Heh heh. Kids just don’t realize. I bought my first hand held calculator in 1974 for $70. I thought that was outrageous but needed it. Once a month I had to do cost allocations for about 60 budgets so did everything long hand the first month. Then I borrowed a 10 key from the accounting dept., then the month after that they actually had a calculator. So finally I just said I’ll get my own.
My grandmother was a skilled, rapid operator of comptometers in the early 1900s until she and my grandfather married in 1913. She was fascinated by the early TI hand held calculators and ten-key office calculators of the late 1960s but thought that she was faster working a comptometer by feel. At one time I was moderately fast using a ten-key by feel left-handed so I could use my right hand for writing but doubt I was as fast as my grandmother was.
In her 85 years she saw the world go from horse drawn wagons to early cars to modern cars and even man on the moon.
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Interesting, I didn’t know that’s what the were called, or how they worked.
So did my Dad (born 1911).
My grandmother was born in 1885 and lived until a month after her eighty-fifth birthday in 1970. What technological changes and advancements our grandparents lived through!
In our lifetimes, I think the historic tech changes are how rapidly computers have advanced and become increasingly integrated into every aspect of everything.
I just looked it up, today’s cars have about 50 computers.
My father, too. He was born in a very small town in Southwestern South Carolina. He used to talk about the one Jewish family in town that packed up on Friday for the day long wagon ride the Charleston. They went to the synagogue on Saturday, and returned home Sunday. It took me at least two hours to drive to his first home from Charleston with my car. I imagine the wagon trip was a long, all day affair. My mother only talked about the trucks her father owned in the 1920s and 1930s. She lived in a small city in Southwest Pennsylvania. It was a lot larger than my father’s original home town.
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When were dwell meters first used to set ignition points? I do remember seeing a mechanic at the Buick dealer pulling the distributor out of my Dad’s 1954 Buick and putting it into a machine to set the point dwell. I also remember a service station in the early 1960s that had one of the first SUN diagnostic machines with the scope that showed the firing voltage at each plug and had s built in dwell meter and a timing light attached to the machine.
One of my grandmother’s was born in 1896 and lived to be 70 she lived all but the last few years of her life in a log cabin the other grandmother was born in 1904 a year after the Wright brothers flew the first airplane and lived to be 98 she was in her 80’s when she took her first and only plane trip.
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My mom’s parents were born in 1885 and 1889. Granddad worked most of his life in the automotive industry, including the Liberty Car Company and another, both of which folded. When Budd Wheel bought the Liberty factory in Detroit, he went to work for Budd, quickly becoming the production manager. Mom told of how he was physically sickened each time he had to lay off people during the depression. At one point he was the sole remaining person in the production office for awhile until gradually things improved and he could hire back those laid off. Then came the war years when there weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with war production.
My dad’s parents were born in 1894 and 1900. My paternal grandfather was a sharecropper farmer in Oklahoma. When I was a young girl he showed my mom and us kids the crumbling remains of a small one-room log house his parents built on one rented farm when he was age three. Dad had a memory of “helping” chink between the logs. They used mules to work the land but eventually had a Model T car and later a Model A my grandfather owned at the time he was killed in 1932 serving as a Special Deputy Sheriff when my dad was only thirteen.
The first brand new car my dad owned was when he and my mom bought the 1956 Olds. Before that he and then he and my mom either had no car or drove older well used cars. Dad and Mom thought they had achieved success in life when they could afford that new '56 Olds and to live in a rented duplex with two bedrooms. Until then they had lived in either a rented one-room converted pre-WWI garage or a two-room walk-up apartment. In the early 1960s they were able to rent a small house and get a second car, an old Chevy with a split screen windshield. By 1965 they owned a house and replaced the old Chevy with a brand new 1965 Olds to pair with the still kept 1956 Olds. They had achieved the vaunted post-WWII suburban success.
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I’ve been working in the computer field for over 45 years…and the changes I’ve seen are mind boggling. I never could have predicted where the technology is today 45 years ago…not even close.
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Heh heh heh. I remember my boss telling me to go see what CPT had for their word processing equipment. He didn’t think it was anything worthwhile so better for me to waste my time than him. He didn’t say that but implied it. I can say though from the start I pushed hard the use of all the technology against brick walls sometimes. I think maybe just getting out of basic training on teletypes though helped me see how this was just a logical technology improvement.
I mean teletypes just used paper tape for storage like CNC equipment. So then cassette tape storage on a word processor was a first step. The floppy disc, then add a crt screen, and some functions. The frustrating part was we knew we had to have about 50-60% penetration of work stations to really improve the electronics. That just didn’t happen until prices came down and there were some older units that could be recycled. Then it all snow balled.
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I was in the DEC C/C++ compiler group in ZK2 (Technical Languages group) and then switched to the Digital UNIX development environment in group working on compilers, linkers, and loaders for about 13 years.
I worked in ZK1 and the ZK2. Started at DEC at MK1 (now owned by Fidelity).
What a great company.
When I was an early teenager someone opened a Frieden calculator store near our house. My father told me if I had a Frieden try to divide by 0 it would go into a complex process that would never end until it was unplugged. I went in and tried it, and he was right! They were not pleased.
Also, in the 60’s I worked in Jamaica, and used a mechanical calculator with a crank that was set up to work with pounds, shillings and pence, a non decimal system. It was strange. http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sterling_calculators.html
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Hi
I’m new to this forum and old cars sorry. I’ll read this chain properly as there are lots of tips and wisdom in here im looking for a Mac et985 tester if one if you can help me please. I’m in Los Angeles and teach at a preschool in Culver City CA called happyland preschool
If any of you can help that would be great. If not, even the reading here will be helpful. Thx a bunch
Aly
I see them advertised on eBay. Did you check there?
Google is your friend .
There I fixed it for you .
I’ve got a MAC et985 still with the case/cables but unfortunately, I can’t turn loose of it as I still dink around with old cars and motorcycles now and then.
My memory is fuzzy on this but I seem to remember those things sold new for going on 200 dollars back when. Quite a bit of money in the 80s but considering the antiquity one should be able to snag one on the cheap on eBay.
The dwell meter is still a useful feature for those who get involved with Lambda controlled CIS fuel injection on late 70s-90s European cars.
Digital Dwell meters are still available at Habor Freight for $ 41. very useful for anyone who has a pre 1960’s car and much better than a 30+ year old analog unit.
Pre 60’s? GM cars still had adjustable dwell points up to at least ‘72, our ‘72 Delta 88 did. And although yes, digital is more accurate, those old analog gauges were perfectly fine for those old analog cars.