'What are those television-typewriters, anyway?', asks the cover of The Personal Computer Book. I plucked this off the shelves of my local Goodwill a few weeks ago and finally got around to cracking it open. It's entertaining, both in the author's writing and illustrations and how dated and/or accurate it is, as well as informative, with many historical tidbits on computing I'd never learned before.
Intro
(from intro)
In other areas, personal computers will prove so unnecessary as to be considered a nuisance -- reading the daily newspaper, scheduling appointments, filing personal income taxes, locking the doors at night, or turning the coffee on in the morning.
(from intro)
Personal computers play games [...] better than anything else around. But you must fancy games. They will chart your biorhythms with great accuracy. But you must care to know what your biorhythms are.
Chapter 1 - The Personal Computer
(ch1 p32) modem stands for "modulate / demodulate" - modems modulate computer info, send over phone line, then modem on other end demodulates. like AM/FM radio (M is modulate)
Chapter 2 - An Incomplete and No Doubt Inaccurate History of Personal Computers Including Some Basic Information on How They Work
(ch2 ) who is Mr Wizard?
(ch2 p36) This is true to this day! > You will never need to know how computers work. All you need to know is that they work. (They do.)
(ch2 p37)
The hows and the history of most machinery is intimately connected. -----> I find this profoundly true! lots of things in tech can be explained as vestiges of the past, or blamed on decisions made decades ago!
(ch2 39) I'd heard of Blaise Pascal's computing machine, but never put it together that the Pascal programming language is named after him.
(ch2 p44) TIL of Charles Babbage, who thought of a mechanical "Analytical Engine" which incorporated memory, programming, punch cards. > But Babbage lacked the technology of size and speed. (ch2 p44) organ to loom to computer
(ch2 p49) the 1890 Census machine!
(ch2 p52) Japanese revolutionized the transistor
Chapter 3 - Of Programs and Programming
The confusion at the onset between running programs and writing programs
(p56)
... writing a computer program is, like any other writing, a creative act ...
(p56)
... the variety of ways in which a computer won't work is infinite.
(p58) the note on programs published in magazines ... relate to the Hackers book, and also I think I would be intimidated / not that interested in painstakingly copying a program from print. (p58) lol ... the comparison to programmers as masochists like those doing polar bear plunges (p58)
the majority of what you run on your computer will have been written by others
(p60) first time hearing about apple's visicalc / didn't remember it
Chapter 4 - Data Banks
(p63/64) access to information like weather in tokyo, stock market prices, etc was accessible not via pc but mainframe - true today too! people use the internet, servers !!! === mainframes !!! (p65) this man really published a password of his! the perils of computer security or lack thereof not a priority in the early days of PC