The year is 1977. Some of you reading this blog have not even been born yet. I am 1 year away from Motherhood and 4 years away from a technical degree in computer programming. At the time this picture was taken, people were still employed as punchcard operators. Computer programmers would write code on punch sheets and then punchcard operators, using a keypunch machine, would key in the information. Computer cards, holding one line of code per card, would then be generated. The cards would then be fed, through the use of a card reader, into the computer. The computer would read the cards and, one card at a time, the program would be downloaded into the computer. This was state-of-the-art programming, baby!
By the time I started tech school in the early 80's computers no longer needed an entire room to hold a mainframe computer. The "mini" computer, (I wonder if the "mini" skirt, quite popular at the time, was the origination of the prefex) I used at Arizona Technical Institute was about 3 1/2 feet high by 4 feet long. Punchcards and keypunch machines, as well as the operators, were soon replaced by data entry personnel. It was a technological revolution and small business was all about getting their business online. Of course that term had not been invented as yet, and it was quite a messy business trying to turn all of those filing cabinets and payroll systems into computer generated information. That, however, is another story.The first chapter of this book reminded me of all of this historical information. It is amazing to me how different the world is from the world I grew up learning about. As a girl, my grandmother, and her siblings, traveled to town (every few weeks) by horse and wagon - if the roads were open. It was a very big deal, when, at aged 13, my 8th grade class got to go to the State Capital for a field trip. My daughter, at age 16, spent a month in Europe studying music - without siblings and/or parents and/or school. She emailed me almost every day and used a cell phone to call home for more money.
It is a different world, that's for sure. But I, for one, am glad to see all the changes and inovations, particularly in computers. The 1980's gave me an opportunity to be on the ground floor of the computer revolution and now, almost 30 years later, I am poised to be on the cutting edge of the next revolution. And isn't that a wonderful thing. There were certainly no 50+ year old students in my first computer classes. And very few women, for that matter. I am glad that I am around to be a part of it.
Punch card operator picture can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punch_card_era
