Earliest electronic memories

A lifelong preoccupation with computers probably began with the ASMR hum of IBM Selectric electronic typewriters in my grandfathers downtown Ottawa law office. That audible hum of electronics running - waiting to take action at the beck and call of your key press. There was something exciting about knowing that piece of hardware was there ready and waiting to help you create something. That little type ball and how it moved at lightning speed inking letters on paper probably faster than you could type - was captivating, and also- an auditory fascination.

Joining the ASMR hum was the Xerox copier machine. Another highly advanced piece of tech ready and waiting to take action. At that age, the main interest in the copy machine was photocopying money to later colour and play with. Something you certainly can't do any longer as scanning devices now recognize what you are doing, thinking you are trying to do something with ill intent. Also of interest at that age, copying your hand(s) and seeing those replicated on paper down to those palm life/heart/fate lines. That feeling of having your hands on the copier glass and the warm light passing by making its copy.

Effectively taking a picture of anything that was relatively flat and have it instantly print out was for sure a novelty for the time, when normally you'd be taking your film roll to the drug store for processing getting back it days later.

Before writing the above, I had actually forgotten about the electronics in the downtown law office, or at least omitted it from being where my interest for electronic type hardware started out- because it seemed so basic and low tech, but they were advanced for their time.

The interest and fascination accelerated while spending time at my moms hi-tech work places in Canada. Probably most notably Dipix Technologies Ottawa. They were true pioneers in the remote sensing field. Not to get too deep into it here and now, but their work required the use of high end computers to manipulate digital graphics when computers didn't usually do that sort of thing. Dipix stood for Digital Pixels. Both words, common today, but then were very high tech words to use.

Again walking into facilities where there were big computers whirring away with their fans and the sound of their drives chattering away was for sure a bit of ASMR. Some of these powerful machines had mice, and high resolution colour CRT screens, very unusual for the time. It was a delight just looking at these things wondering what was being worked on with them.

Indeed most of those computers were locked away in a specially cooled room. There were windows handily, so people could see in. But what I had access to was the WANG system in my moms office. It was placed as a backup computer (imagine having TWO computers in your office!!) once used as the main system. The WANG system was essentially dumb terminals connected to a main server.

On this (WANG) backup machine, you had a friendly interface. A main menu where you selected what you wanted from a numbered list. There were configuration options, word processing, and games. Much of the time I played 'snake' and tried to create ASCII art through the word processor.

My early computer/tech exposure was further encouraged with the novelty of a summer camp- which was a half computer, half sports type camp. This would have been roughly in the 1988/89 year - as I've determined from the computer games that were available to play there. Meaning I would have been about 9-10 years old attending the camp.

In addition to playing games, we learned elements of programing through a basic program called LOGO, or Turtle as we liked to call it. We learned basic coding, making a 'turtle' or cursor on the screen do various things. We also learned how to 'borrow' the games by copying them to our own 5.25" floppy disks - and oh yes there was some physical activity on the 2nd half of the day at camp too.