I was very fortunate that my dad could take his dept's HP-85 computer home during the school holidays - they used the bigger HP-86 to run departmental reports.

I was very fortunate that my dad could take his dept's HP-85 computer home during the school holidays - they used the bigger HP-86 to run departmental reports. The HP-85 had a little CRT screen and built-in printer. During the evenings my dad did some actuarial programming on it and during the day it was all mine to play around with - made my career in programming. Mobile phones are the new PC today but sadly they don't expose themselves like the machines of the past to programming and the likes - maybe it is good thing that they are appliances. Those that wish to discover things like we did will find their way to Rasberry Pi etc ....