In early 1979, we bought an Apple II Plus. It had 64K memory, and an external 5 1/4 inch “floppy disk” drive (see just to the right and partially cropped. We also purchased a thermal “strip printer”. The cost was $3000.00. (For a number of years, every system we bought cost $3000.) When Bob began work at IBM in April of 1965 (having just graduated from the University of Georgia), he purchased a portable GE color TV. It was not quite as large as the monitor in the image but it became our monitor. It lived on a little desk I had purchased at K-Mart when I first moved to Atlanta in 1965. The desk was in the breakfast area of our kitchen.
I cannot seem to recall why we made this HUGE expenditure. It may have been that I was not finding any contracting jobs for my Systems Engineering skills. I had had 2 good gigs – both were converting banks from Burroughs Computers to superior IBM Computers. But both had ended when the conversion was complete. All the other banks in Memphis were already IBM customers. At any event, I did think that perhaps I would learn BASIC – the language for these new “personal” computers. It wasn’t hard – being “basic”. I was accustomed to writing in Assembler Language for mainframe computers – both applications and device drivers (those programs that allow computers to communicate with devices such as printers or check sorters).
While I was learning to program the Apple, the kids, then aged 9 and 6, were having a great time with the games. The really awesome ones just wrote text on the screen and the player had to type what to do next. “You have entered the forest and you see a stream.” Then the player would have to figure out how to get across the stream and type the correct instructions. These were great learning tools, but we had no idea how much of a head start our children were going to have – as we entered the “Computer Age”.
Meanwhile, I was adjusting to having a computer in our kitchen that had greater capacity than the first computer I worked on at IBM. It was a 1410 (a “2nd generation” machine with 4K of memory, 2 tape drives, and a paper tape reader. It ran the 1st National Bank of Atlanta!
I finally decided what program I should write first – a “What If” tax program. I had acquired the task of handling finances, several years before, as Bob’s hours were always unpredictable. I didn’t really mind, but I really hated Tax Time. There were many options regarding self-employment income, investments, etc. and it took forever to run through all the scenarios. Besides, there was no easy way to run through more than one or two. If I had a way to do the “what ifs”, perhaps I could save money as well as time. So, that is the program I wrote first. The result – it saved $3000 on our taxes, thus paying for the Apple. What a deal!!
Good Skraps 