A world without Internet.

[Ming the Merciless]

I'm 56, you cheeky boy!

Is that you, Captain Manwaring?

 

[raleighnut]

I'm 56, you cheeky boy!

Same age as my baby sister is now then.

 

[stephec]

I could have had a computer in 1974 (a console IBM machine) they were scrapping them where my Dad worked (English Electric/GEC) but I didn't want it, no use for a 12yr old into cycling and music (I'd got my own record player by then bought from my wages as a Co-op delivery bike rider) and had access to my cousins Carlton Clubman as well as my own 26" wheel roadster with 3 speed SA and Cowhorns (my cousin had passed his test and had a Mk2 Cortina as well as a Vespa)
What use was a computer to me back then unless I wanted to catalogue my bogey collection so Dad took it back to work and chucked it on the scrapheap

That was me when some of my mates were getting a bit too over excited about their Spectrums and Commode 64s, I couldn't sit and stare at one for more than five minutes.

 

[presta]

Never had computer rooms when I was at school.

We had no computer. My school experience of computing was copying a Fortran script for averaging ten numbers off the blackboard onto a computer bureau form, then sending it off, and getting the answer back on a piece of paper a week later.
Impressed?
No, neither were we.

We were taught to use these though, the head of the maths department arranged extra-curricular lessons because they were to be the future:

 

[tyred]

I'm 45 and never had an opportunity to use internet until I started college.

I went to a small, rural primary school where the most exciting technological development was when electric storage heaters replaced the coal fire or when the teacher got an electric kettle that switched itself off when it started to boil (instead of having condensation pouring down the window of her little office when she forgot about the previous one!).

Just as I was finishing secondary school, a new computer (Win95) was installed in the engineering room but only the teacher was allowed to use it. I don't think it was connected to the net. There was simulation software for showing how CNC lathes operated. There were a few other computers in a room connected to a printer that teachers sometimes used to print out handouts, etc, but pupils weren't allowed anywhere near them.

 

[presta]

I'm 45 and never had an opportunity to use internet until I started college.

I didn't have access to a computer at work until 1984, I didn't have access to the internet until the Library got computers in the early 2000s, and I never had a computer of my own until 2012. I had very little experience of PCs until the library got them, at work I mostly used a VAX 11/780, an HP9826, and Sun SPARCstations.

 

[Drago]

My new home computer is state of the art. Apparently ENIAC is cutting edge.

 

[Smokin Joe]

Calculators were not even around when I left school. Ready Reckoners were all you could get, and I seem to remember them being banned in maths lessons.

 

[tyred]

Calculators weren't allowed in exams when I was at school. Log tables only.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Commode 64s,

They were shoot

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Calculators weren't allowed in exams when I was at school. Log tables only.

Used log tables in my ‘A’ level maths as forgot calculator. It was not a hindrance and still finished well before time limit.

 

[tyred]

Used log tables in my ‘A’ level maths as forgot calculator. It was not a hindrance and still finished well before time limit.

I know it's not hinderance but the calculator is much less likely to make a mistake.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I know it's not hinderance but the calculator is much less likely to make a mistake.

It’s the user that makes the mistake and pressing divide instead of multiply or getting decimal place in wrong place or forgetting where you are up to is rather easy on calculator. Hence the advice of doing a rough mental calculation to get an idea of what ballpark the answer should be.

 

[Alex321]

Yes Internet, do keep up. The web is from the 1990s but Internet much older.

I have no need to "keep up", and I stand by what I said.

Yes, it existed then, and I wouldn't dream of suggesting only only the World Wide Web classes as internet. I was using it before the web existed.

But "we" did not have internet in the late 70's. It was limited then to a few universities and major institutions. I doubt very much if any school in the UK had internet access in the 1970s. TCP/IP wasn't developed until the very end of the 70's, and really was necessary for the internet to move beyond the experimental stage.

I started work in 1981, moved to BT in 1984, and it wasn't until 3-4 years after that before we had email and usenet available to the commercial data processing developers - though I am sure those were available in the BT labs by the time I started.

If you are in your late 50's (as you say above), then it may just have been available in your school by the time you reached the 6th form - But I had finished university by then (I'm 65 now, so 6-10 years older than you).

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Yes, it existed then

Ta da