[Leica] First computer

[datamaster at northcoastphotos.com (Gary Todoroff)]

My first computer was in the 1950's at about age 12. A multi-million 
dollar mainframe? No - about twenty match boxes and white beans that 
I had dyed a few different colors. I drew the tic-tac-toe board on 
each box, representing the possible board combinations with colored 
arrows showing the possible moves. Starting off,each box showed one 
board position with two colored beans each for the different next 
possible moves.  You played against the "computer" as it chose its 
move by whatever colored bean you picked out of the box. If the 
computer won the game, I "rewarded" it with two colored beans to each 
box in the sequence that had won the game. If the computer lost, I 
"punished" the computer by taking away a bean from each box that had 
instructed it towards a losing game.

By the end of an afternoon, I had "programmed" my tic-tac-toe 
computer and could no longer beat it.

Funny how I wound up for 30 years as a programmer/analyst. Those were 
robust machines back then, providing a fine career that put kids 
through college and paid the bills. Photography has been my 
"book-ends" career - a lot more fun, but not nearly as good at 
putting money in the bank!

As for actual electrically powered computers, my first was a 1975 IBM 
System/3 Model 8 - huge two megabyte disk drives and a whopping 12k 
of memory. All for slightly under $100,000.00!

Gary Todoroff