It's 1981 Nostalgia Time!

[John Gray]

It's a long time since we've seen the original IBM PC...
(No, I have no idea how the graphic works!)

[HansV]

(No, I have no idea how the graphic works!)

I assume the ratio of the area of the entire picture and the highlighted small square is the same as that of the speed of the 2010 HP Pavilion vs the 1981 IBM PC.

[Doc Watson]

Just curious... what does this have to do with the Royal Wedding? Other than the fact that the year this came out coincides with the last Royal Wedding.

Last time I saw one was about 5 years ago when I tossed the one I had stored in my basement. I thought it might have some antique value when I put it away. Antique doorstops don't fetch much these days.

[diegol]

1981... the year of my birth! It was not until 2000 that I purchased my first PC.

[HansV]

Ha! So I'm twice as old as you! But I was older than you are now when I bought my first PC...

[Bowlie]

Ha! So I'm twice as old as you! But I was older than you are now when I bought my first PC...

You bought your first PC? That was nothing, I had to build my Ohio Scientific from a kit in 1979. You couldn't buy them assembled, but they did include a soldering iron in the price (about C$350, IIRC).

[Bigaldoc]

Young Whippersnappers, Both !!!         

[John Gray]

(No, I have no idea how the graphic works!)

I assume the ratio of the area of the entire picture and the highlighted small square is the same as that of the speed of the 2010 HP Pavilion vs the 1981 IBM PC.

Unusual to have relative speeds compared by relative areas?

[StuartR]

...Unusual to have relative speeds compared by relative areas?

Reminds me of the article that calculated vehicle fuel consumption as an area.

Distance / volume = 1/area

So the fuel consumption of a vehicle is the cross sectional area of an infinity long tube of fuel that the vehicle consumes when driving.

[johbot]

In 1981 I was undertaking one of my major 'teaching pracs' at my old high school as a trainee English teacher. We were all summoned to stay after school one day to see one of these new fangled computers that would one day be on everyone's desk.
They showed us how it could be used in maths, in science and even geography (but I can't remember the details). I asked about how they saw it being used in the English curriculum and they admitted that they had no idea and that they could not forsee anything overtaking a pen and paper in the classroom.

[John Gray]

[...] they could not foresee anything overtaking a pen and paper in the classroom.

And so it proved...

[HansV]

But twittering in the classroom is of all times and ages...

[BobH]

In 1981 I had been writing COBOL and ALC code for more than 15 years (but by that year I was a manager). I also bought one of those PCs in November of that year. IIRC one had to purchase a special graphics-capable monitor. Mine had a Hercules graphics card. From the crispness of the bar chart in that photo, I believe that monitor must be one of the orange screen variety. I don't recall the green screens being that sharp.

[wasbit]

The even earlier Apple 1 sells for £133,000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11825143" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ChrisGreaves]

[quote="StuartR"]... vehicle is the cross sectional area of an infinity long tube /quote]A pet topic of mine.
Next time you are driving (or being driven) along behind a car, consider that the car acts as a piston, pushing upwards, or to one side, a volume of air equal in volume to the cross-sectional area of the car multiplied by its speed each second.
If I think of a car as a 5'x5' rectangle in cross-section, then traveling at 60mph=88fps it is displacing 25x88=220 cu ft per second of air, and if the mass of air is .. then the work being done in displacing air is ... and the car needs ... Horsepower just to push the air aside.

[ChrisGreaves]

They showed us how it could be used in maths,

I had a similar experience, years earlier when, for two days, they showed us that one could calculate e raised to the power x using FORTRAN II.
Since I already had (and still have) my Cambridge book of log tables, I couldn't see the point of computers at all, at all.

Nowadays, of course, I see that they have great practical use, such as games of one-up-manship in the Scuttlebutt forum ..

[ChrisGreaves]

It's a long time since we've seen the original IBM PC...
(No, I have no idea how the graphic works!)

Here is a YouTube video of an early implementation of Access that was compatible with the '81 PC.

[Leif]

(Allegedly)

1981 & 2005 - Two Interesting Years

Interesting Year 1981
1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe .
3. Australia lost the Ashes.
4. The Pope died.

Interesting Year 2005
1. Prince Charles got married.
2. Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe .
3. Australia lost the Ashes.
4. The Pope died.



The next time Charles gets married, someone should warn the Pope.

[ChrisGreaves]

(Allegedly)1981 & 2005 - Two Interesting Years

Leif, Are you issuing this under a decree of homologation?

[Leif]

Allegedly