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Re: First computers, was: team.net history

To: "Jay Mitchell" <jemitchell@compuserve.com>, <autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: First computers, was: team.net history
From: Dick Rasmussen <rasmussend@mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:29:15 -0500
At 07:34 AM 12/23/2003 -0600, Jay Mitchell wrote:
>Matt Murray wroote:
>
> >What did YOU start on?
>
>Burroughs B5500, IIRC, the campus computer at Ga. Tech for
>programming classes. I took a course in ALGOL (anyone remember
>that?) back in 1970. Had to type the commands - one per card - on
>IBM 026 and 029 card punch machines and then turn in the stack to
>be run. You came back an hour (sometimes more) later to see if
>your program worked. If you made one syntax error, you had to
>figure out what it was and start over.

What a bunch of kids.

My first experience was similar to Jay's except it was in about 1965 at the 
University of Washington. Language used was Fortran IV. Used to walk by the 
on-campus nuclear reactor to get to the building the computer center was in.

I almost flunked my other engineering classes due to all the time it took 
to deal with the computer class.

Obviously I was/am not a computer "natural". Autocrossing came much more 
easily.

Dick Rasmussen
CM 85
85 Van Diemen FF 





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