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Joseph A Toubes's avatar

I was a chem major and back in the day, all chemical instrumentation was by graphs and knowing what caused the peaks and dips. It was tough. The theory that one day these instruments, larger than a tesla truck could one day be able to just tell what the compound was. I even took a class in punch cards. My first teaching gig was in Williamsburg,IA. They just got a dedicated phone line to the big computer in Cedar Rapids over at Collins Radio. I got permission to use the Dec Writer which was a typewriter hooked up to this modem and more frequently as not, half way through writing a program, I'd look up and see that the modem had disconnected from the server and what I had done, was lost. I learned to frequently back up. I used it for the science and athletic medicine inventory. Later I graduated to a TRS80 with a stringy floppy. From there to the computer at Dial center at Drake. I was a lab instructor in chemistry and had access. Onward to running the server at the Register learning center and eventually to the world of my own Gateway, Dell and now iMac. It amuses me greatly when I am somewhere some salesman wants to impress me with his computer facts, and I interupt him, saying, "You ever use a Dec Writer?" Stops them cold . The chemistry instrumentation is now smaller than a laser printer and yes, prepare the sample, put it in the machine, and the magic begins, a graph and a solution as to which of the billions of compounds there are prints out. I don't use them anymore, retired from high school teaching, I do not code anymore, but still have the fun of asking, "Dec Writer? Trs80?"

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Phil Aaberg's avatar

Well, yeah. Ownership. Thanks for reminding us about the world before thieves ruled it.

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