We were still using Hollerith cards when I was working on the mainframe at Harvard (no, I did not attend the university) in 1987, complete with almost-as-ancient jokes about dropping the box of them.
Our local IBM sales office used to sponsor a data-processing Explorer post and would let us take the smallest System/3, a Model 6 if memory serves, to public expos. The thing had a console with keyboard, line printer, monochrome monitor, and two disk drives with sealed disk cartridges about 18" in diameter that probably held something like 256kb. It must have weighed a thousand pounds.
We'd crank out copy after copy of Mona Lisa ASCII art for booth visitors. Ooo! Computing!
Kind of amazing how far computing has come in one generation. The guy in the photo was the same age as my dad was at the time, and I'm posting this from my phone that probably has more computing power than the $238 million computer in the story..
We'd crank out copy after copy of Mona Lisa ASCII art for booth visitors. Ooo! Computing!
(ca. late 1970s)
Interesting how many voted for the Mona Lisa. You folks are so hopeful! That's cute.
I'm shocked! Shocked! I tell you.
Also, it looks like a lot of people didn't cheat (by peeking at the article). Yay, honesty.