Introduction

This is a collection of personal reminiscences about my long love affair with computers. I hope it will be of interest to my friends and family, and perhaps someday it will be a look back on what I consider a renaissance in the development of computers.

Part of my inspiration for writing this document is an autobiography written by my maternal grandfather. I have always found his writing to be a fascinating window on another era. I hope future readers of this document will at least gain some insight into life in Silicon Valley and the state of computer technology at the turn of the 21^st Century.

I am starting this writing on Saturday, January 31, 2004. At the time of this writing I have been working with computers for 40 years. During that time computers have evolved from expensive, esoteric machines, to common consumer goods, found in most homes, not only here, but around the world.

I intend this to be both a stand-alone document that can be read in printed form or stored in a single document. I also intend it to be a web page (or site?) For that latter purpose, I will include hyperlinks where I think it appropriate.

My writing here will include both personal reminiscences and technical recollections. I have debated about the fact I’m writing to two different audiences: personal friends and family who may not understand or care about technical details, and technical friends and colleagues who might well be interested in those details. To solve the problem of divergent audiences, I have decided to use multiple type fonts to indicate which of the audiences I’m addressing:

I will use this font (Times New Roman) in black for general information, suitable for any audience. I will also include here comments about how one interacted with the computer. While such comments are somewhat technical, they should be understandable to the general reader and I believe they may find some of the interactive mechanisms to be, if nothing else, quaint. I assume readers of this material to at least have a user’s acquaintance with personal computers.
I will use this sans-serif font (Arial) in a blue color for technical information. I assume readers of this material to be knowledgeable software professionals.

Please feel free to skip over the technical parts if they don’t interest you.