Three Score Years Plus Ten

maltrab

Administrator
Staff member
As I have hit the big 70, I thought I would post some things that have happened during my lifespan, it's a pretty long and before you comment about there is nothing related to sport, being disabled from very young age and unable to participate, it has never interested me, what has is technology over the years and other events.


1950 NATO was Formed and the year I was born
1951 Polio epidemic which I fell victim to
1951 First UK supermarket opened in London
1952 London Smog
1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which my Parents took me to in a pram, I have no recollection
1955 ITV television launched
1957 The Dot Matrix printer was launched
1959 The first mini went into production
1961 Yuri Gagarin made the first human space flight
1962 The Beatles first single released
1962 The First James Bond Film Dr No was screened
1963 The Rolling Stones first single released
1963 JFK Shot
1963 First self service Petrol station opened in UK
1964 Radio Caroline the first of the offshore pirate radios stations started Broadcasting
1966 Colour TV Launched in UK
1966 The Mini Skirt was the height of fashion
1967 Radio 1 started broadcasting
1967 North Sea Gas
1968 UK first heart transplant
1969 Neil Armstrong landed on the moon
1969 The first Concorde flight
1969 The Ford Capri hit the UK Roads
1970 Jumbo Jets took to the skies
1971 UK Went Decimal
1973 The UK joined the Common Market
1973 The Pilot Episode of Last of The Summer Wine was screened
1974 First Domestic Microwave available in UK
1976 The Summer, at the time I was working for the Fire Service and never saw much of home
1978 VHS Video recorders launched
1980 Sinclair ZX80 sold in UK
1980 John Lennon Shot
1981 First Flight of the space shuttle, glued to TV watching the return landing
1981 CB radio legalised in UK
1981 Sony released the first digital camera
1982 CD players launched
1982 Cellular Car Phones launched in UK
1982 The Falklands war
1983 Motorola 8000 Mobile phone Launched UK
1983 Cordless telephones legalised in UK
1983 Seat Belts compulsory for front seats users
1985 The first Microsoft windows version released
1985 Live Aid broadcast
1987 Kings Cross Tube Disaster
1992 Pipex launched a UK dial up internet service
1994 Sunday Trading started
1995 MP3 audio codec and devices launched
1997 DVD players launched in UK
1997 The Death of Princess Diana
1998 Birth of UK satellite TV
1998 Broadband service trails started in UK
1998 USB 1.1 available on some devices
1998 Amazon available in UK
1999 eBay Launched in UK
2000 The Y2K panic
2002 DAB radio Launched in UK
2003 Iraq war
2004 Fox Hunting Banned
2005 First HDTV broadcast in UK
2006 Facebook available worldwide
2007 The first iPhone was available in UK
2008 The first Android phone available in UK
2009 Woolworth's shut up shop in UK
2010 Heavy snow in Decembers cripples the UK
2011 News of the World stopped Publication
2012 Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee
2014 Scottish Referendum
2015 Windows 10 released
2016 Brexit Referendum
2017 Large Scale Cyber attack causing widespread disruption in UK
2018 Stephen Hawking dies
2019 Thomas Cook travel collapses
2020 A year we would all like to forget
 
Wow. We must have been one of the first to use Windows 10 as we bought our first computer with it in from the proceeds of selling Grandad's house not long after he died. That was in June 2015.
I remember using Windows 3 when it came out!!!! You must be a lot younger than me!!!!

Happy Birthday Terry, sadly you're still underage to be a lead character in LOTSW so apply in a few years time ;) ;) ;)
 
My memories consist of my family having a black dial phone until 1971, running around the neighborhood, playing in the creek with no one being very concerned, climbing trees, and here's the clincher. Watching the Original Star Trek when it was originally on.
 
Congratulations Terry I hope you managed some sort of celebration given the times we are living in . I looked up people who also turned 70 in 2020 and to preserve your "Rock Cred" your share it with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Joe Perry from Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel from Genesis and Peter Frampton from the Herd, Humble Pie and of course his solo career, down the rock scale but played at a host of wedding night time functions Billy Ocean is also 70 . :)
 
Happy Birthday Terry. When you were one year old I was 15 times older than you. Now I'm not even twice as old as you. You must be catching me up. Hope you are having a GOOD DAY. Don't send my piece of the cake by means of the Post Office, Jack will get it and woof it down in no time. o_O
 
Happy 70th. We share Polio me in 1952,thank God that is mostly gone. You didn't post anything for 2013 so i will Amira wins Hollands Got Talent
 
When Sinclair sold the Spectrum in 1980 I started my first job in Computing [having been a bored and frankly not great trainee Accountant] . I worked as a Cobol Programmer on a Mainframe System . When I look at the technology now compared to then it just shows how much we have progressed . In those days it was punch card input with dumb green screen terminals and not one per desk they had specific rooms where they were connected to the Mainframe systems and you had to book a one hour slot to test or undertake corrective work on the programs you were working on .

The rest of the time you sent off coding sheets to a team of punch card operatives who basically transferred the content of your sheets to punch card which you then submitted to be run on the mainframe overnight. I can remember the anxiety when the output from all programs run were delivered the next day by messengers . It would consist of the card pack and paper output which would indicate if the programme had been successful and produced the expected output or had failed in a line of code and produced nothing and so the loop process of submitting corrections to the punch card operators/resubmitting the job/checking the output began.

Can you imagine what the younger people who have known nothing but the technology of day would think of working like that , however in its day it was ground breaking but if you compare it to what Tommy Flowers and Alan Turing achieved their work was just astounding.
 
The rest of the time you sent off coding sheets to a team of punch card operatives who basically transferred the content of your sheets to punch card which you then submitted to be run on the mainframe overnight.
Happy birthday, Terry. You're the same age as my baby sister, who retired in March from her full-time job in the Circulation Department of the local public library, where she had worked since 1973.

When I did the course work for my computer programing and systems analysis degree, we could send our coding sheets to the punch card operators or, if we wanted a much faster turnaround, we could use one of the row of machines in the (deafening) room full of machines for students' use to do the job ourselves. I always chose the latter.
 
When Sinclair sold the Spectrum in 1980 I started my first job in Computing [having been a bored and frankly not great trainee Accountant] . I worked as a Cobol Programmer on a Mainframe System . When I look at the technology now compared to then it just shows how much we have progressed . In those days it was punch card input with dumb green screen terminals and not one per desk they had specific rooms where they were connected to the Mainframe systems and you had to book a one hour slot to test or undertake corrective work on the programs you were working on .

The rest of the time you sent off coding sheets to a team of punch card operatives who basically transferred the content of your sheets to punch card which you then submitted to be run on the mainframe overnight. I can remember the anxiety when the output from all programs run were delivered the next day by messengers . It would consist of the card pack and paper output which would indicate if the programme had been successful and produced the expected output or had failed in a line of code and produced nothing and so the loop process of submitting corrections to the punch card operators/resubmitting the job/checking the output began.

Can you imagine what the younger people who have known nothing but the technology of day would think of working like that , however in its day it was ground breaking but if you compare it to what Tommy Flowers and Alan Turing achieved their work was just astounding.
When I was in college in the early 70's, the Library had one (I guess) mainframe computer. The keyboard was three feet long and each key was one inch square. When you pressed a key, it made a loud bong which echoed throughout the Library.
 
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