Want a Fast Computer 1341

(Charles Richmond) writes:

We graduated from pencils to pens in the 4th or 5th grade, which for me would be 1960 or '61. But although our desks had the holes for the ink bottles, the bottles were long gone. We started with a particular brand of ball-point pen called "Ad-Pac", which had a fancy molded plastic barrel about 8 inches long, tapering to a point, done in a swirly mix of white and the colour of your choice. It took a standard ballpoint refill.

I used those cartridge pens through much of my school days. The cartridges had a little circle scored in the weak end - a strong hint that that's the end you were supposed to pierce - but my sense of perversity led me to always pierce the opposite end instead. Looks like I saved myself some trouble, further vindicating my nonconformist style.

I took a typing clbutt in junior high just for the hell of it. Got to 45 wpm on an Underwood manual. It turned out to be one of the best things I ever did.

That led me to go down into the basement and dig through my back issues of Electronics Illustrated. Yup, in "Uncle Tom's Corner" by Tom Kneitel, K2AES-KBG4303 (sometimes billed as "the dirty old man of electronics"), I found the following letter:

Here's a gimmick that would be a handy extra for a TV set. Why not rig the set with a switch that would allow you to just listen to the sound with the picture tube turned off? This would permit you to wander about the house without taking hours off the life of the expensive picture tube. Hank Limoges Stone Mountain, Ga.

Congratulations! You have just invented radio.

This column also contained a letter which for some reason has always struck me funny:

I've always wondered about the little hole punched into each of the two prongs on all electric plugs. Why? Mel Atler San Francisco, Calif.

Without a hole, how could the current flow?

It was a fun column. And then there were all those ads for electronics schools, featuring things like a fellow staring at an oscilloscope while sitting at a console above which you can see a sign saying "IBM 7070", with a bank of model 729 tape drives in the background (sometimes printed mirror-reversed).

And I've just noticed that on the back page of that issue (July 1967 if anyone is interested), there is a set of cartoons by Rodrigues, also did radio-oriented cartoons in EI. And this issue includes one of my favourites, where a dentist is explaining to a patient: "This is not just a simple case of receiving radio signals through your teeth, Mr. Frayling. Your bicuspid is picking up NSS and your wisdom tooth filling is acting as a BFO..."

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