this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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I had this comic book, it was a special edition sold at Radio Shack when I was a kid. And yeah that pocket computer was just a big calculator that had a lot of keys.
I had that computer, and it was much more than a calculator, unless you mean a modern programmable one. This one could be programmed in BASIC. It also had a receipt-sized printer you could get.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NQheo52J3BM
There was a book series called Micro Adventures that featured a kid named Orion who used a TRS-80. There were BASIC programs in the books that you could run if you had a TRS-80.
These were my first exposure to programming! I did those on a DOS system.
Or rather it was a pocket compute-er. It's very primitive compared to a modern computer but it's still a computer.
The first computers took up entire rooms and they could only do about as much as a calculator. There was a point in time that having a computer do multiplication and long division for you saved you hours of time because the alternative was have 2 or 3 people do it by hand and then compare to check for mistakes.
Some of the code cracking computers used for breaking war-time ciphers were state of the art, and their only job was to check as many combinations as possible, way faster than any human could. Which left the actual scientists to find optimizations and analyze any results.
Yes exactly.
Many years ago you could even have a job as a (human) computer. You pretty much computed/calculated stuff all day.
Me too! Wow that takes me back. Wonder if it's still floating around mom's house.
Just looked at eBay, seems there were a few.
Do you remember the Radio Shack comic? I think it was called "The Whiz Kids" or something like that. I had a few issues of that and felt like the coolest little nerd ever.