Happy Birthday PC!

Saturday, August 12, 2006 was the 25th birthday of the IBM PC which brought to mind my introduction to computers.

Truth be told, the first computer I came across was the abacus - seriously, it's viewed as the first computer ever.
Side note, I think it would be fun to give every stu
dent an abacus and advertise that we give
every student their own, custom-made personal computer. Back to your regularly scheduled
blog...
Store owners and even in the Philippine public schools, the abacus was used for calculating mathmetical functions. I vaguely recall seeing them in use as far back as 1978-79, but I never learned to use one.

My first exposure to an electronic computer was the Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. I was in 5th-grade at the time, attending Faith Academy. I don't know that there were computers elsewhere on campus, but the Middle School Principal had the TRS-80 in his office. Somehow, one of my friends received permission to play games on the machine afterschool and he took me along with him. I only remember doing that once, but it left an indelible impression.

As you might see from the picture, the Model 1 featured a cassette tape drive. If you never experienced a cassette tape drive, you're blessed! My memory recalls that programs took 15-30 minutes to load, but due to often poor audio quality, programs would often misload, requiring restarting the process all over again. We loaded a one dimensional airplane flying game. Contemplate that statement for awhile to grasp the crudeness of all this. In the end, I think the program gave us an error half-way through and by then it was almost dinner time. Though archaic compared to today's standards, something happened that day.

In the next year or two the school had a TRS-80 Model 3 that had a disk drive!!! I also recall taking a little class using an Apple II and learning some BASIC programming.

A reflection on computer history wouldn't be complete without bringing up the Mac/PC debate. I saw my first Mac sometime in early 1985. When you live half-a-world away, technological advances are introduced by the latest missionaries to arrive from the homeland. We never got to see the infamous Mac commercial that introduced it to the US market. No my introduction was Mr. Carlson, who'd just arrived from the US and apparently one of my teachers had asked him to bring his new Mac to class so we could see the newest and latest. I remember my immediate reaction, "Why isn't it in color?"



My family's first personal computer was the IBM PC Jr. which we purchased around 1985. Within a few weeks of getting the machine, my cousin and I wrote a simple BASIC program designed to make the machine appear to have malfunctioned. As a practical joke we ran the progam and yelled for Dad to come quick because something had happened to the computer. It worked to perfection.

From there I took as many computer courses as I could, learning BASIC and Turbo Pascal in high school and helping my parent's co-workers learn how to use WordPerfect and WordStar. When I started college, I went with the intention of pursuing Computer Science, picking up Fortran (not sure why I bothered) and the early parts of COBOL (again, why?!?). Soon thereafter I decided I'd had enough of programming and bugged-out of the program.

Today, computer work is a key role I fill. Between the daycare, school and church office, we have some 100 networked computers in the building. While I don't program, having that background has helped immensely in comprehending what's going on when things hit the fan or understanding new things like the church website.

Seeing how much Faith Academy's investment in computer hardware and education has impacted me, we've worked hard to equip Grace with up-to-date machines and my hope is that we'll be able to expose students to the possibilities in computers.

Happy Birthday PC!