On Wed, 18 Dec 2013 22:59:04 -0600, The Daring Dufas
wrote:

When I was in college you could spot a nerd because he had a pocket
protector and a rectangular box of punch cards under one arm. Pocket
calculators came out later, cost around $400.00 and had nerds drooling
over them. I was out of college when I saw my first HP calculator but I
still had boxes of punch cards. ^_^

Yeah, that was the theory but it didn't quite work at Cal Poly Pomona
in the late 1960's. Among other divisions, Cal Poly had an
engineering skool and an ABM (agricultural business management) skool.
One would assume that the engineering students carried slide rules and
punched cards, and the ABM students looked like TV cowboys. Nope. The
engineering students wanted to look like cowboys and wore boots,
jeans, flannel, but not the hat. The ABM students wore suits, ties,
hats, and carried briefcases. There was also a skool of environmental
design, which true to the stereotype, everyone looked like hippies. I
tried to make sense of it at the time, and gave up.

Incidentally, it took me about 10 years to work my way through all the
punched card decks I had accumulated and used mostly as scratch paper.
I didn't make the same mistake with paper tape, which I converted to
floppy and burned the tapes.

My first calculator was an analog computer that I built into a brief
case. There were several 10 turn pots to input the numbers, and a big
mirrored meter to read the output. Basically, an electronic
implementation of a slide rule.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/scruz.general/Egv8cT2-JGY/SNVk9zi1ULQJ

When I graduated from college, I could throw everything I owned into
my pickup truck and drive off into the sunset (and actually did that a
few times). If I tried that today, it would take at least two large
moving vans and a project manager.

He who dies with the most toys, wins.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558