Technology

I was talking with a young man last night about technology. He was rather amused at my tale of my first pager about 1973. It was about the size of a stick of butter. If the office wanted me when I was out, they would call a number and it would be "patched" through to the device, which would beep. And I knew I had to call them - from a public call box naturally. If anyone else wanted me they had to call the office, which is what they would do anyway, and the message would be sent out.

Further back in 1964, I had a very early ATM card. This was a miniature punched card about 2" by 1." You would insert it into a slot at the bank's ATM station, and it would be swallowed. You punched in your number and a packet with ten pounds would be posted back to you through another slot. The card would be sent back to you in the mail.

Then there was LEO III. This was one of the original computers built by Lyons Company in the late 40's to handle accounting. I used to see it regularly when I visited a customer who shared premises with this huge 100 foot long beast. It needed a lot of air conditioning to deal with all the heat from the valves. Also it couldn't do half the stuff that a modern calculator would do. Ah, those were the days!