I was an adult by this time just buying my first property, so any spare resources after mortgage payments etc, went elsewhere. A video recorder was much more desirable to me than a “toy” computer and I eventually rented one by the mid-80s. From around 1985 PLCs came onto my radar at work gradually replacing the 1960s relay and electronic based controls that I had become familiar with. So I got involved with them, although not on a major scale, so ladder logic is probably the closest I ever got to coding/programming. I was a very early adopter of the Psion Series 3 and still have at least one tucked away at home somewhere. I learned spreadsheet basics and found the add on spellchecker package especially useful when we were still handwriting much of the time. A laptop came along within a couple of years and eventually a digital mobile telephone, but the original and a later reserve Psion still earned their keep until the late 90s. I first gained internet access in 1993 via my employer to support a part-time MSc I was doing, but it didn’t become really useful at home until broadband came to my street this century. I remember complaining in the early noughties that Watford Central Library had dropped the OAG Flight Guide, which you needed if you didn’t rely on a travel agent along with Hotel Gazetteers, guide books etc. Remember the dot-com bubble - its premise is coming true now.
I was an adult by this time just buying my first property, so any spare resources after mortgage payments etc, went elsewhere. A video recorder was much more desirable to me than a “toy” computer and I eventually rented one by the mid-80s. From around 1985 PLCs came onto my radar at work gradually replacing the 1960s relay and electronic based controls that I had become familiar with. So I got involved with them, although not on a major scale, so ladder logic is probably the closest I ever got to coding/programming. I was a very early adopter of the Psion Series 3 and still have at least one tucked away at home somewhere. I learned spreadsheet basics and found the add on spellchecker package especially useful when we were still handwriting much of the time. A laptop came along within a couple of years and eventually a digital mobile telephone, but the original and a later reserve Psion still earned their keep until the late 90s. I first gained internet access in 1993 via my employer to support a part-time MSc I was doing, but it didn’t become really useful at home until broadband came to my street this century. I remember complaining in the early noughties that Watford Central Library had dropped the OAG Flight Guide, which you needed if you didn’t rely on a travel agent along with Hotel Gazetteers, guide books etc. Remember the dot-com bubble - its premise is coming true now.
