Category Archives: Computer History

1974 British Video Game

Fifty years ago, this duo were among the first Britons to enjoy playing a video game, thanks to the project shown in two issues of Practical Wireless, starting in July 1974. The game, dubbed Tele-Tennis, appears to be a clone of Pong, which first hit arcades in 1972. The home version didn’t hit American Sears stores until 1975, so these two were way ahead of the curve. The construction article was careful, however, to avoid the “Pong” name.

The magazine noted that the television, the most sophisticated instrument in most homes, wasn’t living up to its potential being used only to watch Bugs Bunny or Coronation Street. It noted that the game was sweeping pubs and clubs in America, and that the British experimenter could duplicate it.

Initially, the author was afraid that the circuit might be too complex for the amateur constructor. But thanks to a careful design, the use of IC’s, and a printed circuit board, the project could be undertaken by anyone with reasonable soldering ability. Both the circuit boards and cabinet were available for purchase.

1938 Desktop Calculator

If you needed a desktop calculator 85 years ago, you couldn’t go wrong with the one described in the October 1938 issue of the British magazine Practical Mechanics.

It was a literal desktop calculator, since you affixed it to your desk. It consisted of three logarithmic scales, and could perform multiplication and division, and even square roots. To multiply, you placed your straightedge on the numbers on the outer scales. At the point where it crossed the middle scale, that was the product.

You could use any ruler, but the magazine recommended as the best option a strip of celluloid. You would carefully score a line down the middle, fill it with ink, and then polish away the excess ink.

With practice, the calculator was accurate out to three figures.

1953 OARAC Computer

Shown here 70 years ago is Mrs. Connie Hodgson of Syracuse, NY, one of six “intelligent adults” who pitted their multiplication skills against General Electric’s OARAC computer, shown behind her.

The computer was on its way to the U.S. Air Force, but before it left, it showed off its skills by competing against the human contestants in calculating 8,645,392,175 x 8,645,392,175, to get the right answer of 74,742,805,859,551,230,625.

Of course, someone armed with a slide rule would have been able to come up with the right answer of 7.474 x 10^19 almost as fast as OARAC

None of the human contestants got the right answer. Mrs. Hodgson came the closest, but she is pointing to the spot where she forgot to carry a 1, making her final answer be off by a trillion. And, as they say, a trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

And OARAC was much faster, crunching the numbers in about 1/1000 second. The humans took between 4-1/2 and 8 minutes to get the wrong answer.

Bill Gates will be glad to know that the Windows calculator got the same answer as OARAC, and it seemed a little faster than 1/1000 second, although I wasn’t able to time it.

The photo appeared in Popular Mechanics, June 1953.

1953 Robotic Turtle

Seventy years ago this month, the April 1953 issue of Radio News shows this young woman playing with her robotic turtle. She looks overjoyed, but we suspect her father, the turtle’s creator and article author Jack Kubanoff, got to play with it more than she did.

The turtle is actually quite sophisticated for its time. The head (made of a coffee can) contains both eyes(photocell) and tongue (tactile sensor) that allow it to go in search of “food”. The food is indicated by a flashing light that the robot homes in on. But the creature has an ability to learn, in that it can determine which sequence of flashing lights leads to the food. It also has a memory, and can keep heading toward the food, even when the flashing light is behind an obstacle.

The robot has its own entry at the Cybernetic Zoo. Kids today have more options when it comes to playing with robots. But the sophisticated models like the ones shown below are direct descendants of pioneers like Timothy the Turtle.

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1973 Electronic Calculators

The March 1973 issue of Popular Science reported that in the past year, a million Americans had become owners of electronic calculators, and the prices had fallen below a hundred dollars for the basic models. In 2023 dollars, that hundred dollars would be the same as $673, so it still wasn’t a trivial proposition. But they were quickly becoming an item that people could consider owning.

As I’ve recounted previously, a few months later, I recall uncharacteristic jealousy of the kid sitting in front of me in one of my classes whose parents coughed up $79 for his very own pocket calculator. It was just three years later when I was shocked to see the TI-30 scientific calculator in the store for only $29, and I quickly snatched it up, and it saw me through high school. By then, four function calculators were in the under-$10 category, and it was clear that they were around for the long haul. Teachers still said, “but you won’t always have a calculator with you,” but it was soon clear that even they were wrong.

The magazine included a buyer’s guide, and for the newbies, even showed the exact key strokes necessary to carry out everyday math such as balancing your checkbook (a largely forgotten art, it turns out).

Today, of course, the calculator is a practically free commodity item, as evidenced by some of the ones below, all available with free shipping:

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Stuckey’s Highway Emergency Locating Paging Service: 1973

Wikimedia Commons image.

Stuckey’s image.

Today, if you want to contact someone who is traveling, it’s a simple matter of dialing their cell phone number. Wherever they are in the country, or even the world, their phone will ring, and you will be speaking with them. You can text that same number, or e-mail them, and you can be reasonably certain that you will contact them. And you don’t need to know where they are.

This is a new phenomenon, and it hasn’t always been this way. As recently as 30 years ago, if you wanted to contact someone, then you needed to know where they were.

Things began to change with the advent of cellular phones in the early 1990s, but only if the person had a cellular phone, which wasn’t always the case. And you had to know their phone number. For many users, the number was a closely guarded secret. They had to pay per minute for all calls–incoming and outgoing–so they didn’t give the number to just anyone. (Some countries solved this problem by having callers pay, but in the United States, almost without exception, the cellular subscriber had to pay for the airtime.)

But at first, even if you had the number, there was no way to call someone outside of their home area, without knowing where they were. In short, if you were on the road, you might be able to make outgoing calls, but you wouldn’t be able to receive incoming calls.

This 1990 news article made a prediction, which seemed almost unbelievable at the time:

Currently, callers seeking someone who has traveled away from his or her local calling area must know where that person is in order to complete a call. With automatic call delivery, a person “roaming” outside the home market will send out a locating signal to the closest cellular system whenever he or she turns on the cellular phone. Computers then will do the searching and service authorizations.

“If you’re up in Chicago and I’m back in Washington and all I’ve got is your local Washington number, I’m going to be able to dial that Washington number . . . and that phone call is going to find you . . . anywhere in the United States,” said Norman Black, a spokesman for the cellular phone association.

That was almost unbelievable, but according to the article, it was going to happen by 1992. It did eventually happen, but for most customers, it took a bit longer.

Prior to the 1990s, there was really no way to contact someone who was traveling, unless they called you. In emergency situations, broadcast stations might fill in. Occasionally, on stations such as WCCO Minneapolis, it wasn’t uncommon to hear a message such as the following:

The Minnesota Highway Patrol has asked our assistance in locating John Doe of Minneapolis for an emergency message. John Doe of Minneapolis, please call the Minnesota Highway Patrol for an emergency message.

When I heard those, I always wondered what kind of tragedy befell that particular family. But presumably, they heard their name on the radio, called the Highway Patrol, and were put in touch with whoever had the bad news for them.

In 1973, an idea came along that was ahead of its time–a method to contact travelers anywhere in the country. Messages could be sent to anyone anywhere in the country, as long as the traveler was willing to stop at a popular roadside retailer. It was really an early version of e-mail, and certainly one of the first methods of digital communication that most Americans had ever seen.

The retailer was Stuckey’s, and the system they pioneered was called “Highway Emergency Locating Paging Service“, or HELPS for short. The chain had 350 stores nationwide, all strategically located along major highways. They had clean restrooms, they sold snacks, and most had gas pumps. It was the kind of place where you had to stop anyway, and the idea was that if you could also use their stores to keep in touch with family or business associates back home, then it would be a competitive advantage for them.

The store was equipped with a computer console with a CRT screen and 10 digit numeric keyboard. Before you left on your trip, you would tell the folks back home that they could always reach you by calling the Stuckey’s HELPS line in Georgia. From early in the morning to late at night, a friendly operator would answer the phone. After hours, there was answering machine. The caller would tell the operator that they had a message for you, and give the operator your home phone number (or other agreed-upon number). The message would be a phone number that you were to call back.

When you stopped for gas at any of the 350 Stuckey’s locations, you would go inside and use the free terminal. It would prompt you to enter your phone number. The terminal would link back to Stuckey’s headquarters via Western Union lines, and would display any messages, or tell you that you had none. If you had a message, then you would go to the payphone and call them. You would have to pay for a long distance call, but you only had to pay for one long distance call.

The beauty of this system was that the caller didn’t need to know where you were. As long as you bought your gas at Stuckey’s, it didn’t matter if you were in Maine or California–you would get the message.

The system got the approval of the New York Times:

Stuckey’s deserves a large bouquet of pralines and a rousing round of applause from the motoring public for having invented a free, public service with no strings attached that is probably the greatest contribution to the motorist’s peace of mind since the free gas company roadmap and the hopefully clean gas station rest room.

The console had a second function. The store manager had a key that converted it into a terminal for ordering stock from the company’s warehouse. The annual cost of the system was estimated at $660,000.

As a youngster, I remember seeing one of these machines and thinking to myself what a good idea it was. Of course, I entered our home phone number, and there were no messages for us. As far as I know, it didn’t last long, and I never saw another one of the terminals. It was a very good idea, but perhaps a bit ahead of its time.

Clive Sinclair: 1940-2021

Sinclair in 1992. Wikipedia photo by Adrian Pingstone.

We have the sad duty to report that the world has lost one of the pioneers of home computing, Sir Clive Marles Sinclar, who died on 16 September 2021 in London.

In 1961, he founded Sinclair Radionics, Ltd., which produced electronic kits and finished products, including one of the first electronic calculators in 1972.

Sinclair ZX80. Wikipedia photo.

We’ve previously written about his most famous products, the Sinclair ZX80 computer from 1980. In America, a later version was marketed as the Timex Sinclair TS1000, billed as the first computer under $100, whose price later dropped to $49. It could be used for BASIC programs, and served as an introduction to computers to many.

According to the BBC, Sinclair didn’t use computers himself, saying that he didn’t like the distraction. Instead, he was working on his inventions until a week before his death, because that was what he loved doing.

Electronic Route Guidance System (ERGS) 1971

Fifty years ago this month, the September 1971 issue of Elementary Electronics carried a feature describing a proposed system known as Electronic Route Guidance System (ERGS). While it was apparently never adopted, the system was tested in the Washington, D.C. area, and amounted to an early prototype of Google Maps.

he system would provide directions to your destination as you drove. It was ultimately envisioned as a nationwide system. The user would enter a 6-digit alphabetical code into the car’s unit. This code could be looked up in a directory (or provided by a person at the destination) and would represent one of up to four million destinations. As he or she drove along, the system would continually give directions of whether to go straight, turn right, or turn left. In many cases, the instructions would alert the driver to take the second right or the third left. Directions would be given on a heads-up display, such as shown at left, or on a unit mounted on the dashboard, as shown above.

This was all done long before the advent of GPS, and the position locating and storage of directions were elegantly simple. To service four million destinations, up to 200,000 intersections would have installed loop antennas under the pavement. Each loop antenna would be connected to a receiver and 2-watt transmitters operating on 170 and 230 kHz. Cars would be equipped with a similar system. As a car drove over a loop, a 230 kHz signal from the pavement would be detected by the car, and this would trigger the car to transmit its destination, in the form of a 25-bit binary code, on 170 kHz. This would be received by the pavement antenna. For each of the 4,000,000 possible destinations, the system would then have locally stored the proper direction to go to get to that destination. The pavement antenna would then transmit that information as a 16-bit signal, which would be displayed on the 16-element display shown at right. Only the needed segments would be lighted, allowing a wide variety of messages. The entire process would take 21.0-24.3 milliseconds. The system used on-off keying with a data transmission rate of 2000 bits per second. When the driver passed over the station closest to the final destination, the display would indicate “END.”

More technical details of the system can be found in this 1969 report of the Federal Highway Administration.

If a driver missed a turn, the system would be automatically self-correcting. At the next intersection equipped with a loop antenna, the system would show directions to the programmed destination, from that location.

1960 Homemade Computer

Sixty years ago, the gentleman shown here was undoubtedly the first one on his block to own a personal computer, since he built this one, as shown in the January 1960 issue of Electronics Illustrated.

The device was essentially a binary counter. The pulses from the telephone dial went to a series of six flip-flop circuits, and the total was shown in binary with the top row of lights. So to add, you just dial in the numbers you want to add, and then read the sum (in binary) on the lights.

Subtraction was also possible, since subtraction of a number was the equivalent of addition of the number’s complement. In this case, since the computer handles 6 digit binary numbers, it can display 0-63. Thus, the complement of a number is 64 minus that number. The bottom row of lights showed the complement of the number shown in the top row. (For example, the complement of 110000 is 001111.)

Multiplication was possible by repeatedly adding, and division amounted to repeatedly adding and seeing how many times the addition was necessary.

The author does conclude by noting that the computer was intended as a demonstration model. Accordingly, it had little practical use “unless the builder takes the time to study some of the readily available literature on computer techniques and mathematics. I do not recommend that anyone not familiar with high school mathematics attempt to construct it, as it will merely become a toy of limited value.”

On The Radio, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog: 1939

1993 New Yorker cartoon, via Wikipedia.

According to the familiar adage, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. But as shown by the photo above, the general concept predates the Internet by decades. The photo, from the July 1939 issue of Boys’ Life, shows Maud, an English Bulldog, at the controls of W2KBA, the station owned by Vincent S. Barker, who had written a feature about Amateur Radio for the magazine’s April issue.

Maud appears to prefer operating CW, and is busy putting a weak DX station in the log.

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