pen and pencil for notes. I would not want to return to pre-computer days. I was one of the last to get my own computer. This here is my second one. I used typewriters for everything until about 13 years ago. I used the first pre-internet service (DIALOG-Lockheed) at a library. $60. an hour, mediocre results.
I don't know what a cloud is, or a cookie or a byte...I used to think app was for apple.
 
Speaking of "Life Before Computers" reminds me of some older houses we lived in back in the early 1960's, when I was still a boy. Inside some of those old, late 19th century houses were gaslight fixtures, still attached to the walls - completely intact. They were remnants from the Age of Gaslighting, when homes were lit by gaslight. Although gaslighting had begun to die out toward the end of the 19th century, many homes of that era (still standing in the 1960's) still had the original gaslight fixtures, even though electric ceiling lights and electric wall outlets had long since replaced them. When new electric lighting was installed during the early decades of the 20th century, many a homeowner back then simply turned off the gas and extinguished their gaslighting days forever, since it was less costly to leave them in. But as a kid in one of those old houses I used to ponder the long-dead gaslight fixtures sitting up on the walls, their old-timey brass appearance an intriguing glimpse into a past far distant from my own. Today, decades later, I'm sure many of those transitional gaslit/electric lit houses are long gone. Still, the memory of those old houses of my childhood yet remain with me.

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Spreadsheets: I remember using them ALL NIGHT LONG and coming out 1 cent short!
Dad had an Underwood typewriter. He was on that thing everyday!

This thread makes you wonder what's next? E-mail is already outdated!
 
I remember having to learn counting on an abacus, writing in Roman numerals, and using a slide rule.
Later on, I remember assembling my first computer at the kitchen table. It was a Sinclair kit computer.
It had no software so I had to learn BASIC. Long time ago.
 
Sunday newspapers, you could spend the entire day reading. I used to look forward to lying on the living room floor and going through every section. My best pal, my dog would lay near by as a part of this Sunday ritual.
 
I remember where I worked they rented out a space for a computer sales company. So mysterious and interesting. This was around 1988-89? Eventually I bought a computer with the premise that it could help my daughter do better in school. Might be somewhat true today, but it really was not back then. I became hooked on learning the computer and my daughter was basically not interested at all. I remember fighting the dot matrix printer. It took so much power from the computer that if you even moved the mouse often the printer would freeze and then the computer would freeze and you had to reboot and start all over again. Used to buy every computer magazine on the rack at the grocery store. A friend of mine at work and I learned computers by reading and doing. I loved the hardware end, tearing them apart and hopefully putting them back together. He was more into the software part. I still work on computers, but it's kind of a love-hate relationship today.
 


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