1984 World Book

[Garrett]

My grandparents have a complete collection of world books dating from 1963 and 1996. Of course, the PC revolution took off in the 80s, so I thought it would be captured in the World Books. But was I wrong...



The world book was for 1984 (sent in 1985?) and it featured an Apple ///, but made no mention of the Macintosh like it never even was released. In fact, the world books from the later 1980s and 1990s made no mention of the Macintosh, but made plenty of mention of the IBM PC and IBM-clone markets. No mention of smaller companies like NeXT or Dell, though

 

[CC_333]

We have a 1960 World Book, and it mentions a computer as being this big, room-sized thing that costs about $2 million in late 1950's-early 1960's dollars.

It's incredible how far we've come since then.

By the way, I have a 1998 World Book CD-ROM that came with my old iMac. I bet that would have some sort of info about Macintosh (or at least about Apple).

c

 

[jruschme]

We have a 1960 World Book, and it mentions a computer as being this big, room-sized thing that costs about $2 million in late 1950's-early 1960's dollars.

Of course not. Everyone knows that a computer is a person whose occupation is to perform computations, as in a bank.

 

[Elfen]

Of course not. Everyone knows that a computer is a person whose occupation is to perform computations, as in a bank.

That was the 1942 definition of a "computer." By 1943 with Colossus, Eniac, and other big room machines, a computer became from a person to a machine.

 

[jruschme]

That was the 1942 definition of a "computer." By 1943 with Colossus, Eniac, and other big room machines, a computer became from a person to a machine.

Somewhere around here I have a fairly late slide rule whose instruction book talked about the slide rule being a device that allowed the computer to perform his job faster and more accurately.

 

[Garrett]

The issue with the old computers (pre-1943) is they just couldn't network like a modern computer can. You couldn't plug an ethernet cable into them and their memory system was horrible. And entering data on something other than a piece of paper was difficult. You couldn't even use a reel-to-reel with them. Or maybe they networked too well with other computers. But they didn't like having add-on cards stuck in them. lol

 

[CC_333]

You mean humans? Those were the only "computers" pre-1943.

I had to re read yor post a couple times, and you are indeed talking about human computers.

c

 

[Garrett]

Yes. It was supposed to be funny. Maybe I just try too hard to be "funny"...

And yes, I understand that before 1943 there were no computers except for Enigma machines and the like. I'm not sure when those were invented.

 

[CC_333]

No, it was perfectly funny

c