old school

[Nancy Allison]

Melissa says:


>Wow Pop tops... Anyone ever get their foot cut on one of those...

No, but I damn near cut a finger off more than once trying to get a can open. Especially a cold, hot-pink can of Tab. Remember Tab?

My claim to digital prehistory is the rainy Saturday I spent at my brother's school (I was 10; he was a freshman in high school) using the terminal to the mystery mainframe somewhere, fooling around and watching the yellow tape come out. I remember entering values in base 2 one by one, and trying to see if the holes punched in the tape corresponded to the values I was entering. I convinced myself they did, but I have no idea if they really did.

However, I bundled up the tape, stapled it to a piece of posterboard, filled up the rest of the posterboard with an explanation of how computers worked, and entered it in the Science Fair. 

That explanation would probably make good reading.

Oh, and I remember it was a rainy Saturday because the terminal was stuck in the only place the school had available, a sort of stuck-on porch-closet on the very end of the classroom building, with barely room to turn around but lots of windows . . .