Tuesday, June 4, 2024

My first home computer, circa 1976


 I got my first home computer in 1976. The PDP-11/34 looked like three refrigerators stacked side by side, and had two washing-machine-size hard drives that each at 5MB of memory. It required special air conditioning in my den. It had 16 phone lines coming into a RSTS system I used to run for congress. It sported a magnetic tape drive on which I loaded voter registration lists for my district, and a dot-matrix printer on which I produced mailing labels for postcards. I think it was quite advanced for its time.

Here's Frank Herbert in my computer room signing his novel The Dosadi Experiment for my young son, Matthew (Matthew is now a senior data scientist for Sony). Frank talked me into running for congress in 1978. Hey, Frank got me 47% of the vote, which wasn't quite enough. So I started my career in guerrilla warfare advertising.

Frank said I reminded him of his fictional character Jorj X. McKie in his short story, The Tactful Saboteur. Well, someday I'll be…uh…tactful.

Enjoy the summer, one and all.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?