Technologies of the past
- Thread starter Unown
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Circa 1981, my first job in the bank had me frequently interact with a peculiar fellow who was not much for words but what I gathered very intelligent- He took me to his secure office one day and asked me if I knew what a telex machine was .
I had no clue-
He introduced me to a bunch of machines that spit out braille like tape-
By touch, he was able to read real time transmissions from out head office in Asia
Fascinating
I had no clue-
He introduced me to a bunch of machines that spit out braille like tape-
By touch, he was able to read real time transmissions from out head office in Asia
Fascinating
CB radio talk.
There is a cop behind you.
One of the more common ones was asking for "an over the shoulder shout" meaning getting some info from someone traveling in the opposite direction on a parkway.
The fad was hot for a while in the late 70's then just died out except for the hardcore addicts.
And then it seemed every town had that one retarded kid who rode around with a CB radio on his bicycle. Said kid usually also hung around a firehouse pestering the volunteers.
There is a cop behind you.
One of the more common ones was asking for "an over the shoulder shout" meaning getting some info from someone traveling in the opposite direction on a parkway.
The fad was hot for a while in the late 70's then just died out except for the hardcore addicts.
And then it seemed every town had that one retarded kid who rode around with a CB radio on his bicycle. Said kid usually also hung around a firehouse pestering the volunteers.
My CB radio, was my dad's car after he got home from work. He used it in the morning/ evening commutes, with his 8 track player installedin every car until the 1990's... I used his radio nearly every night after he got home to chat with all the neighborhood kids in town and on weekends [party phone lines weren't a thing anymore, we still wanted the group chat features]
Ah, party phone lines.
During the 50's there weren't enough individual lines so there were party lines where there was a common loop connecting phone subscribes instead of an individual line from the central station to a single subscriber.
Whether a single subscriber line or a party line there was literally a physical wire connecting phones to the central station and central stations were connected to other central stations with individual wires. Each central station had massive banks of switches that would connect a calling phone to a receiving phone. also the ring tone was generated at the receiving central station (the ring you heard in the sending handset had no relationship to the receiving handset ring — was only in the sending handset to let the sender know a call was trying to be made.
So on a party line you as a subscriber would get an individual ring pattern identifying that a call was for you but anyone could pick up on the line and listen to the conversations. Everyone in the party line loop would hear their phone ring but were supposed to pick up if their identifying pattern was heard e.g., a long, followed by two short, followed by a long may be your identifying code — these rings were actual bells ringing. If one of the parties used the phone heavily, then the inconvenience for the others was more than occasional, as depicted in the 1959 comedy film Pillow talk. Also you couldn't make an out going call if some other subscriber was on the line. If someone left a phone off hook the line would be tied up for outgoing and new incoming calls.
Prior to the massive switching schemes at each central station there would be actual operators there that would literally connect an outgoing call to the incoming phone with a wire and plug/jack switch board (See my post #12 for a picture of such). the operators, usually women, could listen into any call and have a wealth of gossip as to what was going on in the community.
During the 50's there weren't enough individual lines so there were party lines where there was a common loop connecting phone subscribes instead of an individual line from the central station to a single subscriber.
Whether a single subscriber line or a party line there was literally a physical wire connecting phones to the central station and central stations were connected to other central stations with individual wires. Each central station had massive banks of switches that would connect a calling phone to a receiving phone. also the ring tone was generated at the receiving central station (the ring you heard in the sending handset had no relationship to the receiving handset ring — was only in the sending handset to let the sender know a call was trying to be made.
So on a party line you as a subscriber would get an individual ring pattern identifying that a call was for you but anyone could pick up on the line and listen to the conversations. Everyone in the party line loop would hear their phone ring but were supposed to pick up if their identifying pattern was heard e.g., a long, followed by two short, followed by a long may be your identifying code — these rings were actual bells ringing. If one of the parties used the phone heavily, then the inconvenience for the others was more than occasional, as depicted in the 1959 comedy film Pillow talk. Also you couldn't make an out going call if some other subscriber was on the line. If someone left a phone off hook the line would be tied up for outgoing and new incoming calls.
Prior to the massive switching schemes at each central station there would be actual operators there that would literally connect an outgoing call to the incoming phone with a wire and plug/jack switch board (See my post #12 for a picture of such). the operators, usually women, could listen into any call and have a wealth of gossip as to what was going on in the community.
Good article about DEC and the VAX.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...p1TQpuNp0NfinYDdnSwj45dubwV_sssy5YnQ2u7bDIp00
More importantly, I don't think tech nerds were getting laid at this time. It took the microprocessor and the internet to make the classic tech nerd millionaire.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...p1TQpuNp0NfinYDdnSwj45dubwV_sssy5YnQ2u7bDIp00
More importantly, I don't think tech nerds were getting laid at this time. It took the microprocessor and the internet to make the classic tech nerd millionaire.
With assembler you can do really great things with almost no computing power. For example the Apollo Guidance Computer was 64Kb, 16 bits and 1 Mhz.
Also you can use higher level languages to do the time insensitive stuff and do he bottle neck routines in assembler.
Do you recall what projects in LILCO that they wanted you for? Substations related perhaps.
Also you can use higher level languages to do the time insensitive stuff and do he bottle neck routines in assembler.
Do you recall what projects in LILCO that they wanted you for? Substations related perhaps.
Their entire ERP was coded in BAL (assembler).
They had this odd policy though that they waited until the end of the interview to tell you about. When there was an emergency, like a big storm with down powelines it was all hands on deck. He said they wouldn't make me climb poles and fix the wires but I'd have to go out in a truck and help find the wires and possibly hold the flashlight while the electrician or linesman fixed it. And he was dead serious. That was the deal breaker.
They had this odd policy though that they waited until the end of the interview to tell you about. When there was an emergency, like a big storm with down powelines it was all hands on deck. He said they wouldn't make me climb poles and fix the wires but I'd have to go out in a truck and help find the wires and possibly hold the flashlight while the electrician or linesman fixed it. And he was dead serious. That was the deal breaker.
The name of that language will come to me. I'm thinking it was an acronym but then the acronym spelled out a male name.
@genius - the last time I used assembler, we had a project at the Bank to get the securities information onto a File Server so it could be used for what was then a new Client Server system. This was before there was FTP to automatically convert data types so we wrote assembler programs to do byte by byte conversions. That was the power of BAL, you could manipulate date at the bit level.
@genius - the last time I used assembler, we had a project at the Bank to get the securities information onto a File Server so it could be used for what was then a new Client Server system. This was before there was FTP to automatically convert data types so we wrote assembler programs to do byte by byte conversions. That was the power of BAL, you could manipulate date at the bit level.