EME 2040 Computer history. My perspective.

My first computer experience in college was programming using punch cards or Hollerith cards on an IBM computer that nearly filled a room. You had to schedule appointment time on the computer to test your programs. Within a year the Apple computer was introduced to our curriculum. While in the Navy I had a 486 on my desk that I used for word processing. The entire command got 486's and training so we would come into the computer age. We used an IBM 300 main frame to keep track of all our accounting and inventory. We had two full time programmers to keep up. The cool thing was that we had two Cray supercomputers at our base. It was a spy facility and the Crays were used to sort out the millions of bits of data that were received from electronic intelligence sources (elint). One of the guys I worked with developed the algorithms to determine which of the millions of bits of data collected through elint would be looked at by human analysts. It was very interesting. When we moved back to the US we got our first new desk top computer. We had purchased used Apples and an old 486 and experimented with various types of printers and electronic games but the new computer had a modem and bulletin boards were available to sign up with to get access to the newly forming web. I seem to remember all the old computers weighed so much more than anything out there today. I do not know if it was because of shielding or the weight of the power assemblies. The cabinets were definitely steel and thick. The blue screen of death made everyone hate Microsoft. You constantly had to reboot your computer and even needed to learn some basic programming if you expected to keep up. Eventually systems have become more stable. Most people do not even know what DOS is anymore. Most operating systems on current computers can diagnose themselves. It amazes me how interconnected all of the devices are becoming. It is also a bit scary. Someone can learn more about me than I really know about myself by analyzing my calling habits, texting, browsing, credit, background, purchasing, etc... Almost makes one hesitate. I got my first desktop with dual processors about ten years ago. I could also connect four different CRT screens all controlled by the same mouse and key board. Surfing the web was never so good. It was amazing. Memory became a problem, especially RAM. Dual processors reduced thrashing but web pages and programs were taking so much more processing memory. It is hard to keep up.