Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/03/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Gary, let me get this straight. You played tic-tac-toe against a handful of beans and after an afternoon the beans would beat you every time ;-) We have a saying here regarding someone having the IQ of a shrub. I may have to make an exception for legumes. Were these the beans that Jack got for the cow? Also, with that method, I'm surprised that you didn't end up as an accountant ;-) Irreverently Hoppy -----Original Message----- From: lug-bounces+hoppyman=bigpond.net.au@leica-users.org [mailto:lug-bounces+hoppyman=bigpond.net.au@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Gary Todoroff Sent: Tuesday, 20 March 2007 13:30 To: Leica Users Group Subject: Re: [Leica] First computer 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