I have been interested in Computers since I first heard the name UNIVAC while listening to the 1952 presidential election returns. At that time I was a freshman at Utah State University, the next day I asked my Math teacher (Joe Elich) about the "Univac" and what he thought about it predicting election returns. (He had worked as a Mathematician in a computing center, where a lot of women used mechanical calculators to do arithmetic sequences as directed by the mathematicians.) He felt that the election night talk about a "Univac" was just spoof to add interest to the rather boring reporting of the early returns. He did not believe there was such a thing as a "Univac" that could predict the outcome of elections.

Joe thought I was a better math student than I was; but that is another story. He introduced me to the mechanical calculators that the math department had and showed me how to multiply and divide on them. I had seen adding machines, but not anything that could multiply or divide. I was allowed to go into the "computer room" and use (actually play) with them pretty much when I wanted. I was fascinated and experimented with each different make: Friden, Marchant and Monroe. I raced them to see which would divide faster. (Divide was the most lengthy operation that the machine would do by itself. Multiply was not automatic and required the operator to ride the plus key and then shift the carriage for each multiplier digit.) Probably the fastest and most complicated mechanical calculator ever built and sold in quantity was the Marchant which had proportional gearing.

I wanted a calculator of my own in the worst way, but one cost more than an automobile in those days. I didn't have a car either, but I would have much rather had a calculator. I went to the University Library but they only had one book on "Computers" so I checked it out; but it was about calculating with levers and non-circular gears. To read and understand that book required a better understanding of Trigonometry and Calculus than I had at the time.

The University used IBM cards for something in the enrolling and grading of students. While it wasn't for students, I was able to get in on a night class for University employes about using the IBM cards and a little about the machines. But, using the keypunches and some of the other machines used cards. I didn't have any cards of my own and it didn't seem right for me to "steal" them from the University.

I found out that IBM had an office in Salt Lake. Salt Lake is nearly 100 miles from where I was going to University, and in those days that was a trip we only did a couple times a year. Eventually, I got to Salt Lake and went into the IBM office to buy a box of cards. Now, nobody ever buys a single box of cards. (A box is 2000 cards.) A case has five boxes, and I that doubt any business which was big enough to rent an IBM machine ever ordered just one case. But, I was there in the IBM office, very seriously wanting to buy one box of cards.

Although it was somewhat like going into a Corning Glass factory and wanting to buy just one test tube, but after much discussion and agonizing they eventually figured out how to sell me a box of cards. I was surprised to find out that I could specify the color and whether there was anything printed on the cards. Eventually, I left with one box of green 5081 cards. (5081 is a standard card that has little digits printed everywhere a hole can be punched in the card.) I still have some of those cards squirreled away in my parents old house. (In a few more years they may be collectors items. Who knows? I might get on the "Antique Road Show".)
I just found in an old book the hand filled in receipt for that box of cards. It has the following information:

IBM RECEIVING AND SHIPPING AUTHORIZATION, No. 620393 dated 6-3-7 to LaFarr Stuart for 2m 5081 Green Cards $2.66, tax .27 Total $2.93 Signed by Russ. (That had to be June 3, 1957)

I wonder if that might be the smallest value receipt ever written by IBM until after they introduced the Personal Computer?

I learned how to run and wire the panels for all the IBM machines they had at the University, but did little more until after I graduated. I went into the Air Force and they sent me to the University of Utah for a year of Meteorology training. While there I took a night class on programming the IBM 650, and got my first computer manual; and learned the concept of a stored program. (I was much more interested in the IBM class than Meteorology, which I didn't want in the first place.)

I wrote to manufactures and got manuals for many early computers. A list of all the computers that I got manuals for, and wrote programs for, even though I never got to actually run them is here.

It was not until I got out of the Air Force and went to Iowa State University that I actually got to touch a real computer. This was almost nine years after the November night in 1952 when I first heard of a Univac Computer. It turned out I was very lucky to get to work on a computer that they were building at Iowa State. Initially, I would much preferred to have been working on the IBM 650 they had at Iowa state. Myself and an instructor (Bob Sharpe) in the Electrical Engineering department wrote all the diagnostics for the computer. (It was called the Cyclone). We also wrote the Assembler for it. I think I am rather unique in that I can honestly say: "The first Assembler I ever used, I wrote". Bob and I then used the Assembler to write a floating point package, EERIE, which was taught to the Engineering students. Launching a computer from the ground up was a great experience.

There is much that could be said about the places I worked and the computers I used, but in a nutshell they were: IBM 1401 in Las Vegas for the Nevada AEC test site and latter the telephone company, RCA in Cherry Hill New Jersey for nearly 6 years, MultiComp in Waltham Mass. using a PDP-8 as a front end for a Control Data 3600, CDC in Sunnyvale California, Kustom electronics putting terminals in police cars, Tektronix marketing graphics terminals, Employ Benefits Insurance company, Computer Avionics, Intersil making Masks for Read Only Memory chips, and Zytrex a company started to make CMOS ROMS.

The first computer I ever owned was a PDP-11/20 with 8K words of memory. Next I got a 6800 Proto Typing board put out by AMI. (The 6800 was Motorola's first microprocessor, it was second sourced by AMI.) Latter I upgraded this to a 6801 and then a 6809, then I got a HeathKit Z-89 and used it mainly as a CRT terminal with disk storage. I bought my first IBM PC in 1983, and have made many upward steps from that till I am now using a 450 Mhz Pentium III system with 128K bytes of ECC memory, and a 10 G Byte hard drive. I have a 1.7 Gig Pentium IV system that sets idle because it doesn't have ECC. I would much rather have reliability than speed I can hardly notice.

You may well ask: "What is ECC memory? ECC is an acronym that stands for Error Correcting Code. For today's PC that is memory that stores an extra bit with each byte. But it accesses memory reading or writing 64 bits at a time, but it retrieves 72 bits from memory. The extra bits provides enough redundancy that it can correct single bit errors and detect multiple bit errors. I strongly believe that to be reliable a computer must have error detection, at least for the memory. You can read more about it from this link Memory, Parity and ECC.

I got an IBM 1451 ThinkPad Laptop. I chose it because it has a relatively large LCD screen. But, I would not recommend it, nor buy it if I were in the market for a laptop. The documentation with it is worse than POOR. The BIOS is obsolete and cannot handle FAT32 files, in their hibernate mode. IBM has now replaced it with the 1452, but it uses the cheap Intel Celeron processor. (I am glad I didn't get it.)

I bought a HP PhotoSmart and expect to have a few pages with photos. So far I have only used it enough to verify that it works.

Wishful thinking: I got for $29 another speech recognition program, VoiceXpress, I haven't spent enough time with it to know if I am going to like it or not; but at the present I am quite impressed.
Another similar program: "Learn to Speak Spanish" from The Learning Company uses a microphone to evaluate your pronunciation. It sounds too good to be true. I haven't even tried to install it yet.

There are too many things to do in a day to just set and talk to a computer all day. I am embarrassed to admit it, but: My experimenting with the Linux operating system on a PC is more or less on hold.

I still don't like Windows, or a GUI interface.