Notes on COMPUTERS
 I started with computers in 1956 with the Navy's Gun Fire Control Mk1A Computer. This was a system of gears that computed via mechanical integration. The idea was like the first  1812 Babbage difference engine (below), which calculated trigonometric functions from logrithmic tables.
Later I worked on a Gun Fire Control System, Computer with the designation GUNAR. This system used vacuum tubes to do the integration work done with gears on the earlier computers. 
NOTE: The GUNAR modules were not exactly like this, but similar.
The Military system was classified.
By 1968 I was working on Control Data Computers. The 1604 a mainframe and the 3100. They used transistors to carry out their computations 1010101010. The computer word of the 1604 was 48 bits long. A computer word had to be contained in one memory address. Toady's computers have a lot of memory, but the memory space is only 8 bits long, or 1/6th. the size. Although it is physically much, much smaller. The Core memory [below left] (NOT RAM IC Memory) was small magnetizable doughnuts. with magnetizing and sensing wires threaded through them. Then they were connected to the circuit card slots via many twisted pairs of  wires [below right].
Eventually the circuit boards started to become quite a bit larger with more connections [left], and this gave way to hybrid circuits using transistors and Integrated circuits like those below.
1972 ECL Logic
1979 UYK-7 Logic Card

Today personal computers can be all on one logic board including Video processor, CPU and RAM (IC MEMORY).
Believe it or not those Palm Pilot, hand held devices ARE Computers.

My friend bought his first (4 function) electronic calculator from CHEVRON for $100.00 in 1975.
Now they are $1.00 or less.

Another friend fixed this Integrated circuit board timing.

Hey it Worked!

Now we are in the age of PERSONAL Computers

1981 - My personal first the Commodore VIC20. These usually used a TV for the screen with built in BASIC. NO disk drive of any kind the load and save of programs was from a cassette tape.

1982 next came the Commodore 64. Very similar to the VIC 20, but with more memory (64k) and an external floppy disk drive that loads faster and more reliably. Commercial software is also becoming available, though mostly games. I wrote my own simple word processor. The system with monitor, disk drive, and printer cost more than $1200.00
1984 Macintosh 128 by Apple. This computer had a small floppy disk drive but it's graphic user interface is much the same after 20 years and many upgrades to the computer. The next year it became a FAT MAC upgraded with 512 meg of memory and a double density disk drive upgrade.
I have upgraded computers every few years. In 1996 I changed from Mac to Windows machines and in 2004 I went back to a Mac.


Other Facts

If you got this far and are curious about CD's here you go!