How fast technology changes

[EngJW]

Just curious as to how much change in technology has changed in your careers. In my case,

1st year of college- we were using slide rules

3rd year- got an HP35 calculator, very expensive, but what a time saver

4th year- used Fortran on a huge mainframe. We had to punch IBM cards, and one mistake and you threw the card away

1st computer- Apple 2E

1st job- spent 2 years on the drawing board

1st cad- Computervision, they had to build a special climate controlled room, and the computer had its own room

Now- doing 3d modeling with Solidworks

I can't believe how much things have changed, and 30 years ago I could never have envisioned what we are doing today. It seems impossible to keep up with all of it and it is hard enough to stay current in your own job.

Anyone else think the same?

 

[ctopher]

yes. I try to explain the changes to my kids. They give me a weird look and say ... "ya, back in the time...". Makes me feel old. But it was only 15-20 yrs ago! I started with calc, not slide rules. A lot has changed just in 10 yrs. We still have 40 yr old drafting tables in our offices for storing stuff on. New engineers don't realize what they are until we tell them.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP0.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

 

[rbcoulter]

JLWoodard - Ha. Think you are a little older than me. LOL.

Started tenth grade chemistry using slide rules. Rich kid in class bought the first pocket calculator I ever saw.

Wrote programs in FORTRAN on IBM mainframe in college.
There was a "Star Trek" program on the mainframe written
in BASIC. I thought it was neat that I had the program punched out on CARDS with the intent of playing the game on any mainframe computer I encountered in the future.

Introduced to desktop computers during first year of my first job. Only had a BASIC operating system. Printer was on silver thermal paper.

Bought first computer two years later, it was a Sinclair that had 16K of memory. Thought at the time that I would never need more that 16K of memory because I couldn't imagine writing a program that big. (People didn't buy software in those days.)

Bought a Radio Shack computer 5 years later with 256K of memory and TWO 5" floppy drives. WOW! That will never be obsolete (so I thought).

Got 20 megabyte hard drive and CGA color monitor 1 year later. "I'll never fill that hard drive up....

And 17 years later...

In this office I have five computers. The total hard drive storage is half a tera-byte.

 

[Myndex]

Somewhere in storage, I still have my old Mutoh drafting machine, Alvin compass set and Reform drafting pens.

My first computer with a hard drive was $3500 (the 40 MB hard drive was 800 of that.)

Today a 700MB CD-R is 25 cents, and for 800 dollars I can buy 5-250GB drives for 1,250,000 MB.

This is 31250 times more space per dollar in under 15 years.

That's an average increase of 5.7 times PER DAY.

---


On another note, a friend of mine is attending Cal Tech - and they still START YOU OUT with a SLIDE RULE.


Interesting.


Andy

 

[HVAC68]

I saw a computer first time in my final year of engineering. My son all of 5 years old has been using the computer for the last 3 years at home !!!

HVAC68

 

[MadMango]

My company bought me a new computer to be able to spearhead 3D CAD. It was a 300mhz box with 128mb of memory, 16mb graphics card and 10gb hard drive. This was almost $1900. I remember the Director of Engineering saying to me, "You'll be able to do some damage with this!"

This was less than 9 years ago.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[PSE]

My experience is similar to rbcoulter's (I remember the Star Trek program as well)! Within the field of my profession I have seen the advent of the visible diode laser, vertical cavity surface emitting laser, holography becoming umbiquitous (just look at a credit card), CD technology, DVD technology, gradient index optical materials, diffractive optics, MEMS, harmonic generation ... The listing can go on and on.

Regards

 

[IRstuff]

My first computer was a CPM-80 box that set me back $1999. Came with 64K of DRAM; hacked the BIOS to support THREE 5.25" floppies (Yeow!!)

First PC-based computer, I bought with a $330 30MB Winchester. Co-worker laughed at me for being so extravagant on the HD. Said he bought two 5MB HDs and that should be good enough. Less than 2 days later, he came back and apologized. Apparently, he was unable to load all his floppy collection on the meager 10MB of HD.

For $330 I can now buy more than 400GB of HD. Can't even get a 32MB jumpdrive anymore, it's sooo old.

TTFN

 

[MadMango]

I just received a "vendor freeby". Usually these are samples of parts, pens, or perhaps a calendar or cheap tape measure, all with the vendors name or logo stamped on it. I think my latest freebie speaks loudly about technology changes-- 256mb USB 2.0 flash memory stick.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[olynyk]

Myndex, you forget about compound interest!

A 31250-fold increase in 15 years is just under a doubling every year (99% increase annually), not a 5.7-fold increase every day.

 

[Comcokid]

Any time you think how much technology has changed in the Y years since you got out of school in year X, just think about what the technology was in year X-Y, and you will get a glimpse of how new grads view you.

By this formula, newbies view my college experience the same way I would view someone who got their degree in the mid 50's ! Yikes! that does make me feel old.

But then again, both history and technology tend to repeat themselves. The first computers were mechanical. Today, MEMS is at the forefront of technology - mechanical gears and wheels are back!

Vacuum tubes still are around. Right now, I am staring at a CRT, and the overhead lighting is fluorescent tubes. Many clocks use VFD displays.

 

[kchayfie]

At 28, I tend to think of myself as a kid of the computer age but even for me, its scary how technology has moved. In my first job 96/97 (pre-university) there wasn't necessarily a computer on every desk and the only internet access was in the library. Towards the end of the placement, external e-mail was just becoming available so that I could keep in touch with my colleagues from university. Now I remote access my desktop from the clients' offices 200 miles away.

 

[haggis]

When I started out in 1962, like a lot of the “older guys”, I used a Staedler-Mars slide rule. Drew in ink with the same make of instruments. My first calculator was a Texas Instruments TI-40 and fortunately enough, I had gained enough experience that I didn,t blindly believe the output in the case of hitting the wrong button somewhere along the line. My fisrt home computer, actually it was for the kids, was a Commodore Vic 20 with 5k of ram. Then I bought my first PC for doing work at home. This powerhouse was a 286 with 1 meg. of ram, a 40meg. Hard drive and the Turbo button increased the processing speed from 8Mhz to a blistering 12 Mhz.

My first cad experience was with an old CADAM system with mainframe file storage then we went to PC’s with AutoCAD. Today, my sytem at work is a dual 3.2Ghz machine with 3Gb of ram, 63 Gb hard drive and 24” plasma screen.

Over the years, I seen some guys go by the wayside because of a reluctance to adapt to technological change but I always welcomed it and still do.

Even in communications, it’s hard to believe we managed without the internet, e-mails, PDA’s and mobile phones etc., and when I started, it was all sci-fi.

 

[NickE]

This is one that I try to keep in mind.

Celullar telephones.

In ~'88 my dad got a free trial phone for his car. The phone holder and Xcever was about the size of a car battery. Niether of us even considered that the thing should be portable. (He was then the only person I knew with a cellular phone.)

By ~'92 (when I graduated from HighSchool) portable phones were more common, though now the battery and phone were approximately the same size.

In '98 (BS degree) I got my dads old motorola phone, this phone was incredible. The battery was Li-ION, and the phone itself was much smaller than the battery. I predicted that in 10years you would dial a person instead of a place.

Last summer I got my current phone. Tha battery is only around 5 credit cards thick, is actually smaller than the phone again. Now however the phone has 5MB of installed memory. Can run applications that would have choked my old '486-33mhz PC. Takes photos in VGA resolution. Works anywhere in the world. Is an alarm clock, datebook, cardfile, note recorder, 5-function calculator, uses a graphics processor that can "only" handle 16-bit color, and fits easily into the watch/zippo pocket on my Levi's. (It's also been obsolete since about 2weeks after I bought it.)

This miniturization has been a huge boon, however I think that the kids of today really got it good. Yeterday I was at a bar'b'que. There was a styrofoam model of a jet fighter with an electric motor, instead of a nitromethane glowplug motor and balsa/tissue construction.

Found the link:

http://www.modelflight.com.au/hobbyzone/f-27_striker.htm

WOW is all I can say.

 

[SolderingGunslinger]

1st year of college- we were using slide rules

2nd year- got an HP35 calculator, very expensive, but what a time saver

All four years- used Fortran, APL, COBOL and machine code on an IBM 1130. We had to punch IBM cards, and one mistake and you threw the card away. Made the thing play music on an FM radio placed near the core memory. Also wrote "Star Trek" program...I think the boxes of punch cards still reside in the attic of my parents' garage.

1st computer- Analog computer, heathkit; digital computer Altair 8080

1st job- I won't include time as a teenager and as an undergrad working in a TV repair shop...RF Engineer for a small radio group 5-years.


When I began in electronics, parts were large enough to see, color codes were big as were part numbers (6L6, 12AX7,2N2222, etc.)...oh yeah, I didn't need eyeglasses in order to see. Now the lowly 2N2222 or equiv. is avaliable in a package about the size of a small grain of rice, it still has numbers silkscreened upon it, however a magnifier is needed to read the durned thing and I will probably be graduating to trifocals (bad pun intended) next eye exam.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger

 

[EngJW]

Do you remember what the HP35 cost? Seems to me it was $375. If so, I don't know how I ever managed to afford it while in college, but it did knock hours off of the homework.

 

[SolderingGunslinger]

Do you remember what the HP35 cost? Seems to me it was $375.

EGAD! That was a third of a century ago or more!

I do remember that the calculator which fit in my (albeit oversized) shirtpocket cost me only slightly less than my first car, a 1966 Mustang Hardtop (purchased used in 1973) which got 20 MPG gasoline and 100 miles/ quart motoroil.

I still have my old Log-Log Pickett Slipstick. From time to time I pull it out of the lap-top case and gee-whiz even a few of the Proffessors at the U of AZ.

I have no idea what ever happened to the HP-35, however I currently have a little HP 6S solar calculator in my shirt pocket for those times I need to quickly crunch a number and don't want to warm up the Dell Latitude for Excel.

I remain,

The Old Soldering Gunslinger

 

[looslib]

HP35 when introduced was $495. Reduced to $395 when the HP45 was introduced.

Someone told me that HP's manufacturing cost on the HP45 was $29.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
"Fixed in the next release" should replace "Product First" as the PTC slogan.

Ben Loosli
CAD/CAM System Analyst
Ingersoll-Rand

 

[zdas04]

When I started work out of college, there were starting to be CICS (mainframe) terminals around and some accounts had rudimentary engineering programs. The company's Chief Engineer repeatedly said "If I ever see an engineer with his hands on a keyboard I'll fire him." He lasted till 1982 and the first deployment of IBM PC XT's (single 10 MB HD, something like 64K of ram, and a 360k floppy) then retired.

David

 

[EngJW]

$495-wow. I know it was worth it. My first calculator was a Heathkit desktop unit and it only did 4 operations. The digits, whatever they used before led's, would fade out after an hour or so. I made two trips with it to the service center on Long Island and they found nothing wrong with it. Then one of the technicians plugged it into a power supply at work all day and it never faded out. We found that the line voltage fluctuations at night (it was a hot summer) were shutting it down. So I bought the HP35 as soon as it came out.

The HP doesn't work anymore but it has a place of honor on my bookshelf, next to my Accutron.