Earliest Memories of Computing

1980s - Growing up with computer games

Geoff blogs about growing up with Macintosh computers—and computer games—in his home. He reflects on the relationship between his early exposure to computer games and his hobby of playing board and card games offline. To read his entire story, click here.

Early 1970s - Keypunching in a Library Circulation System

My first reaction to Louie's request was to recall the same events Louie recalls—text processing on a mainframe in the Penn State Computer Center. English majors write JCL, but it seemed better than typing and re-typing, which was the other option in 1978.

I learned that early morning (that's 8:00 AM or so) was a good time to use the computer center, and it was through that experience that I learned the REAL reason mainframe computer centers used to close daily for a couple of hours in the early morning. They SAID it was for computer maintenance, but the real reason is so the computer nerds would need to have another place to go—they needed an apartment to live in and dedicated time to take a shower. Otherwise they would never leave the computer center.

After massaging these fond memories, prompted by Louie's request and Louie's own tale, I realized that I had EARLIER computer experiences. That would be keypunching 80-column Hollerith punch cards for the circulation system at Wilson Library, Western Washington State College (now Western Washing University).

The library item's accession number was the one and only key to the data file; for cross-checking we punched in a limited number of characters of the author, the title, and the call number. There was no online catalog, or catalog of any kind. (Well, there was a 3 x 5 card catalog, but it had nothing to do with the computer data; they were two separate manifestations of the same entity.) You could get batch (i.e., overnight) lists on green-bar paper. I think you could get a sort by call number (unless the call number was really long, in which case it wasn't ALL in the computer).

An unfortunate individual had a full-time job keypunching these 80-column cards (as did many people in many businesses, in those days). I did other “Technical Services” (see note below) things in the library, and filled in as keypuncher for items that couldn’t wait during the real keypuncher’s vacations, sick days, and lunches and breaks. This was the early 1970s, and I was in my early 20s.

Louie is interested in these postings including info about technology and resources—“hardware and software, manuals, how-to-do videos, and so on)”—Hah! Outside the computer center, the vocabulary of computing was pretty much limited to computer, keypunch machine, printout. “Software” was not discussed—software was some mainframe programs that ran at the computer center. Training was what other workers could tell you. (Videos had not been invented.)

It seemed nifty at the time. And every incremental improvement in computing has seemed like a gift. You can imagine what a breakthrough personal computers seemed—we got our first home personal computer in 1984.

Note on term “Technical Services”: This a library term that pre-dates and has nothing to do with computers. Technical Services includes acquiring materials, processing materials, creating and maintaining bibliographic records.

Mary

Early 1980s - Word Processing on an Epson

Few people of my generation had computers when I bought my first one, an Epson which ran on an operating system that was soon abandoned for DOS. It had no hard drive—few personal computers did in the early 1980s. Instead, users inserted one 5¼" black floppy disk in one drive in order to boot up the word processing program and another floppy disk in the other drive to receive—and save—documents. I had chosen the Epson over IBM because it had a WYSIWYG word processing program that allowed users to name files with phrases instead of code words. It didn’t hurt that it was cheaper and prettier, too.

I bought my computer specifically because I needed a tool that would make writing easier. Having started my graduate school career at the advanced age of thirty-eight, I needed all the help I could get. The old pencil-to-typewriter system had barely sustained me through graduate courses, and none of the three-to-ten page papers I had produced over the first three years of study would have won any prizes for neatness of presentation. Composing my dissertation had become a nightmare of handwritten notes and badly typed sheets of cheap paper covered with arrows, connecting lines, and asterisks numbered so that I could figure out what went where. It was an “insert asterisk B here” system which didn’t allow for sudden insights into the text that always occurred when I was trying to type out the final copy.
Oddly enough, my English department colleagues played no part in convincing me to make the purchase. My ex-husband, a scientist who had used the kind of computers that filled large rooms, and my cousin, who was eventually to become a millionaire based on his computer savvy, first urged me to try word-processing. Like others in the English, I wasn’t sure that the computer would be any improvement over the typewriter. However, shortly after a disaster of an editing session occurred that left my entire living room floor covered with an odd bits of text taped together in a gigantic puzzle. As I attempted to type up those pieces in the order in which I’d laid them out and NOT revise at the same time, I became obsessed with the idea of a technology which would keep me off my knees and the floor clear. Crazed by hope of order, I took out a student loan and turn over most of it over to the Epson people. It couldn’t get much worst, I figured—anything that might help get more words on paper had to be an improvement.

And, much to my joy, the “little Epson that could” did help get words on paper. It helped me insert one block of words into another. It allowed me to remove words but not lose them, and it even provided a way to mark a place where I needed more information and ask questions of myself to be considered later. I reveled in on-screen composing, creating documents of ten to thirty pages. I free-wrote; I revised; I printed out hard text that I could edit and then throw away! Producing text ceased to be a problem. Revising became a intellectual pursuit rather than a simple matter of correctly reproducing a scribbled document.

The process was not without grief. Before I learned the importance of saving documents frequently, I lost some important ideas and had to recreate them. Once in a flurry of excitement and adrenaline, I produced thirty pages in a binge writing session that lasted all day. As hard as it is for me to understand today, I never saved during that long productive day. Saving was something I habitually did at the end of a writing session. When I finally gave in to mental and physical exhaustion, I simply turned off the computer. In a split second, I knew I’d lost it all. My grief was only exceeded by my disgust with my failure to follow a simply technological process.

But I learned from that experience—I have probably saved this document too compulsively—and as I produced my dissertation, I discovered a tool that drove me to advocate for computers for students as well as for the lonely academic writer in the garret. Computer composing remains at the center of my pedagogy, and I’ve urged more than one student to at least try using the computer as more than a typewriter with spell-check. Nowadays it’s uncommon to find students who don’t have computers in college. That’s not to say that I believe the nation has succeeded in providing universal access to technology. Many families still can’t afford computers much less internet connections. Like me, today’s college-aged adults still take out student loans in order to buy a laptop or desk model computer, and just as often as not, their purchases, like mine, are prompted by their need to write papers, to compose and revise, to write.

Marcia

1989-1990: Computing in Kindergarten

My first memories of computing probably date back to about 1989-90. In Kindergarten, my mom would come into my classroom and help all of us on our class computer. We would play math games on big floppy disks, (which of course were all the rage back then). In first grade I remember my parents bought me two floppy disks games, "Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers" and "Mother Goose." I would play them for hours! My very first CD ROM (oooohh.....ahhhhh) was the Encarta Encyclopedia. I was a big nerd (still am) and I was extremely proud of my academic record. I wrote many reports with the aid of that CD ROM. It not only had amazing articles, but it had pictures, video time lines, and sound recordings. I never typed my own reports, though. My mom always helped me with that. I didn't learn to actually type until the 6th and 7th grades. Of course by then, computers were much more advanced and very different from those funny floppy disks and green type. It's amazing what kindergarteners do today versus when I was that age. I taught preschool for a while and some of them knew how to not only turn on the computer, but load and play a program! Who knows what kids that young will be able to do in another 10 or 20 years.

Kristina

Late 70s - Early 80s: Word Processing in a Government Office

A computer experience.

There are several.

The first one is obvious. This goes back to the very first IBM PC. In
late 1981 or early 1982 the Solicitor of Labor decided he needed one of
those new computers from IBM to track his correspondence and manage a
calendar. It was a job that fell to his personal assistant, a young
lawyer, a woman that came with him from private practice. She was given an
office across the fall from his. In it was government issue desk, chair
phone and the brand new IBM PC. Along with the PC was the documentation or
manuals. The assistant had never seen a PC, nor had anyone, and now she
was privileged to figure out how to do those tasks as best she could.

To my great relief (I was Associate Solicitor for Administration at the
time), I was not invited to partake of that exercise. She spent several
weeks doping out DOS and doing whatever it was she did. It was a mystery,
but it was a great new toy.

I should explain that prior to this time the only technology in the
Solicitor's Office, an organization of some 800 souls, 450 of them lawyers,
consisted of dedicated "word processors" and paper data sheets that were
used to manually record tracking or docketing data that was entered into a
mainframe computer operated by Boeing Aircraft Company for the Pentagon
[Department of Defense]. The former was used to produce legal documents
and briefs, letters, correspondence, and the latter was used to support our
budget activity. My big project at that time was to "strongly encourage"
each of the twelve divisions of the Solicitor's Office to get their data
automated.

The dedicated word processors were at least as technologically developed as
was the IBM PC, but they were designed to do text documents and
spreadsheets all in a proprietary format. Thus once an agency was hooked
upon the product of a particular manufacturer, in our case the Xerox
Corporation (those guys were talking about the paperless office in the
70s - fat chance!), you were wed to them unless you wanted to change
horses and start all over again. Those things were expensive - $25,000 or
more apiece in the late 70s. In fact, an IBM correcting typewriter with
a tiny bit of memory that would hold a line or two of text costs over $1000
and had to be specially justified before such an expense could be incurred.
This market virtually disappeared as the PC was cloned and became widely
available. However, that equipment was able to get the job done in the law
office very nicely. Consider the inflation that has occurred since then,
and that a good PC can now be had for $500. The economics guys call that
productivity I believe. :)

A sociological factor came into play as well. At that time President
Johnson's war on poverty had matured and many people, especially minority
women, were being trained for office work. Many had not had years of
experience in the office or no experience at all. Many did not type. With
the use of this technology those who had learned to type 30 words a minute
could be trained on the word processors and could become productive. One
such person became my secretary when I first went to Washington. She
was from South Carolina, a single mother of a son. Her last job before
her training course was as a hotel maid. She was able to hold her position
for many years and take care of her son. Her son completed high school and
won a scholarship to the University of Virginia, where he graduated. When I
went to Nashville in 1982, our best secretary, bar none, had entered the
work force the same way. Today she still works for the US Attorney in
Nashville. Office technology in general and personal computers have played
a huge role in these kinds of stories.

Sonny

1989-1992: Computer Time in the Library

Lucas Cifranic writes about using "edutainment software, simulation games, 'CD playhouses,' and the occasional use of QuarkXPress (with lots of help from my dad!) for school projects" during elementary school. For his full story, click here.

1982 - Finishing a Dissertation

Punch cards. That was my first clue that computers existed. Early 1960s. My Aunt Dorothy would bring home from work old computer punch cards, and when we went to visit she would give my brother and me stacks of these cards to play with, draw on, make train tickets with, etc. I was writing on computer punch cards at age 8 or so. (Aunt Dorothy, a math whiz, was payroll supervisor for a large company in Cleveland, in an era when not many women held management positions.)

First real use of a computer: 1982. Age 28. I was in my first year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne. I was doing revisions on my dissertation the old-fashioned way: typing, retyping, and RETYPING pages, chapters endlessly. Steve Hollander, a new colleague in the Department of English and Linguistics, said to me one day, Why don't you us my computer to finish your dissertation? Steve served as University Editor and in his work used a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4 computer with, as I can dimly remember, a powerful 128K RAM. (Steve bought it himself.) I was hesitant at first: Would moving over to the computer save me time finishing the dissertation, or would it cost me time if I had to learn how to use it? Steve assured me that it would save me loads of time — and of course he was right. Generous soul that he was, Steve let me use his computer when he didn’t need it, during the work day, after hours, on weekends. He taught me how to load disks, access files, enter text, make formatting changes, print out pages, save and back up work, the whole deal. I typed in the entire dissertation (once!) and from that point made editorial changes and revisions over the course of several months, until I finished the thing in May of 1982. Thanks to Steve, I learned that computers were usable, not scary, and that they were great tools for writing.

In 1984 I bought my first computer, a TRS-80 Model 4P. I talk about this experience
in a 2003 Computers & Composition article, "Why Technology
Matters to Writing: A Cyberwriter's Tale" (Volume 20, 375-394).

Jim

1984 - Creating Opportunities to Learn

In 1984, personal computers were first coming out, and they were costly. As a graduate seminary student, a home computer was out of my reach. In fact, it would not be until 1987, in my second year as a rabbi that I would switch from the typewriter for sermons, articles, research and letters, and enjoy the freeing possibilities of word processing. But the first realizations that I had of how much a personal computer could enhance writing, provide for efficiency in editing, and allow for a better product was when I would use a computer in limited usage when I would borrow some time on a friend’s or colleague’s computer. So in 1984, I decided to suggest those possibilities to my professor and rabbinic thesis advisor, who at the time was almost 90 years old. Dr. Marcus was a scholar who was active in teaching and writing; in fact, at the time this event occurred, he was at work in composing a five-volume history of American Jewish life, and had already authored over 20 books and articles and monographs too numerous to count. His secretary, Mrs. Callner, had worked at his side for over 30 years, painstakingly typing out every correction from Dr. Marcus’ handwritten notes on classic yellow tablets of paper. At the time, she was the young one in the operation, at an age approaching 80. I had to approach Dr. Marcus from the utilitarian perspective of a personal computer, suggesting that “Callner” could edit faster, and that even the most minor change he might suggest could be done almost as quickly and efficiently as he thought about it. I argued that the personal computer would allow him to make the most nuanced editing changes that heretofore, he might have let go so as to avoid having to retype an entire chapter for one small change. I had the hubris to suggest that this new technology would, at this late stage in his long distinguished and prolific career, offer the possibility of an easier approach to writing with the potential of a better product. Mrs. Callner was ecstatic with the possibilities as I demonstrated them to her in the store. Dr. Marcus remained skeptical, even after he agreed to purchase “the machine,” which became the term by which he discussed the computer, and always at a distance. It occurred to me at one point, that I probably should call IBM (They were using an IBM PC) and tell them that they had the perfect commercial in this older professor and his older administrative assistant, since in the early days the biggest obstacle to computers, after the price, was personal resistance felt among anyone older than age 25!

As for me, living down the street only two blocks away, and with my daughter Jenna soon to be born, I had to learn the computer along with Mrs. Callner; in fact I soon became her PC advisor and problem solver, available at any time at my professor and mentor’s beckoning. It was one of the many pleasures that I had in a wonderful relationship that continued on a daily and weekly basis until each of their deaths some 13 years later. And from it all, I learned a thing or two about the computer. There is no substitute for learning that is better than being the teacher!

Rabbi Lewis Kamrass

1981 - Exploring New Technologies Collaboratively

My first experience with computing should have cured me of it for life. Programming via punch cards!

But my first real useful encounter was with some really powerful (at the time) TERAC computers (they called them micro-computers, just below mainframe in size and speed) at that time: 1981. They had 8.5" floppy disks (that REALLY flopped) for storage. You had to handle them with care and two hands at all times. But they were a VAST improvement over mainframe punch cards and made this new thing called "word processing" really much easier.

But the most important thing that I learned then, and have been learning ever since, was that young people were fearless and generous in their approach to new technologies; that I could learn from them and that they were willing to learn from me; that they were to be considered valued collaborators. The rest of my career has been spent working with young people around technological environments, learning with them about the affordances we noticed, and trying to encourage the stogy academic community to realize that we (students and teachers) were in this adventure together.

In the meantime, nothing is new and nothing is the same. Another quote that I use a lot is from Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist who said in the 1960s that people are still, occasionally, immigrants in space (some choose to move; others are forced to move) BUT we are ALL immigrants in time.

If that is true (and I tend to believe it) there are important implications that I'd be happy to explore with folks if you are interested.

Dickie Selfe

Early 1980s - Computing Machines for Games and BASIC

Ben writes of playing games and experimenting with BASIC programming on the Commodore64 and Atari2600. Read his full story here.

1981 - Computers in Teaching

My first memories of computing are very vivid. I began graduate school in the fall of 1981. I took a computer class my first semester. (in the school of Education) We had a lab filled with a special Apple computers made by a company called Bell & Howell. We spent a week on "Booting" the computer. We used 5 1/2-inch floppy disks and learn to run some very basic reading programs and games. You had to boot with a disk for each thing you did. I was intrigued, and took one more class.

The following year, I was a Reading Supervisor in an Atlanta, Elementary School. I had one Apple computer and no software. I let the kids play a ping pong game on it for a reward when they got a certain amount of Stars!!

The following year, I moved to Cincinnati, and became the High School Reading Specialist. The school had just received many Bell & Howell Apple's and had no idea what to do with them. I became the expert! I taught teachers after school how to turn on the computer and boot it. I even received a certification in Technology (that is still in effect today) from the State of Ohio. During that year we began to purchase software and actually use the computers in the Reading Lab. Each year since 1983, Computers have found more of a place in classrooms, schools, and our homes!

Renee

1990 - Using "The Oregon Trail" on an Apple IIe in Kindergarten

My father had a computer in our home for as long as I can
remember. I remember him using WordPerfect on DOS to write his
High Holy Day sermons (he is a rabbi at a synagogue in Cincinnati),
and occasionally, playing a very primitive game of computer
solitaire when he was trying NOT to write his sermons. I don't
really remember touching that computer until I was at least 6 or 7,
though.

My first computer experience was with an Apple IIe in the
state-of-the-art computer lab at my elementary school.
Once a week, every class in this K-4 school got an hour of
computer lab time, and we got to do various things on the Apple
IIe's. "Various things" encompassed a learn-to-type program, a
child's word processing program, and the still-loved Oregon Trail.
Playing "The Oregon Trail" is the most vivid computing memory
that I have from my early days, although the learn-to-type
program was definitely helpful. We played "The Oregon Trail" for at
least four weeks of every year from kindergarten to fourth grade
(probably because it was one of the only games available fifteen
years ago, and because it was "educational"), and it never grew old
or tiresome.

I loved playing on those Apple IIe computers. I still have a soft
spot in my heart for the green-and-black screens, terrible
graphics, and complicated start-up and shut-down processes.

And of course, for "The Oregon Trail."

Jenna

1979 - Writing a dissertation

Cindy Selfe tells how she first used a computer to write her dissertation on a mainframe at the University of Texas in 1979. Fellow graduate student Hugh Burns introduced her to the technology. Read the full entry at her blog.

ca. 1972 - Learning BASIC on your own at school

I was born in 1960. Somewhere in between 1972 and 1974, in 7th or 8th grade, Mr. Wentz at Ramsay Junior High in St. Paul, Minnesota, showed his class a teletype which was connected via dial-up to a centrally-located IBM time-sharing computer. Ramsay was an in-the-city Junior High; I don't think I would call it "inner city," but it was in the district next to the inner city junior high. I think I was in another class taught by a different teacher, and was getting the demo from Mr. Wentz, who taught 9th-grade algebra. Mr. Wentz had a reputation as being a very smart guy, so this was something of a big deal. He typed on the teletype, and it printed back. I was at the far margins of the crowd and really couldn't see so I had to listen carefully to Mr. Wentz. He said that he had "programmed" the computer in BASIC to compute the grade distribution for his class. It all sounded very interesting. When the bell rang it was the end of the day, and when all the kids left, I remained and asked Mr. Wentz if he could run the demonstration again, because I wasn't close enough to see. He said, "no, I have to catch my bus," but said that I could come in after school and try it myself. So on some subsequent day, I stayed after and he gave me this rather thick IBM manual (maybe two manuals, one for the system, and the other for the IBM dialect of BASIC), and said: go to it. I honestly have no idea why I wanted to do this, but there wasn't much else to do. I didn't know how to log in, enter a program, or run a program. He may have told me how to run his grade distribution program. Even typing on the teletype was pretty horrible, since "deleting" meant saying that a previous character would "be deleted" when the line was committed to the system; there was no "erase and overtype" functionality, and it wasn't until later that I was able to use a screen terminal. In any event, after trial-and-error over several days, I managed to write a program that would have a little conversation, on the order of: Computer: "How are you doing?" And the user could type in a response which would then be printed out. Doubtless the fact that my first program was about having a conversation says something about my relative degree of friendlessness in that era.

Before this, I am sure that I had never seen in person a computer, teletype or terminal. I know I had heard Spock talk to the computer on Star Trek, and I had probably started reading science fiction by this time, so I had some idea that a computer was an "electronic brain."

After that, I read a lot of books about computers. The best book on BASIC programming by far was called BASIC BASIC, and there was also an incredible book on games called Basic Computer Games by Dave Ahl. I also read a history of computer programming languages.

After the teletype programming on the IBM, Ramsay switched over to a different time-shared computer, a Hewlett-Packard 2000, which was a wonderful machine with a very rich version of BASIC. In 8th or 9th grade, I was able to participate in a programming tutorial of sorts conducted by college students at Macalester College; I learned FORTRAN on their IBM 1130 (data entry was through punch cards; they also had a Calcomp plotter). When I was in high school, the school district switched over to an awful Univac 1100 system, and eventually Macalester started using a PDP-11/70 (running RSTS/E), which is where I really learned how to program in a more sophisticated fashion in 11th grade, teaching myself assembler. It would be hard to convey how hard it was to teach myself assembler; even typing the right command to run the assembler and linker was hard to figure out. There was also a program with the Boy Scouts where I was taught some COBOL on an IBM 370 at Burlington Northern (the railroad computer). They had the gigantic "green screen" terminals. Somewhere in here I got to play on a "Plato" system (CDC's educational system).

Having said all that, the crucial observation would that none of this had anything to do with the personal computer; though, of course, I was treating every one of these computers as my "personal" computer (indeed, the IBM 1130, with core memory and a 2-ft. wide removable 5 MB disk drivem could only run a single job at a time, and had an APL keyboard to promote truly interactive computing).

A few more tidbits:

When I was in 4th grade or so, I saw a desktop programmable HP calculator at my uncle's lab (he was a radiologist), but I don't think I figured out how to use it.
When Ramsey switched over to the HP 2000, it started to have actual uses for the "business" of the school. The guidance counselor had some database he could log into, and I had to use the computer in his office. So there was some contention for resources between the kid hacker and the "real" users.
Also in this era, I gained access to an account at the University of Minnesota's MERITSS system, which ran on a CDC Cyber 6400 or 6600 system, and provided timeshared access all over Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin. This was a very important system for kids, because it was possible to communicate through two chat systems. One chat system was called X,TALK and was very sophisticated, and the other was PPC ("port to port communication") by one Mick Huck. There was also an e-mail program written by a guy who used the handle Aragorn. A number of us in high school formed an informal group called "Various Users," and we all had secret handles. There must have been 20 people in the group. I think we swapped passwords quite a bit. We also wrote our own chat systems (I wrote one for the HP 2000). One of the best and most knowledgable of us was someone who used the Esperanto word "Knabino" (girl) as his hacker handle. He had long hair down to his waist and was sort of a high school hippie, or at least looked the part. Everyone was shocked when he went into the Air Force.
Before 9th grade, my parents considered sending me to St. Paul Academy, though in the end we couldn't afford it. I remember vividly getting the tour of the high school, and seeing that they actually had their own computer room, which contained a few teletypes and an DEC 11/45. I am pretty sure I was distraught when it became clear I wouldn't get to use this fancy setup for the more well-off kids.

John

1978 - Word Processing on a Mainframe

When I began an MA program in English at Penn State University in 1978 at the age of 26, then Associate Professor of English John B. Smith, who would later become one of the authors of Storyspace and move on to a career in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, offered a non-credit, term-long workshop on using the University's mainframe computer for various literary tasks, including writing, text analysis, and compiling bibliographies. The writing program was called SCRIPT (see the "History" section), the text analysis program RATS (for "Random Accessible Text System"), and the bibliographic program, if memory serves me right, was called BAG II (between 1979 and 1982, Professor Smith coauthored the annual update of the Annotated World Bibliography for Shakespeare—now the World Shakespeare Bibliography—with Professor Harrison T. Meserole, who at the time was also on the faculty at Penn State).

At first, the workshop group included about a dozen graduate students and a dozen faculty members (or, if I am wrong about the total, equal numbers of grad students and faculty). Before too many weeks had passed, the group had shrunk to a handful of graduate students, but I was fascinated and hooked. Why? Who knows? I was, at the time, an Extra Class Amateur Radio Operator, so I was fairly comfortable around electronic technology, and a good part of my involvement with computers over the past 28 years probably stems from a fasination with making things work. However, I now tell myself that the real draw was the potential to "download" some of the tedium of writing—especially retyping of essays—to the computer and focus more time on creating and expressing literary arguments.

Of course, what I viewed as the wonders of text processing in 1978 would seem like tedium today. We worked at dumb terminals across campus linked to an IBM 370 mainframe housed in the University Computing Center. In 1978, editing SCRIPT over those terminals involved line editing: you called up a single line of your text file (a line which had no relationship to the line breaks in your printout—this was way before WYSIWYG), corrected it, and then submitted those corrections to the mainframe. To insert lengthy text, you had to insert extra line numbers between existing lines. All formatting, including line and paragraph breaks, had to be included in the text as formatting commands (much like writing HTML code). And to print a draft of your essay, you had to submit a print job to a line printer at the University Computing Center and pick up your job from a bin at the Center. Believe it or not, all that still seemed easier than retyping a 20-page seminar paper to incorporate changes.

Over the next few years, we jumped for joy when the technology allowed for screen editing (editing an entire screen of lines in your terminal's memory before having to save to the mainframe) and accessing the mainframe from home via cheap dumb terminals with, if I remember correctly, 100-baud dial-up modems (my first one came from Zenith).

After that workshop, I wrote everything in Waterloo SCRIPT and printed my seminar papers and my masters thesis on a line printer—often to the consternation of my professors :-). I didn't do much with RATS and BAG II at the time, but Professor Smith had made the point that the computer was not only an instrument for writing (or any other task) but also a tool for creating new tools. Consequently, during a stint as a graduate administrative assistant with the First-Year Writing Program at Penn State, I learned to program in REXX, a scripting language that allowed us to automate a number of clerical tasks involved in running a statewide writing contest for highschool students.

That early workshop not only introduced me to academic computing but also established several emphases for my engagement with it over the next three decades: seeing computers as tools for manipulating and analyzing texts; creating tools over the years in BASIC, HyperTalk, AppleScript, and XML for streamlining tasks; and asking questions about how digital technology affected, and was affected by, the most fundamental questions in my discipline.

Lewis