ORIGINAL: Ben Lanterman
My first job was as a summer hire at Lockheed between school semesters. It was a real basic computer where all it did was read tapes brought over from the big IBM 360 in order to print out the IBM's output. Later as a real aero eng at McDonnell Douglas I used to have to punch my own cards for small input changes. The big punch jobs we wrote out on tablets and sent them for the KeyPunch Ladies to do. I am amazed that they could be as accurate as they were. Of course I hated to do the computer related stuff since I was a real aero engineer and wanted to design airplanes. Unfortunately for me our Six-Degree-of-Freedom program required inputs with the card stacks we would submit to the computer area. Sometimes it would be a full box of the type that the blank cards came in.
Today we just ask the computer to please analyze what I am thinking of and - poof - instant airplane. Well almost that good I think. I quit just before the time the first personal computer was put on a desk. Aero eng would be interesting today.
Ben
I first learned IBM 360 Assembly Language in 1970. The computer lab had a "large" (768K core) Model 75 (I think). We all had to do our own keypunching when we wrote our programs. Write up the code on paper, then "type" it onto the cards. The semester term project was to write a program that simulated a machine the professor designed. Took an entire box of cards. You'd carry the cards back and forth to the lab as you submitted your program to be run. You'd get the results, debug it, re-type the code, and then return the box to run again. Sometimes, you'd have as much as a 7-day turnaround due to computer breakdowns, heavy student load, and so on.
Today, my laptop makes that "big" machine look like a toy. Today's stuff was science fiction, then.