1979 was the first year I touched a computer--a Decwriter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECwriter#/media/File:Decwriter.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECwr

1979 was the first year I touched a computer--a Decwriter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECwriter#/media/File:Decwriter.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECwriter#/media/File:Decwrite...) that was the flagship of my high school's nascent 'Computer Club', of which I was a proud founding member. If you're unfamiliar with it, the Decwriter was basically a (very) wide-carriage printer with a keyboard attached, situated at desk height. It connected to our school district's RSTS system (resource sharing/time sharing) via an acoustic modem: you'd dial the phone, wait for the tone then quickly stick the receiver in the rubber cups and hope the connection was successful. A running 'joke' was to walk by and bump the phone out of the acoustic coupling, closing the connection and pissing off the user who just lost their process/place/progress and might not be able to log in again (due to resource/time sharing constraints). That's how I first learned BASIC; the true geek of the club had assembled printed manuals, and I plugged away learning exotic incantations like GOSUB. To be honest, the main activity on the Decwriter was playing Star Trek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(1971_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(1971_video_game)). I miss those days.