I recently posted an old photo I found of my in-laws, posing with an IBM 1440 terminal:

Here’s some background (courtesy of my Mother-In-Law) on that particular photo and some neat history on the way working with computers used to be:

This photo was taken in 1967. I was taking the ‘Data Processing’ AA degree program. I knew I wanted to become a computer programmer because my uncle from Oklahoma, who worked for IBM, had just been out here in California when I was a junior in high school and said I should become a computer programmer. Doug and Mark Wayne (our professor) choose me to pose in the picture for the Community College -Junior College- flyer to promote this NEW AA degree program in computers.

There was no such thing as computer science at this time, just a Data Processing AA degree.

We learned to wire sorting machines and collating machines. Then we learned to key-punch the cards to load our programs into the machines (via autoload program code). I remember working in the computer lab at the time and having to hold a tray of computer punch cards up my arm to load in the machine. Students that didn’t number their cards would sure be in trouble if I dropped them!

We had to read ‘dumps’ through the lights on the machines.

Reading dumps was really a lot of fun, but that was when we were in the 360 IBM series machines.

Once I became a computer programmer way back then, I have never left the field.

I cringe when having to work on an 800×600 desktop….I can’t even fathom what it must have been like to read machine dumps off a light panel on a computer!

I totally dig all the new technology that emerges on a daily basis, but I can’t help but think how much fun it must have been to work on those machines that not so long ago were considered “state-of-the-art”.