Getting into the world of computers, like it or not

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

When I started in the world, in 1940, there were no computers that I knew of. We had calculating machines and cash registers in the stores. But we didn’t have computers to write with, to keep accounting records, to store and use address lists or to send mail. These days computers are everywhere. Business transactions are almost always done by computer, most communications run through a computer, newspapers are done on computers, and so on. Now that the digital age is here, our TVs are computers, our phones are computers, and almost all cars have computer control modules. Even if we think we don’t want to beinvolved with computers, they are everywhere. Although I like them in many ways, I still hate these company systems where you have to try to talk to a voice-recognition computer over the phone. Those things are not ready forprime time, in my humble opinion.

The first calculators I remember were large and heavy machines, with what looked like a hundred white buttons. There was a column of at least 10 buttons for each number place. At the very right, there was a column of buttons 0 to 9, for the amounts 0 to 9 cents; then just left of it was a column of buttons 0 to 9 for the number of dimes - 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents and so on; then next left was a column of buttons 0 to 9 for the number of dollars; then a column for 10s, a column for 100s, for 1000s and for 10,000s. I think the maximum number for the machine was 99,999.99. The fun part for me, as a boy, came after youhad punched in the buttons for each money amount, then you grabbed the lever on the right side of the machine and cranked it toward you and down. That added your amount into the total. Then you punched in the next amount and cranked the lever again. I can’t remember just what you did to get the grand total, but the total amount showed up on numbered roll wheels at the top of the machine, like the odometer on an older car.

The first electronic computers I ever heard of were as large as a room, with racks and racks of glowing tubes that looked kind of like incandescent light bulbs, and other winking, blinking lights here andthere. The whirling reels of tape would come later. For read-outs, the computer spit out slips of paper with printed results from your inquiry or calculation. The early computers didn’t have screens, and might not have keyboards either.

Some were developed to read punched cards. The holes were punched into the card at locations which stood for number values. I remember when our phone bills came to us as cards punched with little square holes. When our payment was received at the phone company, the punched card was fed into the computer’s card reader to record our payment.

The University of Pennsylvania had an early computer called the Eniac.

It was once thought to be the first successful electronic computer. Apparently a professor at Iowa State University actually achieved the first. A story was told about the Eniac that one day it wouldn’twork. As the operators checked tubes and circuits to find the problem, they discovered that a bug had crawled into the apparatus and shorted across the circuits. Since that time, when a computer or computer program won’t work right,we say “It has a bug in it.”

My earliest interest in computers was more in how they work, and how one can make them do what you want them to do.

I was curious about how to write the programs that run inside them to make them do things you want them to do. In 1984, when we were living in Searcy, one of my church members persuaded me to take a computer course offered to adults through the Searcy High School. The course was an introduction to the BASIC computer language. BASIC stands for something like, Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.So, it wasn’t really just the basics, but it was very interesting to me, intriguing actually.

I bought my first computer system in 1984 after taking that class.

The Montgomery Ward Company was still in the mail-order business in those days, and I ordered a Commodore 64 computer,with a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drive, and a dot-matrix printer. We had a little black and white TV that I could attach to the computer as a monitor. It may sound pretty primitive by today’s standards, but it didn’t seem so then. It was an interesting exercise to try writing programs to handle mailing lists, do accounting, write and print letters and newsletters.

The downside to trying to write one’s own programs is that lots of time is invested in making the programs, and if you are mostly just interested in getting a job done, the programming time may seem like time wasted. But I like to work at it.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history.

He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 07/13/2011