Rip Ragged

Once upon a time there was a reader – Paul, I think – who suggested that I apply my own unique (read: twisted) version of the history of personal computing to the innertubes.

Over the weeks since that suggestion, I’ve thought deeply (consumed beer) about how to properly address (make fun of) such an overwhelming task. Today we begin. Why? Because the interwebs are full of idiots consuming the titles of each others’ posts and puking undigested opinions about everything under the sun. And just between us, I’m a little tired of reporting that over and over. I don’t really have anything to say, but I’m doing it for free, which is at least no more than my opinions are worth. Anyway…

Before we can really address the personal computer we must first briefly examine the history of computers in general.

The first personal computer, of course, is the fingers. Followed by the abacus. The fingers could get you into base ten. The average man can count to ten on his fingers, twenty on his toes, twenty-one if naked and aroused. Of course, there’s no way you’re counting at that point, so twenty-one became the name of a card game in which strangers take your money. It’s about the same thing.

The abacus involved beads. Much like modern computers it would not run the most recent Microsoft operating system.

Electronic computers were invented during WWII. The first digital computer, ENIAC, had thousands of vacuum tubes and relays. It began operating in 1946. It weighed 27 tons. It signaled the beginning of the digital age. In a tradition that continues to this day, it was the most powerful computer of its time and it did not have all the drivers necessary for running Vista.

Later, in the early 50s, the UNIVAC was manufactured by the Remington Rand corporation. UNIVAC was much smaller than ENIAC, weighing in at only 13 tons. It could store a thousand words. Carefully tended, it could conceivably keep everything useful ever said by Rob Enderle, with room left over for limericks and a couple of recipes.

The computer naming tradition continued through the 50s and 60s. ENIAC, UNIVAC, PONTIAC, CARDIAC, CADILLAC, SACROILIAC, HACKENSACK,  you name it.

Later IBM started building mainframes. If you wanted an IBM mainframe, you needed a dedicated air conditioned room in which it could operate. It had Ginormous tape drives for storage. They looked pretty impressive on TV, but compared to what we currently use, they didn’t crash as often. Other companies also entered the computer business, but IBM pretty much ran the show.

Computers were the domain of the government and humongous corporations. They were room-sized monoliths that consumed vast amounts of energy, and had mere kilobytes of accessible memory. They bogged down on Photoshop renderings of anything over a few megapixels. Frogger had not even been written yet. For any reasonable application they were useless.

Scary as it might sound, that was pretty much how things were through the early 1970s. 

In the mid-seventies, two impetuous youths began a business in their garage in California that we know today as Federal Express, but that has little to do with the story unless you’re still waiting for RAM you ordered a week ago.

Bastards.

Before I write the next segment, I’ll reread the last couple of paragraphs to figure out what the hell I was talking about.

Please return you whatever you were doing before.

Note: For the sake of historical perspective, I should note it was during the summer of 1965, while playing Little League baseball in Montesano, Washington, that I learned:

Great big gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts

Mutilated monkey nuts

Concentrated birdie butts

One big jar of all purpose porpoise piss

And me without my spoon.