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?

 

[Foada]

How about the eraser shield, electric eraser, and all the ammonia fumes from the blue print machine!

 

[ewh]

Remember sepia prints and eradicator fluid?

 

[MadMango]

We used to make ammonia prints onto mylar for durability. When changes were required, nothing worked better than your eraser shield to scrape-off the text/lines from the back of the mylar.

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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[matthewj]

First position was maintaining computers and DEC VAX. 8086, 8088 and 80286's and windows 2.1. When intel came out with the 386, we thought it was blazing fast. Windows 3.0 came out with the first "multitasking" environment, GUI was new, that really blew our minds in hardware!

Got burnt out on computers, IT, and keeping current on the hardware/software divide, so I went back to get a degree in civil. The days when hardware was king almost seems like neolithic times as far as technology goes.

Hey, it's Friday! Cheers!

 

[haggis]

Communications:

Today I had a request from another plant to send a picture of something we have at ours. This post came to mind again as I got out the digital camera. Marvelous...take the picture, upload it and e-mail it to the guy.

Then a better idea struck me. Take my personal cell phone, get the picture with it, and e-mail it while sitting outside in the sun for five minutes with a coffee and a smoke. So it will cost me on my phone but it was well worth it for the five minute break.

Ah yes....technology...keep it coming!

 

[mshimko]

Great advances, but with downsides as well:

- with more amd more ino stored on computers, theft of information (identity theft) is a major concern today.

- to safeguard information, many defense related agencies and companies have severe retrictions on digital equiment. I cannot even carry into some buildings call phones with cameras, or even thumb drives.

If this continues, I won't be able to buy a cell phone I can use!

 

[NickE]

mshimko- I know what you mean. Our sales dept upgraded all of their cells and had to get the cheapest, most rudimentary phones available cause none of the advanced phones are available w/o a camera.

(I didnt wnat a camera when I bought my current phone either, I've never been a fan of gross amounts of picture taking, and really prefer to fiddle with a manual 35mm SLR anyway.)

 

[haggis]

mshimko

While I agree with you that safeguarding our info is paramount and technology in safeguarding this must advance as fast as the communications technology itself, I wonder if it is any easier to spy and glean info today as it was before wireless technology providing the safeguards are in place.

NickE

As I said, I love technological advancement, however, I too still play with a totaly manual 35mm SLR Practica which my wife bought me in 1979 in leaner times. Sentimentality too I think.

 

[EngJW]

I hate these watches where you have to get out a manual to set the time twice a year. Give me a watch with hands or better yet do away with the time changes.

It's Friday and half past beer thirty. I'm outta here.

 

[IRstuff]

In some respects, information protection is actually a lot easier now.

You used to have so little data that the sum total was easy to find. I've got so many CDs now that it would take hours just to find a CD that I know about. Trying to find a particular piece of data on an arbitrary CD is well nigh impossible.

"half past beer thirty" --> 15 beers, by 18:04!!!!!! must have been a rough week

TTFN

 

[svanels]

First semester at the university learned fortran, used punch cards on the main frame etc (it was transition time).
Second semester they brought in the PC's (no hard drives yet for the students). I saw others using wordstar, but I was only interested in fortan to use on matrixes. Had bought some interesting books about calcullus and matrix operations. Faced the dillema: how to put fortran on a 360K floppy and use it. Fortunately a friend of mine was doing the introduction to computer science and learned pascal. Put Turbo Pascal on the floppy and did all the Fortan stuff in Pascal.
4[sup]th[/sup] semester I discovered DOS (finally I grasped this magic format command that was needed to get things running) and realized that the computer could be used for other things then only programming. I started using Wordstar. Before that 360K only existed of the OS, TP 3.01 and my programs in Turbo.
7[sup]th[/sup] semester first computer 4.88 mHz, 2 floppies no HD
Now my daughter of 6, kicks alien buts in Doom 3, My son of 8 hunts mercenaries in Far Cry, when they are not killing each other in some game on the home LAN.

 

[BillPSU]

First experience in computer assist NC programming was using Compact II and time sharing on a computer. My means of communication with the computer a 110 baud teletype with paper tape. Calculators were still very expensive and people were still using trig tables.

 

[Hippo41]

Nobody seems to have mentioned fax and e-mail machines.

To get an urgent drawing from Johannesburg over to Europe we had to drive to the airport to put on th enext available flight - then wait 2 weeks for a reply. The enquiry went via telex.

Then faxing made things a little easier (for small drawings of course). How could things improve.

Now, living in the UK, I can do a CAD drawing, e-mail it to the other side of the world and have an answer back by the morning. (And I guess there must be interactive systems in bigger companies than ours)

Is it better? Maybe - but the world seems to expect nstant answers for everything these days - not always easy.

Lester Milton
Telford, Shropshire, UK

 

[EngJW]

The good old days. Everytime you finished a project you had to run check prints and then more prints for all the other departments. Sometimes the secretary would do it but more likely the engineers had to come in Saturday mornings and run them for free. Now we can email the drawings to purchasing and let them take care of the distribution. No more ammonia, folding E size drawings, stuffing envelopes, writing addresses, getting postage.

 

[HgTX]

Word-processors have completely changed the way I type.
The ability to backspace as typos occur makes me not nearly as careful about how accurate I am the first time around. The other day I was typing something from a hard copy and tried the old-fashioned way of looking just at the copy and not at the screen...lordy. Bad bad bad.

Hg

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[svanels]

Talking about computers, there are still some keys on the keyboard from the good old days.
You still remember the message "press return to continue". Yeah I know there are still people looking for that famous return key.
Does anybody know what SysRq was supposed to do?

 

[GregLocock]

http://www.intelipedia.com/SysRq.htm

it's a direct low level interrupt to BIOS, a bit like the three fingered salute, but not as terminal (bad pun day).



Cheers

Greg Locock

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[BillPSU]

How about 5 1/4" and 8" floppy disks. 8 bit computers. Color television. Tube technology to solid state.

Casting technology such as vacuum melted and poured super alloys with directional grain or single crystal used in jet engine hot section compressor blades.

 

[svanels]

5 1/4" and 8" floppy disks...
Second semester, after vacation, I arrive at the computing center, eager to continue with this computing stuff. Made the algoritm on paper used Fortran.
[blue]Where are the punchers? [/blue]
Clerk, the guy which former job was to collect the cards and feed the monster : they are gone
[blue]I need a computer[/blue]
Clerk: there are new ones (8088), you need a floppy disk

2 days later I am at a bookstore that sells floppies, you don't need to purchase a package of 10

[blue]I need a floppy[/blue]
Seller: which one 5 1/4 or 8"
[blue]What is the difference?[/blue]
Seller: you can store more on the big one (8 inch)
[blue]Oke I will take a big one and a small one [/blue]
Back at the Uni, test drive!!!
I receive a computer, I must put in the disk and turn the computer on. The 8 inch stays in my bag, looking around what others are doing.
Nothing happens, the helpfull souls around help me formatting the floppy about 10 times. Most of them are students in computer science, but when I use the word Fortran, they back-off (later I will understand that programming is the most unpopular course, something like vector mathematics x engineering).
End of story, after the 3[sup]rd[/sup] time to the computing center I have a bootable disk, Turbo Pascal on it, and know how to save and print my files

 

[EngJW]

First cad system was Computer Vision. They had to build a special room with controlled climate and lighting. It had a mainframe computer in another room and each person had a special workstation with video display, a graphics pad, and a separate computer for entering data. They had to have a cad manager and several operators who did nothing else. Engineers were not allowed to use the system. You were expected to describe what you wanted and the operators would make the drawings. The cad room was off limits to anyone except operators. It was difficult to communicate when you had no idea what the system could do.

Years later we wanted Pro-E but they were pushing a complete system for something like $50k a seat.

Now, I have just a plain computer and installed Solidworks myself from a cd. To me it is easier and faster to work out your ideas by yourself than to try to explain them to someone else who has no idea what you want.