Ted’s essays

computers circa 1970

Given the choice between kill (people I did not know and certainly did not hate) or be killed in the jungles of Vietnam, I enlisted in the US Air Force. In retrospect, I helped with a lot of killing, but I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.

I spent the working part of my 4-year enlistment as a computer operator, and most of that running an RCA 301.

Computer operators read the lights, and wrote our instructions to the lights. Milly was the master I learned from, and I ended up exceeding her.
I was a geek before geeks were invented.

This miraculous machine that could process data at light speed had gen-u-ine Core Storage of 17K. That was A LOT of space to work with. I wrote several programs to amuse me and my co-workers that took a tiny fraction of that.

I printed out boxes of unclassified, classified, secret and top secret paper without looking at a single page past the first one to confirm the printer was working properly.

Not … My … Business.

Other people killing other people.

Just doin’ my job.

Crumb.

That’s EXACTLY why they only take young people into military and law enforcement. They will just do their job … follow orders.