Computers have come a long way baby

Like many of us, there are times when I worry and get angry about how slow a web page loads or how long it takes to download a file. And, being a programmer by trade, I also sometimes tell myself how limited the command set is for a particular programming language or how slow a particular PC is to update a large database file. However, at times like that, I can calm myself down by closing my eyes and thinking about when I started working with computers.

In 1972, fresh out of the Army (and a semester into graduate school) I decided to move to Tulsa. My aunt had an accounting practice and she was trying to computerize, and I thought it would be interesting to help her while she was looking for a job. After much research, I suggested that she should purchase a Litton 1241; it seemed reasonably simple to operate and had several software packages that came with it. The local sales rep had sold quite a few, and his clients included several accountants, so he seemed like a perfect fit.

Unfortunately, my aunt had no idea how to use a computer, so I decided to stick around a bit longer and try to transfer some of her workload to her shiny new computer. And she was a real computer genius for the time. It featured a magnetic drum memory that could hold 64 data items and had 128 program registers, each of which could hold four instructions. Of course, there was no monitor: the printer doubled as an input screen. And since internal memory was volatile (its data disappeared when you turned off the computer), the 1241 also had a paper tape punch/reader. All of your data files were punched onto paper tape when you finished a job and read back through the paper tape reader the next time you ran that job. The 1241 also comes with a free electric paper tape top roller to keep your tapes neatly wound on reels.

Actually, the 1241 was pretty fast once it loaded its data from tape, assuming it could get by with those 64 data records. Any major application had to be done in stages; for example, a job cost package that was available from Litton had to be done in a series of steps with pauses in between to punch intermediate data onto tape and then read it back for the next step. All in all, it’s not exactly a speed burner if you were running something very complicated.

After a while, I managed to learn how to program the damn thing, and eventually I was offered a job at the local Litton office. I got a lot of experience there with the venerable 1241, but over the next few years Litton made great strides in modernizing his computers. First came the 1251, which was basically a 1241 with a bigger drum. I helped run a demo for the manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling plant and he was so impressed with the speed of the new system (he sorted 2,000 items in just over two hours) that he bought one on the spot.

Then came the Litton 1281, which featured magnetic ledger cards. No more messy paper tape rolls; the 1281 stored data on magnetic ledger cards. It seemed like a big step forward at the time and we immediately set up a demo for a great prospect. The sales manager and I practiced running the entire demo the night before our presentation and everything went well. The next morning on the actual demo absolutely nothing worked, like the frog in the old Warner Brothers cartoon, the 1281 just sat there and beeped occasionally. It turned out that there was a set of “microroutines” on a special registration card that had to be loaded every time the 1281 was used for the first time.

1281 was followed a couple of years later by 1300; a much more modern system. The 1300 had a monitor and cassette tape drives for storage. It was so impressive that we actually made an appointment with Walmart and went to their headquarters to give them a presentation. When they showed us their data processing area, it looked like old times: by God, they were storing everything on paper tape. There were giant loops of paper tape everywhere and the chad from the paper punchers was strewn all over the floor. Walmart didn’t buy us out, but they modernized their computer department soon after that, which probably had a lot to do with Walmart growing by leaps and bounds over the next several decades.

Once I forgot to mention; newer is not always better. We once tried to upgrade a construction company in Oklahoma City that had a Litton 1230 (basically a teletype with a magnetic drum and a paper perforator). The client flatly rejected us. The boss’s wife ran her job cost estimating program and worked the front desk and the only way she knew when she started running another estimate was when the 1230 rang the ticker bell at the end of each job. We could deliver all kinds of new features, but we couldn’t ring that bell for her.

Programming those systems was fun too. Some ingenuity was definitely required sometimes to produce complex programs with only a handful of commands and register storage available. I miss those days? You bet, until you decide to go find some products on Amazon or check out the latest stuff on YouTube. Perhaps the best part of remembering those times is that it reminds me of how far we’ve come and makes me much more tolerant of that slow-loading web page.