Students today have more computing power in their pockets than the Apollo astronauts did on their missions to the moon.
Artificial intelligence is poised to change learning in ways that we humans cannot begin to imagine. (Should we ask ChatGPT what’s ahead?)
But it was only a few years ago — okay, a few decades — that calculators were incredible new devices.
The other day, Sabrina Bunks found a couple of Westport News photos, from 1974. She posted them on social media.
One (below) shows students Paul Flaxman and John Lamb posing in presumed awe as they “operate” a calculator that can “compute, calculate and perform higher mathematical functions” — an important skill in “the machine age.”
Another photo showed Sabrina herself, seated at a table next to Joanne Macieski and Brad Siff, watching a “teletyper” to see whether the program they wrote would work.
Sure, we can laugh at these gee-whiz photos today.
But 5 decades from now — in 2075 — what will the readers of whatever “06880” becomes think about our “simple” cellphones, let alone our wary embrace of AI.
Assuming, of course, that the human race is still around then.
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I remember the IBM 360 computer terminal we had at BJHS back in the 70’s with the phone modem that you had to actually plug the phone handset into. If I recall we had to program it using punch cards. I also recall saving my money to buy a very expensive calculator that was the size and weight of a paperback novel and all it did was add, subtract, multiply, and divide and maybe %. Times sure have changed.
In 1991 or 1992 my son Evan wanted a graphing calculator for Chanukah, the NEWEST. He got it, so his friend Darin Mckeever was impressed and got one also
The majority of the teachers at Staples did not know how to use this new fangled gadget
Evan and Darin had a class for the teachers. It became a common place gadget.
Don’t know if it’s still used , I’m just a mom
Another interesting additive to computer history
Evan did his Junior paper on something new and upcoming. – artificial intelligence
Dan, thanks for the interesting article. I deal with AI daily and I don’t think it’s the great panacea that many people believe. Realistically, it’s just a way to better fine-tune the vast amounts of gathered information and use triggers to take automated actions. While predictive analytics is nothing new, the fine-tuned information helps make it more accurate and useful. The “triggers” are nothing new, but are being used more widely now and are more valuable with the better information. It is and will continue to aid in productivity, mostly because of the fine-tuning, but there’s no “magic” in it. Respectfully, Rich
In 1975 a junior, living in the mixed dorm I was head resident of at UMaine Orono (fun!), created on his own a program to make the machine’s batch processing faster by several magnitude. No new parts. Just the program! The IT office put him on the student-work team immediately. Same office was giving me half a ream of green & white 14-inch wide sprocketed sheets of paper for SPSS results that were 80% non-relational AFTER I did the by-hand analytical review.
Pretty sure I can get full analytical results of present day SPSS on the PC in PDF format.
Oh, we will be here, Dan. The Elonites will all have moved to the orbital New World above us as prophetically seen in the Matt Damon-Jodie Foster 2013 movie Elysium: In the year 2154, humanity survives on an overpopulated, ruined Earth as the super rich escape to a luxury space station. One man sets out to equalise the two classes, but the elite will stop at nothing to keep their privileged lives. [Any Westport connection to this movie?]
Unless . . . .
(What’s that sound I hear?)
Wow, this brings back memories… In 1969, BJHS had a terminal attached (via dial-up modem @ 110 baud) to the University of Bridgeport mainframe. They used an archaic programming language called APL (“A Programming Language”) – you had to have a special keyboard template, because it was all symbols. Not the thing you throw at 8th graders! My first real program was Tic-Tac-Toe. A side note – recently I asked ChatGPT to write a Tic-Tac-Toe program in APL, and it did! Fast forward to Staples High in 1973, and we had a terminal with a modem in Bldg 9 connected to the town mainframe. We spend many an hour up there programming simple card games, storing them on paper tape. Well, the teacher responsible for it (I do not remember his name) felt that computers “should not be used for games (!)”. Feeling that he was misguided in his opinion of the future of computing, one of us (who will remain nameless) managed to find a way to store our games in a place where the teacher could not see. Well, the sys admins figured it out, and took away our terminal. But the Westport school system could not deprive it’s most technologically adept students from having access to a computer, so my senior year the town bought a HP “desktop” computer, with a plotter, strip printer, and cassette storage. This thing WAS the size of a desktop! And being Westport, they went and upgraded the RAM in the computer, adding an additional 1K (1024) bytes for $3,000 (in 1973 dollars, no less).
And yes, I too bought a simple calculator in 1974 for $100 – it was enough to get me thru my four years of Engineering at UConn.
We had a similar teletypewriter at Long Lots Junior High, 1969-72, to communicate in BASIC with the Town School Office mainframe, which I recall was in the Five Building at Staples in an air-conditioned room. We wrote some — if you will — basic BASIC programs. We dreamed of hacking into our report cards. Never came close!
If any of these kids are still around, I could use their help.
I had a chance to try out the Bedford JHS computer in 1975. As I recall, we filled in dots on punch cards to feed into the machine to create a program. The program: “Type HELLO.”