The Age of Computers (Thank Goodness).

[Rollo]

This morning I was given the not so enviable job doing the calculations for someone's tax returns which they hadn't filed going back to the year 1996. Not surprisingly, the Tax Office was out for its pound of flesh and wasn't going to stop until it all gone done.
I was working away in Excel; inputting various figures so that I could get a side by side comparison, and the thought dawned on me that this must have been utter hell in the days before computers.

I can just imagine people with huge books in front of them with adding machines, scribbling away in pencil so that they could correct mistakes, and going crazy if they accidentally wrote something down incorrectly or had a carry through add error.
It would have also have been worse in the £/s/d days as well. Working out relatively simple things like sales taxes at the rate of 2/9 in the pound, must have been tedious for clerks working away in back offices.

I work for a small accountancy firm of only two people, and our little office has 33,968 documents scanned and on file. Hard copies of all of those would probably weaken the floor and the filing cabinets would probably crash through into the hairdresser's below us.

On reflection, I think I rather prefer the age of computers. They've replaced a lot of tedium... with other tedium :D

[Bob Riebe]

This morning I was given the not so enviable job doing the calculations for someone's tax returns which they hadn't filed going back to the year 1996. Not surprisingly, the Tax Office was out for its pound of flesh and wasn't going to stop until it all gone done.
I was working away in Excel; inputting various figures so that I could get a side by side comparison, and the thought dawned on me that this must have been utter hell in the days before computers.

I can just imagine people with huge books in front of them with adding machines, scribbling away in pencil so that they could correct mistakes, and going crazy if they accidentally wrote something down incorrectly or had a carry through add error.
It would have also have been worse in the £/s/d days as well. Working out relatively simple things like sales taxes at the rate of 2/9 in the pound, must have been tedious for clerks working away in back offices.

I work for a small accountancy firm of only two people, and our little office has 33,968 documents scanned and on file. Hard copies of all of those would probably weaken the floor and the filing cabinets would probably crash through into the hairdresser's below us.

On reflection, I think I rather prefer the age of computers. They've replaced a lot of tedium... with other tedium :D Although in the past I worked with some people who could take an old fashioned tape type adding machine and damn near have it smoking it was going so fast, not to mention people who could just look at numbers and only have to write sum totals, I agree.

It has been forty years since I had to do a hand written essay pages long, or decades since fighting with a non-word processing type writer, and I miss none of it.
Bob

[AndySpeed]

I can only imagine this long forgetten, mythical time... :p

How did students in days gone by access those essential journals without a fight breaking out for the very last copy, I wonder...

[schmenke]

I work in engineering and the last drafting table I remember seeing in active use was in the late 1980s. Computers, specifically 3D CADD applications, have completely changed the industry.

[Daniel]

I love computers of course. The only problem is that my writing which was always apalling, has got even worse and I would say it's probably the handwriting of a primary school child......

[Sonic]

What's a computer? ;) :p

[Mark]

For that sort of thing they used to big teams of workers who's only job it was to add up (or subtract / whatever) reams of figures. They were called 'computers'.

[ArrowsFA1]

How did students in days gone by access those essential journals without a fight breaking out for the very last copy, I wonder...
:laugh: I well remember those happy days at Uni of heading to the library in the hope that a required book would be there to help with some essay or another that needed to be written. If it wasn't...tough!!

[Mark]

:laugh: I well remember those happy days at Uni of heading to the library in the hope that a required book would be there to help with some essay or another that needed to be written. If it wasn't...tough!!

I'm not too old to remember that, even if in 1996-2000 internet access was readily available.
There were certain sections of the library which housed popular books where you could check them out for reading in the library for a maximum of 3 hours, you couldn't take them out of the building itself!

[MrJan]

Accountancy sums? Journals? Studying? How have we got this far without someone mention the wonders that computers have performed in the advance of pornography?

On a serious note, they're superb. Our internet was down yesterday and someone had to resort to something called 'The Yellow Pages' to find out a phone number. WTF is The Yellow Pages? Also a bloke was looking for some specific fittings and the catalogue that had been faxed over was useless. Thankfully I had my phone so just brought up the website on that, I love technology, me.

[Mark]

Yep, computers are great but really came into their own when the internet, and specifically the web was invented. Now you can find information about anything at any time.

Strangely I always think about that when reading Harry Potter - oh they spent hours in the library looking something up. FFS, you're like all special and magical and yet you don't have Google?!

[Sonic]

Strangely I always think about that when reading Harry Potter - oh they spent hours in the library looking something up. FFS, you're like all special and magical and yet you don't have Google?!

*Siren wails* "WARNING! GEEK ALERT. WARNING! GEEK ALERT."

You call yourself a Potter fan? :rolleyes: Muggle electronic devices do not work inside the grounds of Hogwarts. Sheesh! :D

[Mark]

*Siren wails* "WARNING! GEEK ALERT. WARNING! GEEK ALERT."

You call yourself a Potter fan? :rolleyes: Muggle electronic devices do not work inside the grounds of Hogwarts. Sheesh! :D

I know that :rolleyes: :p With all their powers they don't have an equivalent?! Or they can't apirate to an internet cafe? (I know you can't apirate in Hogwarts grounds either :p )

[Sonic]

I know that :rolleyes: :p With all their powers they don't have an equivalent?! Or they can't apirate to an internet cafe? (I know you can't apirate in Hogwarts grounds either :p )

We are so LAME! :D

[Sonic]

We are so LAME! :D

Also, to increase the lameness factor by one hundred; the books start in 1991 - I doubt reading about MS DOS would be hugely interesting! :D

[Mark]

Also, to increase the lameness factor by one hundred; the books start in 1991 - I doubt reading about MS DOS would be hugely interesting! :D

You make a good point :p . They didn't even have the web then, I'll let them off :mark:

[Sonic]

You make a good point :p . They didn't even have the web then, I'll let them off :mark:

New direction for the tread then; when did you first get Internet access at home? I think for me it was around 1996/7

[Mark]

Roughly the same here. I distinctly remember the internet computers (a row of 5 MACS) arriving at the 6th form college I was at in the second year. Which must have been around 1995. They had other computers, but they weren't connected to anything.

Must have gotten internet at home a little after that, but it was still dialup charged at 4p per minute during the day and 1p per minute at the weekends, expensive business so you could only afford to login, grab your email and log out again. I remember thinking, could I afford to stay online during the entire IndyCar race to watch the live timings and chat via IRC (remember that?!)

I think around 1998 or so, Force9 brought out what was one of the first 'flat-rate' connections and it was a complete revalation, being able to stay online for as long as you wanted!

[Daniel]

1998 I think for me. When did everyone get broadband? 2004 for me I think

[GridGirl]

This morning I was given the not so enviable job doing the calculations for someone's tax returns which they hadn't filed going back to the year 1996. Not surprisingly, the Tax Office was out for its pound of flesh and wasn't going to stop until it all gone done.
I was working away in Excel; inputting various figures so that I could get a side by side comparison, and the thought dawned on me that this must have been utter hell in the days before computers.

I can just imagine people with huge books in front of them with adding machines, scribbling away in pencil so that they could correct mistakes, and going crazy if they accidentally wrote something down incorrectly or had a carry through add error.
It would have also have been worse in the £/s/d days as well. Working out relatively simple things like sales taxes at the rate of 2/9 in the pound, must have been tedious for clerks working away in back offices.

I work for a small accountancy firm of only two people, and our little office has 33,968 documents scanned and on file. Hard copies of all of those would probably weaken the floor and the filing cabinets would probably crash through into the hairdresser's below us.

On reflection, I think I rather prefer the age of computers. They've replaced a lot of tedium... with other tedium :D

I'm sat in bed reading this forum and absolutely loved reading this thread not having to worry about the tedium of accountancy. I'm currently on gardening leave until I officially become an unemployed at 11.30am on Monday. :D

When I first started as an accountant we did everything manually and used to use huge reams of analysis paper. I remember being in finacial training college one day when the lecturer said "In my day, we used to do everything manually on paper" and the majority of the class laughed. Me and my workmates were sat there thinks "Errr yeah, we still do".

I actually find that I can no longer add up or subtract of my own accord anymore. I've had clients laugh at me before for putting 10 plus 10 in my calculator. That I could of probably worked out myself (I hope) but I'd still put it in a calculator every time. I didn't know whether to be proud or ashamed on the day I realised I no longer need ed to look my calculator to cast things. :s

[Mark]

1998 I think for me. When did everyone get broadband? 2004 for me I think

Quite a bit before that I think, more like 2001/2002 time. It was a bit of a strange setup as it came through the set top box I had from Telewest (now virgin) via an ethernet port at the back to my own wireless router, then onto my laptop via a PCMCIA card inserted in the side - laptops didn't have built in wifi back then!

[MrJan]

We took ages to join the electronic revolution. Don't think we had dial-up at home until nearly 2000 and didn't get broadband until after I'd come home from uni (although I did have it at my student house), so probably 2007. In fact when I first came home from uni I used to go to the public library to deal with internet stuff because my dial-up was still expensive and slow. My post rate for the forum plummeted :D

[Daniel]

If it weren't for computers I'd be doing something completely different for a job and I wouldn't be in a school migrating pc's over to a new AD server

[Daniel]

Not a fam of wireless myself. Good for phones of course but the bandwidth and reliability will never be as good as yr olde cat6 cable ;) You had a Sony laptop I recall Mark?

[Mark]

Not a fam of wireless myself. Good for phones of course but the bandwidth and reliability will never be as good as yr olde cat6 cable ;)


It was fine at the time as it could do 11Mbps but my internet connection was 512Kbps! However the wireless component of the router eventually failed and I resorted to using a CAT5 cable running across the living room, which my Mum wasn't best pleased about!



You had a Sony laptop I recall Mark?

Yep. As I recall 600Mhz and originally 128Mb of RAM. Came with Windows98 which I upgraded to XP :cool:
Cost me a cool £1,800 :eek:

[Daniel]

Scary! All of the three pc's I've built have cost more or less the same but have gradually become more high end each time.

[Mark]

£1,800 wasn't too bad as it was when I'd went from University to work and that strange time of your life when you all of a sudden have hods of income but haven't got lots of costs to go with it. That doesn't last long!

[Sonic]

Not a fam of wireless myself. Good for phones of course but the bandwidth and reliability will never be as good as yr olde cat6 cable ;) You had a Sony laptop I recall Mark?

I'm with you on that. Obviously wireless is fine for my iPad or whatever but I still like to hard wire the home computer or PS3 - just so much more reliable and consistent.

[Daniel]

Yet people fall over themselves to be wireless especially with keyboards and mice. Why?

[Retro Formula 1]

I work in engineering and the last drafting table I remember seeing in active use was in the late 1980s. Computers, specifically 3D CADD applications, have completely changed the industry.


I was at McLaren in 1988 at they still had them then.

All replaced now :(

[MrJan]

Yet people fall over themselves to be wireless especially with keyboards and mice. Why?

So I can sit on my sofa without having wires between my feet, or at work I can put my mouse anywhere on my desk without hassle.

I also need wireless for my internet, it'd be far too much of a mission of chasing out walls and drilling holes to get a wire from my phoneline/router to the PS3 or computer. Never really experience any problems with that either.

[Sonic]

Took my wires under the floor board so I've got a hook up right beside the PS3 and the PC.

[schmenke]

I totally agree. :)
Packages like SolidWorks (which is what I use every day) have made aspects of our manufacturing simpler. I used to have to write G-code for CNC which was a lengthy task and very unreliable where I used to watch anxiously as my code would either work, or plunge a 12.7mm cutter 80mm deep through solid aluminium lol. Not good. Now with the latest packages like SolidWorks with handy add on's the job can be be done in a fraction of the time with very little stress. Obviously there have been some shocker packages over the years, but these have put us in good stead and we can appreciate of working today IMO. Technical drawings are also easier to produce from solid models, and assembly's can be individually split into parts carrying information of suppliers, desired processes, and estimated machining timing. ...

We design process plants, mostly petrochemical, and by far the biggest benefit is the ability to design the plant in a 3D model. Instantly we can run clash-checks that simply can't be visualised in a 2-D rendering. We're even designing undergrounds, piling, civil works, etc. in a model now.
Also, at the press of a button (well, sort of :p : ) we can push out reams of piping isometric drawings that would take weeks to produce manually (used to be very labour-intensive stuff).

[billiaml]

I wouldn't want to think about doing half of the work I use the computer for manually. Working at a credit union & calculating the interest that we collect on peoples' loans -- and that we pay on their deposits? I don't think so.

[Alexamateo]

I remember my dad speaking admirably of a man who worked at the bank (at a standing desk and wearing the stereotypical green eye shade visor) who could add four ledger columns simultaneously.

I asked a guy who is my mentor how they used to ever get anything done in sales without cell phones and computers. He said it was actually better. You could get work done and have appointments without interruption, and then you would call and get messages from your secretary at prescribed intervals. You kept a lot of quarters and had to work from pay phones oftentimes returning calls. Later you got a "brick" phone, but minutes were so expensive you never gave your number to anyone, but someone could get a hold of you in an emergency.

Nowadays, they fired the secretary and your customer expects you to answer the phone and have all of his answers in 5 seconds! :D :eek: ;) Wait maybe it was better in the old days. :)

[Bob Riebe]

Accountancy sums? Journals? Studying? How have we got this far without someone mention the wonders that computers have performed in the advance of pornography?

On a serious note, they're superb. Our internet was down yesterday and someone had to resort to something called 'The Yellow Pages' to find out a phone number. WTF is The Yellow Pages? Also a bloke was looking for some specific fittings and the catalogue that had been faxed over was useless. Thankfully I had my phone so just brought up the website on that, I love technology, me.
I still have not dropped to that level, if I need a number around here it is dial 411.

Sorta related, I do not use a cell phone. My cousin gave me one for Christmas last year and only my sig. stopped me from throwing it in the garbage.
I think it is now some where near my old type-writer.

One thing that is nice and some what amazes me is how cheap long distance calling on a pay-phone is now.

[Bob Riebe]

Yep, computers are great but really came into their own when the internet, and specifically the web was invented. Now you can find information about anything at any time.

Strangely I always think about that when reading Harry Potter - oh they spent hours in the library looking something up. FFS, you're like all special and magical and yet you don't have Google?!

In my home town, I last used the card catalog probably eight years ago, and would still use it but they took it out.

[Bob Riebe]

New direction for the tread then; when did you first get Internet access at home? I think for me it was around 1996/7
Early nineties, do not remember exactly when, but the same as I did with cable I would take the special intro, cancel when that ran out and find another intro special and hook-up again.

[Tazio]

I love computers of course. The only problem is that my writing which was always apalling, has got even worse and I would say it's probably the handwriting of a primary school child......
Ditto!
Plus I remember when I was actually very good at spelling.
I got my BA in 1977. When I was an underclassman I found it quite useful to buy used books, because a lot of valuable information was written in the margins, and the same editions were used for several years. :)

[veeten]

Late 90's here. My eldest sister bought into a DSL line to go with the original PC for the house, and nearly a year later Comcast advertised their "always on" internet service. Seeing as I already had their cable TV service in my name, it wasn't all that hard to have them hook up the internet, and that was when it was 1.5/5 Mbps. Been with them ever since, even as the number of computers (PCs and laptops) have grown and changed.

[BDunnell]

It has been forty years since I had to do a hand written essay pages long, or decades since fighting with a non-word processing type writer, and I miss none of it.
Bob

Me neither. The thought of writing anything more than a few words out by hand at a time fills me with dread, I must say! I'm not sure how I got to the end of a written exam involving essay questions without my hand giving up the ghost.

[BDunnell]

I'm not too old to remember that, even if in 1996-2000 internet access was readily available.
There were certain sections of the library which housed popular books where you could check them out for reading in the library for a maximum of 3 hours, you couldn't take them out of the building itself!

Likewise from 1997-2001. Personally, I much prefer using books, journals, etc as research tomes than I do the internet, and nothing much in research terms can beat looking through reams of archive papers, something I find extremely rewarding.

[BDunnell]

Yet people fall over themselves to be wireless especially with keyboards and mice. Why?

Lack of wires themselves — nice. I find myself living amongst far too many cables anyway, what with chargers for various devices and so on. Being able to move keyboard or mouse any further away than I would have them even if they had wires — pointless.

[donKey jote]

memory lane:

1st Number crunching: early teens, used to add up page after page of aviation fuel amounts sold and prices into a calculator with a paper roll printout for my dad. :crazy:

1st Computer: a HP85 around age 16 in the early 80's... borrowed an assembly ROM from HP for a day and then, armed with my new peek and poke commands, proceeded to disassemble the entire ROM byte by byte (all 32K of it :p ) and code meself an assembler to enhance the original basic with matrix functions -including finding the eigenvectors and eigenvalues-, function plotting, fitting, rootsolving, calculus and the like. :dozey:

1st chat (called talk back then I think): late 80's on one of the Uni's Vaxes in the UK via rlogin to one of the IAC's Vaxes in Tenerife. :D

1st PC: the 486 50Mhz I wrote my thesis on. Windows 3.1. Early 90's.
(2nd PC: 2GHz Pentium -my current home PC :s - XP. Early 00's.)

1st home internet: dial-up 1996 when I moved to Germany. Broadband a year or two later.

[Daniel]

(2nd PC: 2GHz Pentium -my current home PC :s - XP. Early 00's.)

Jeezus Donkey! If I lived nearer I'd have to break into your house and build you a PC, that's like rolling on bald chinese tyres that is! :p

[Bob Riebe]

Likewise from 1997-2001. Personally, I much prefer using books, journals, etc as research tomes than I do the internet, and nothing much in research terms can beat looking through reams of archive papers, something I find extremely rewarding.I call the inter-net the ultimate card catalog, but I prefer books because one can have, depending on table size four to eight books open on the table in front of one, and quickly scan all at once without punching buttons, much less dicker around with computer screens which in modern laptops, seem to so sensitive if one sneezes too hard the screen will change.

[donKey jote]

Jeezus Donkey! If I lived nearer I'd have to break into your house and build you a PC, that's like rolling on bald chinese tyres that is! :p

yeah well I don't throw out my PC's til they're well illegal 'cos I'm soo clever me I even let my wife and kids on it ;) :p

... it's only really used for a bit of t'internet. Anything more serious gets done on one of the laptops :)

[Daniel]

Lack of wires themselves — nice. I find myself living amongst far too many cables anyway, what with chargers for various devices and so on. Being able to move keyboard or mouse any further away than I would have them even if they had wires — pointless.

I think for use on a couch a keyboard is a good idea. But then again we've got a media remote to use on the PC when we're in bed which has an inbuilt mouse thing. It's going to sound silly but my keyboard, mouse and headset all have braided sheath's on the cables which means they don't tend to get tangled quite as much.
http://techgage.com/reviews/logitech/g9/logitech_g9_05_thumb.jpg


The bottom of my keyboard also has channels on the bottom where you pass cabls through to tidy up the cabling a bit.
http://benchmarkreviews.com/images/reviews/input_devices/Logitech_G15_2007/logitech_g35_bottom.jpg

Buy the right products and cables certainly aren't the bother they might be with other products ;)

*takes geek anorak off*

[Rollo]

I call the inter-net the ultimate card catalog, but I prefer books because one can have, depending on table size four to eight books open on the table in front of one, and quickly scan all at once without punching buttons, much less dicker around with computer screens which in modern laptops, seem to so sensitive if one sneezes too hard the screen will change.

Hear Hear :up:

In my offices both at home and work, I have copies of various bits of legislation, tax handbooks, constitutions, copies of Pear's Cyclopediae and at home various copies of Wisden, motorsport books, technical journals, workshop manuals and classic literature.

All of my commonly referred to reference material has little post-its sticking out of it, which is somewhat annoying when it comes to doing Tax work, sometimes the note might be flagged in an edition which is four or five years old.

There are some things which I doubt that computers will ever replace. Although Kindle and other e-readers exist, they don't reproduce the smell or feel of an old book and you can't really read them in a dimly lit room with a cup of cocoa and raisin toast.

[airshifter]

First computer was a 486/25 back when it was cutting edge stuff. Mega memory (all four Megs!) and hard drive (80 Megs). Had worked with some at the time high end stuff in the military well before that. Not long after getting the 486 I got into running sign plotters which use essentially 2D CAD software, so the search for more power was on. I had two or 3 486 based systems, and I think 3 or 4 Pentium based systems. Somewhere around the Pentium 850 level the system was finally keeping up with the software I used and a few tweaks here and there kept me using that system for quite a long time. No longer needing power systems we now have a 3 Ghz single core system for my daughter and my system is a dual core 2.7 Ghz machine. I've owned Intel, Cyrix, and AMD based systems and all were either custom built or built by myself except for the first, which was a store purchased machine. My sign software was actually DOS based and would multitask circles around the Windows at the time while only using 1 meg of memory.


Before the internet was available to the normal people we used what were called Bulletin Board Systems. They worked similar to modern day email in that you connected and downloaded what was essentially a primitive "forum" of sorts. This was done with a modem, and most often to a fairly close location. That local system in turn connected to larger systems in the link, and at some point to the primary hub system. I remember spending days helping a friend set up one of the systems.

I can't really recall when our first internet connection was. Not long after it was available at any rate. Having gone though 2400, 14400, and 56K modems going to true high speed connection was great. Though it was available we didn't switch to high speed until 2004 IIRC. Now we have 25 Mbit up and download.

As for wireless I worked in military communications and saw how great wireless was long ago. Granted some things are better with a cable running to them, but I've never typed or moused too fast for a wireless connection, and we get plenty of bandwidth running wireless on the kids computer/PS3/Wii. It also saved me running way too much cable all over the house and fishing it through walls.

1st "chat" was military teletypes back in the early 80s. I'd love to know what kind of gear they have now. I've been out over 20 years and worked with stuff back then that only became commercially available in the last 5 years or so. Even back in the 80s we had some laptops with built in encryption and what we called "modem muff" that you could strap over a regular phone handset. We were authorized to transmit top secret communications over a regular phone line when needed. At the time it was the stuff of James Bond movies. :)

[Mark]

Back at school and college most of my work involved writing stuff out by hand, loads and loads of it! Essays filling several sides of A4 for example. Whereas now I'm that unused to writing that if I have to write out more than a few words my hand starts to ache quite a bit!

[Daniel]

Me too.

[Tazio]

if I have to write out more than a few words my hand starts to ache quite a bit!
You should consider suing the writing utensil manufacturers for causing you undue pain and suffering. :bigcry: :laugh:

[Mark]

I need a tiny printer to attach to my iPhone :p