Reply to: Aw diddums, in my day...

[DallasDad]

We had cutting edge technology for our exams - were allowed to use Slide Rules

I had my own PDP11 running DSM (Digital Standard Mumps) for a while till replacing it with a Compaq 386SX - sold it to some bod providing support to fleet street iirc.

[NickFitz]

Our PDP-8/e had two Teletypes and a VDU attached to it. One day, somebody wrote a program for use only on the VDU: it printed "I", then backspaced and printed "O", then backspaced, and looped back to the beginning. Due to the low speed of the serial connection from the computer to the VDU, this gave the impression of a spinning disk.

That was the first example of computer animation I ever saw

[adubya]

RM 380Z for us too.....

One chap wrote space invaders on it!

I think that was widely available as we had space invaders on ours

[unemployed]

At least the maths was simple in your day.

2 x teachers wage =

You are missing a zero

[BrilloPad]

Your school had a PDP-8 ? Independent school ?

We had a RM 380Z

RM 380Z for us too.....

One chap wrote space invaders on it!

[PurpleGorilla]

At least the maths was simple in your day.

2 x teachers wage =

[Uncle Albert]

Well they may have had British born and educated female primary school teachers like one I met who stated "Maths is hard" and "Girls can't do Maths anyway".

Myself and the other more mature lady, with a Maths degree, I was standing next to were too stunted to act or reply.

Are you saying size matters?

[SueEllen]

Ah yes, but you knew about hundreds, tens and units, unlike the present unfortunates.

And the advantage of knowing your times tables.

We (me & a lecturer) were gobsmacked at the way the esteemed customers were taught to do multiplication.

I'm not sure we ever found out how they do long division.

Well they may have had British born and educated female primary school teachers like one I met who stated "Maths is hard" and "Girls can't do Maths anyway".

Myself and the other more mature lady, with a Maths degree, I was standing next to were too stunted to act or reply.

[scooterscot]

rational

(assuming you mean real numbers used in numerical calculations)

I'm not really into Euclidean geometry, when I younger perhaps.

[OwlHoot]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

rational

(assuming you mean real numbers used in numerical calculations)

[scooterscot]

Is a number not defined by a set?

[JozefBlofeld]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

Whole numbers as in ...

The numbers {0, 1, 2, 3, ...} etc. There is no fractional or decimal part. And no negatives.

[unemployed]

Public school, though I got there on the 11-plus

It was either the first or second school in the UK to have its own computer on the premises (historians are, I believe, uncertain) - I think it arrived around 1972 or 1973, a short while before me. As I recall it was donated by a rich parent.

Around 1977 funds were allocated to buy an additional 8K of core. The canny teachers responsible for it waited a year or so, and spent the money instead on two SWTPC-6800 machines, each with 64K of RAM, one with twin floppies and the other with a cassette interface. Even the cassettes were faster than the punched paper tape we'd been used to. Halcyon days

Another old chunt

[scooterscot]

Technically all numbers are whole. I wonder if they're talking about integers...

[NickFitz]

Your school had a PDP-8 ? Independent school ?

We had a RM 380Z

Public school, though I got there on the 11-plus

It was either the first or second school in the UK to have its own computer on the premises (historians are, I believe, uncertain) - I think it arrived around 1972 or 1973, a short while before me. As I recall it was donated by a rich parent.

Around 1977 funds were allocated to buy an additional 8K of core. The canny teachers responsible for it waited a year or so, and spent the money instead on two SWTPC-6800 machines, each with 64K of RAM, one with twin floppies and the other with a cassette interface. Even the cassettes were faster than the punched paper tape we'd been used to. Halcyon days