My First Computer

VIC-20

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This was my first computer, a Commodore VIC-20. It had 3.5 KB of memory. That’s 18 million times less memory than the iPad I’m typing this on now. I used a cassette player to store programs on tapes. One of the programs I wrote helped me with cooking. I would get home in the afternoon from teaching a couple of hours my wife’s accounting job. So I would select the dish I wanted to cook and the time that I wanted to serve it. The program would list the ingredients, which I gathered, measured and chopped. Then each time an action was required in the preparation the computer would buzz and I would do it, and then get back to grading papers. When my wife got home, our chili, stuffed peppers, vegetable soup or Mac & cheese with tomatoes and sweet peppers was done and on the table.

(One of many such stories in A Quiet Revolution [https://goo.gl/T3o5e8])