The lighter side

The Psychologist Vol 12 No 1 January 1999

B ABY and I got going round aboutthe same time in 1948. Baby, thefirst machine worthy of the title

‘computer’, took up the whole of one roomat Manchester University. She haddedicated carers and, if you fed her codedinformation at one end, she would reactwith a satisfying response at the other.I did much the same.

After this, we went our sep a rate way s , t h eo n ly mechanical whizzbang I encountere dbeing the fi rst mail-sorting machine ond i s p l ay at a ch i l d re n ’s science exhibition inLondon. My cousin stalled it, and now he’s a part i cle physicist doing something similarwith the unive rs e.

I met my fi rst real computer as anu n d e rgra d u ate in the late seve n t i e s , a l t h o u g hit was something of a blind date — thech appie in question being located on ad i ffe rent campus and accessible only byt e l ep h o n e. This a rra n gement prov i d e dunlimited opport u n i t i e s for scra m bling dat a .S o , after an unsat i s fa c t o ry hour spentlistening to the squeaks and bu rps of wh atthen passed for tech n o l ogy, I re t re ated to myWoolies calculator and a few t-tests.

As a postgra d u at e, the next computer toenter my life was an ove rgrown wa s h i n gm a chine that took up the whole of one endof the lab o rat o ry, a n d, b e fo re it would get upin the morn i n g, re q u i red enough ticker tap eto welcome home the entire crew of thes t a rship E n t e rp ri s e.

Things we re not mu ch better as a cl i n i c a lt ra i n e e. The dep a rt m e n t ’s one computingm a chine re q u i red supplicants to punch holesin armfuls of cards and hand them to aTe ch P riest who would offer them up (atmidnight in the presence of toads, no doubt)for consideration. You had to wait two day sto discover whether or not you had pleased it with your effo rts — incurring its wrat hmeant another afternoon in the punch ro o mt rying to wo rk out wh i ch card of the 50-oddhad the wrong hole in it. Back to thec a l c u l ator and a Pe a rsons r.

Th at might have been it for me andc o m p u t e rs if it hadn’t been for Clive Sincl a i r.Ye s , he of the silly bike. Someone lent me a

d i n ky little ZX something-or-other wh i chl o o ked like a ch o c o l ate box , had ru bber key sand sat on your lap in ex a c t ly the way thatt o d ay ’s laptops don’t. I taught it to do a ch i -s q u a re and ch a n ge colour midway thro u g h .G ro ovy!

N ext came a Commodore with 16K, t h e na 32K with wo rd pro c e s s i n g, a spre a d s h e e tand the facility to scroll mu l t i c o l o u re dex p l e t ives at times of supreme fru s t rat i o n .This facility got rather ove rused when Id i s c ove red that the 32K would in no waydemean itself by reading anything written byits little bro t h e r, t h e reby losing the data fro man entire re s e a rch project. Still, it typed we l l ,and somewh e re in the fa m i ly there exists aphoto of me producing the menu fo rC h ristmas dinner.

The Commodore and I stuck together fo rquite a wh i l e, one of us becoming ever moreo b s o l e t e, the other resisting the tre n d.

Fi n a l ly, as mu ch with the intent of winning around against the Inland Reve nue asa ny t h i n g, I pitched up at my local PC shopmu t t e ring about megaby t e s , c a che cap a c i t yand CD-ROM speeds and hoping not to besold something pink with a nice line inm ega - d e ath games. Th ey kitted me out, a n do ff I went with a box full of Bill Gat e s .

We ’ve come a long way, B aby and me —we ’re off our knees and crashing fo r wa rd sinto the 21st century in our romper suits.M aybe next time I run into difficulties with ap rogra m m e, a holo-ex p e rt will bea u t o m at i c a l ly activated and zapped stra i g h tinto my office to re c o n fi g u re wh at eve rt h i n gamajig bummed out. Let’s hope nobodyi nvents smart toilets.

■ Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill is a consultantclinical psych o l ogist in learning disab i l i t i e swith South Downs Health NHS Tru s t , B ri g h t o n .

The lighter side

B a by and meS U Z A N N E CO N B O Y- H I L L gives a personal history of computing.