Programming before the Internet existed

mmm4444bot

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I’m using a mix of PHP and JavaScript.

… Basically anything you need to write this is in it. If you have any experience in programming, this may be easy for you.
Ah, good. My programming experience began before Bill Gates and Paul Allen started tinkering in that garage, on the other side of the lake. I'd used earlier languages, as well as scripting macros for dedicated hardware or within relational database software. Then, I started a new career just as the Internet began making itself available for mass consumption, so I never learned HTML or javascript.
 
...My programming experience began before Bill Gates and Paul Allen started tinkering in that garage, on the other side of the lake. I used earlier languages, as well as scripting macros for dedicated hardware and within relational database software. Then, I started a new career just as the Internet began making itself available for mass consumption, so I never learned HTML or javascript....
Wow! I love hearing about "the old days", when people used card readers, "memory" was a strip of punched paper, and the new-fangled floppy disks were eight inches across! :D
 
Wow! I love hearing about "the old days", when people used card readers, "memory" was a strip of punched paper, and the new-fangled floppy disks were eight inches across! :D
Oh, the memories. I saw cards and readers, during a field trip in junior high, but the real fun was sitting at a console with a TV screen (seemed like Star Trek) and writing a simple computer program. This was at University of Washington's Computer Science school (1970?); I think we were test subjects, actually, for researchers interested in human-machine interactions. Funny story: there was also an area full of teletype machines, but as we were led inside somebody ushered us out, telling us that it was too noisy because "Mr. Allen and his friends" had "taken over the lab again". Could it be?

In high school, I was introduced to graphic arts. I had a part-time job at a lithography printshop, during my senior year. That's where I was introduced to a Phototypositor. Two years later, my boss purchased a Mergenthaler Linofilm typesetting system from a defunct, local newspaper. The keyboard was the size of a washing machine! It produced a roll of punched tape (15-hole width). No programming language; just "bell" codes for commands. The paper tape was read by a Rube Goldberg-type machine (the size of a small locomotive), and the type was set photographically using fonts made of glass! That system was built in the 1950s. There were no integrated circuits; half the hardware was radio tubes and bundled wires. There was no way to save work at the keyboard; small edits could be made to the paper tape, by covering certain holes and punching new ones by hand. (Reading those tapes was like learning braille.) Mostly, we made edits by retyping the job from scratch.

I moved on to work for Cole & Weber Advertising, in the early 80s, doing pre-press graphic arts (in a shop named Silas Marner). I produced high-quality typography using a much newer Mergenthaler system: one-fourth the size, macro programming language, electronic keyboard with screen, 8-inch floppy disks for storing jobs, and a 6-hole paper punch to interface with the typesetter. On day one, I was amazed at the new technology. You could save jobs (!) on a floppy or by feeding the tape back into the keyboard.
 
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Anybody remember the Commodore64 ?
Yes, I think the UW had some of those. I also remember the Tandy TRS (Radio Shack's computer line). One early machine required loading the operating system from a cassette tape! heh

How about those daisy-wheel printers?

COBOL?

PERL? (Didn't like it. Not good for string manipulation.)

Anybody remember the Wang word processing system? Best keyboard setup EVER. That was the first networked system I used. (Cole & Weber always had the money for latest technology.) Wang enabled my proudest accomplishment as a programmer; unknown to my boss and coworkers, I learned the Wang's programming language and created a marco that saved Silas Marner a nice chunk of change. I was promoted to assistant manager with a bonus. Not bad for a 24-year-old guy with autism. :cool:
 
Oh, the memories. I saw cards and readers, during a field trip in junior high, but the real fun was sitting at a console with a TV screen (seemed like Star Trek) and writing a simple computer program. This was at University of Washington's Computer Science school (1970?); I think we were test subjects, actually, for researchers interested in human-machine interactions. Funny story: there was also an area full of teletype machines, but as we were led inside somebody ushered us out, telling us that it was too noisy because "Mr. Allen and his friends" had "taken over the lab again". Could it be?

In high school, I was introduced to graphic arts. I had a part-time job at a lithography printshop, during my senior year. That's where I was introduced to a Phototypositor. Two years later, my boss purchased a Mergenthaler Linofilm typesetting system from a defunct, local newspaper. The keyboard was the size of a washing machine! It produced a roll of punched tape (15-hole width). No programming language; just "bell" codes for commands. The paper tape was read by a Rube Goldberg-type machine (the size of a small locomotive), and the type was set photographically using fonts made of glass! That system was built in the 1950s. There were no integrated circuits; half the hardware was radio tubes and bundled wires. There was no way to save work; small edits could be to the paper tape, by covering certain holes and punching new ones by hand. (Reading those tapes was like learning braille.) Mostly, we made edits by retyping the job from scratch.

I moved on to work for Cole & Weber Advertising, in the early 80s, doing pre-press graphic arts (in a shop named Silas Marner). I produced high-quality typography using a much newer Mergenthaler system: one-fourth the size, macro programming language, electronic keyboard with screen, 8-inch floppy disks for storing jobs, and a 6-hole paper punch to interface with the typesetter. On day one, I was amazed at the new technology. You could save jobs (!) on a floppy or by feeding the tape back into the keyboard.
Wow! That is so cool! Especially the glass fonts! :shock: :D
 
COmmon Business Oriented Language ..... right?

Hated it!!
Yeah, seems right. I didn't care for either one; I found BASIC preferable, whenever I could get away with it. Later, I used C++ for software on graphical interfaces (after Microsoft, IBM and HP imploded the typesetting industry with Word and desktop publishing software, literally thousands of free typefaces for any ol' joe, personal computers and 6,000 line-per-inch laser printers). My last paid gig programming (not counting coding as math tutor) was using dBASE for St. James Cathedral, automating administrative tasks, like collection notices, heh, heh. I like working with databases.
 
I remember programming a cribbage game (playing against computer)
on a Commodore64...took me some 6 months: about 1/2 hour per day wasted!

I has "delay" subroutines called on to slow down stuff like time in between
the laying down of cards...did it by fake "FOR NEXT" loops...

After I was finished, I noticed that a "DELAY(n)" command existed :(
 
I also remember the Tandy TRS (Radio Shack's computer line). One early machine required loading the operating system from a cassette tape!
Ah, the Trash-80!

How about those daisy-wheel printers?
How about the dot-matrix printers? I can remember, during the periodical-cicada hatching in the 1980s in Ohio, listening to the play-by-play and color commentators for an at-home Cincinnati baseball game repeatedly expressing frustration at all the red-eyed bugs that were dive-bombing their box. Turned out, the "scree, scree, scree" of their dot matrix printer was being heard by the bugs as coming from females "warm for their form". Ha!

COBOL?

PERL? (Didn't like it. Not good for string manipulation.)

I didn't care for either one; I found BASIC preferable.
I loved FORTRAN!

I remember programming a cribbage game...

I has "delay" subroutines called on to slow down stuff like time in between
the laying down of cards...did it by fake "FOR NEXT" loops...

After I was finished, I noticed that a "DELAY(n)" command existed :sad:
This reminds me of a tale that my son recently discovered: The Story of Mel
 
… I loved FORTRAN! …
I just looked at a sample; keywords/syntax seem close to BASIC. IF condition enclosed in parentheses and using .NE. for not equal, .LT. for less than, etc., were some differences I saw (it was a very short program).
 
These are pictures of the older and newer "computerized" typesetting machines I worked with at the print shop (1950s LinoFilm model) and at the ad agency (1980s V-I-P model) -- both built by Mergenthaler. Most of these images show the older system (it's more interesting).

Big keyboards. The lower-right cabinet housed the roll of paper tape, and above it were horizontal slots for cards prewired to contain exact character-width data (one card for each typeface used, italic, bold italic, semibold, etc).
LINOFILM keyboard 2.JPG

This photo shows a slightly newer model from the 1950s than what my boss got at auction; I remember the typesetting machine was longer and taller.

LINOFILM typesetter.JPG

1950s system used 15-level tape; 1980s model used 6-level tape. These tapes came in large rolls, and the paper was coated with lubricant that smelled like diesel oil. (Experimentation showed that it burned spectacularly -- especially as a large, unwound, twisted pile.)

LINOFILM paper tapes.JPG
 
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Old glass font

LINOFILM glass font.JPG

Newer film font (up to six of these wrapped around a drum with a strobe light in the center)

LINOFILM film font.JPG

Glass fonts sat in a turret; the typesetter read font codes from the tape, the turret spun to position, a mechanical arm literally grabbed and flung the font up between a flashbulb and shutter screen (one shutter blocking each character on the font). You can also see the first of a sequence of lenses (which slid back and forth horizontally on tracks). As the character codes were read from the tape (along with spacing data), shutters would open and close, photons comprising characters would stream through the lenses, bouncing off a moving mirror at the far end, exposing characters on a sheet of photographic paper, one after the other, line by line. It was amazing the contraption worked as well as it did. The type was very sharp and perfectly spaced. The machine was loud; it had a dozen electric motors driving all manner of gears. As I mentioned, the entire upper half was full of racks stuffed with radio tubes. (So was the keyboard).

LINOFILM font turret.JPG
 
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Tape reader -- 15 small, metal fingers (each connected to a switch) rested on the moving tape. As holes passed underneath, the vertical "twitches" of the finger tips determined the combination of switch settings corresponding to each code punched on the tape.

LINOFILM paper feed.JPG

Anybody remember nixie tubes (lights used to display numbers, before LEDs)? They were light bulbs, each containing 10 filaments shaped as numbers 0 through 9. The older system's keyboard used nixie-tube displays, to show current point size and spacing settings.

LINOFILM nixie tubes.JPG

This is the newer system, at Silas Marner: the "Variable-Input-Phototypesetter". The keyboard (no image, but it was the size of an average suitcase) could read its own paper tapes and also stored files on 8-inch floppy disks. It had a CRT screen. No more retyping jobs from scratch, to make edits. The typesetter was about the size of a washer/dryer. It was fast and quiet (servo motors).

LINOFILM V-I-P.JPG

The introduction of personal computers and laser printers drove Silas Marner out of business by 1986 (annual revenue of $4.5 million dropped to $300k in about 2.5 years). Somewhere between 1986 and 1990, the phototypesetting industry went extinct. I had to change "careers". :cool:
 
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Back in the sixties, I wrote software, mostly stuff to automate rolling mills, monitor temperatures in annealing furnaces, very specialized stuff for making steel. I mostly coded in assembler because high level languages then were not equipped to interact with truly dumb heavy equipment, but I documented my code in the comments section in Cobol. Cobol was certainly clunky, but, with a clean design for a program, it was semi-self-documenting.

Weird first job for a European history major
 
Back in the sixties, I wrote software, mostly stuff to automate rolling mills, monitor temperatures in annealing furnaces, very specialized stuff for making steel …
Sounds like we both experienced a precursor to robotics.

… Weird first job for a European history major
Sounds better than driving a bus!
 
1950s system used 15-level tape; 1980s model used 6-level tape. These tapes came in large rolls, and the paper was coated with lubricant that smelled like diesel oil. (Experimentation showed that it burned spectacularly -- especially as a large, unwound, twisted pile.)

View attachment 10051
I love that kind of "experimentation"! :twisted::lol:
 
I love that kind of "experimentation"!
Me too!

Silas Marner had six rooms, and my boss generally left cigarettes burning in each of them. (Bletch)

As the typesetter read tapes, it would spill them onto the floor. It wasn't unusual for my workspace to have several piles waiting to be rewound.

I typeset no-smoking signs for my room, but they didn't work. Eventually, I was forced to demonstrate the experiment for him, out in the parking lot (near his 1962 Benz). That worked. :cool:
 
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