My First Pet (A little bit of techno-nostalgia)

in #technology7 years ago (edited)

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I remember my first computer. It was the first computer I’d ever seen in real life and not on Tomorrow’s World (Thursday evening, 7.30, BBC1 – how we looked forward to it!)

I was about eight years old and it was a big, off-white, bulky contraption of metal with a curved glass television screen, a typewriter keyboard and a tape player all built in. Across the front in big silver letters was written PET. It was magic. The future had arrived, just like they said it would on Tomorrow’s World – and here it was, in my very own house.
At first we didn’t know what to do with it. We discovered how to switch it on and were thrilled as it hummed into life. We sat in eager anticipation as the cathode-ray-tube warmed up, then in some bemusement as we watched a small green line blinking on and off in the top left corner of the screen.

Before very long we learned that we could tell it to do certain simple tasks and it would do them. I soon learned its language and wrote long and logical instructions to make it perform more complicated tricks, such as writing poetry (that almost made sense), playing guessing games, doing difficult sums very quickly. It could count up to a thousand in about three seconds and was very good at sums. It always gave the right answer, except when I succeeded in confusing or confounding it with impossible equations involving fractions or multiples of infinity

In a way, it was just like having an actual pet – except that it didn’t actually move. It wasn’t actually alive, but still it became part of the family, a part of our lives. From then on it was always there – always ready to play games, perform new or old tricks, do difficult sums very quickly…

I can’t remember when the PET died or what happened to it in the end. Perhaps it’s still in the attic of my parents’ house, gathering dust with the old tape players, record players, cine-cameras and projectors and piles of other outdated technology from bygone days. At some point – I can’t remember when – it was replaced with a new computer. Something similar, but more modern looking, more powerful – perhaps even 64K, which was about eight times more K’s than the PET had had. You could get it to count to a million before you could p-p-p-pick up a Penguin (That’s an obscure reference to 1970’s British advertising campaign for a chocolate bar, in case you’re wondering. Funny how these things stick in your mind, even decades after you’ve forgotten everything you ever learned in school).

I don’t remember shedding any tears for the passing of my first PET, but now, when I look back on those days – when that was the first and only computer on our street – before the internet, before youtube, facebook and google – before smartphones and GPS, voice and face recognition software built in – I do miss it and sometimes wonder at what it has grown to become.

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This story first appeared as part of my 'No Internet Diary' series. I wrote it myself.
https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/57391855/posts/1277432762

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My first computer was a Schneider - basically a large keyboard and a monitor.
Tomorrow's World and Horizon were teen TV staples.

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How the times have changed! I remember seeing the first CD on Tomorrow’s World – they called it a 'laser disk'and proved that it was indestructible by spreading peanut butter and jam on it - and it still worked.
Unfortunately, now that we actually live in tomorrow's world, CD's turned out to be quite useless - especially trying to listen to them in a car. I've gone back to cassettes. Some of mine are thirty years old and still work.

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Yes, hi-tech always starts as hi-quality but quickly descends into mass-produced lo-quality hi-profit commodity.

I found cassettes get chewed up in cars too - CDs scratch - funnily, the most vibration-proof format I found was the old 8-track cartridges. I still see them in markets here - no buyers.

i totally remember that Tomorrows World episode!
and its was all lies also! i mean ok you can probably get away with peanut butter.. but skipping scratched CD's were always a big problem!

u still have a cassette player!!? Jeeez

and i love this one!

Yes, there's a tape player in my car. It's even got auto reverse and it can find the beginning of the next song automatically. I've only got a few tapes though. Mostly bob dylan. I need to make some more compilations but need to find a recorder and someone who sells blank cassettes.

Nice last picture :-). Can't believe i never heard of this (again), so that was before commodore 64, tandy trs80 etc...? You must be old man :-)

I think it was the one before the commodore 64. The pet had about 4 or 8 K , as I remember. The ZX Spectrum was the next big development a couple of years later, maybe. you could make it draw circles without having to write long codes, and you could plug it into the telly. You could even buy games for it, on cassette. But the PET had real class and style.

I think I was about eight at the time.

The Commodore Vic 20 was my first machine.

Aah those were the days! Somehow seems like an age ago. A lot has changed in the last 35 years.

Digital grandpas. ;-)

i remember that computer! It always looked SO cool and powerful..
i think its still in your dad's office.. maybe he still uses it even! lol

This was the first computer on the street. I think I did see it in the attic actually. My dad was always into the latest gadgets. He was the first person to get a satellite dish, a video camera , a telly with a remote control (it had one button which could switch between the three channels that there were in those days. .. I am starting to feel old now. Oh dear

Great Nostalgia, im very similar we had an Amiga Commodore when i was young. No one i knew had anything like it.

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