Hubby brought me a present last week.  He found it when he was cleaning out the shop.  Here’s the cover shot:

Those of you of a certain age will recall how controversial the TV show featured on the cover of this issue of Newsweek was.  Today, of course, it would be quaint, but according to the article inside, it, and several other cutting edge shows for the time, were heavily protested.  But the cover article is not what caught my eye.  It was, of all things, an advertisement.

Immediately before Page 83, this advertisement appears:

This was a remarkable product in its time, and yes, $18,000 was an extraordinary price.  Note the advertisement begins, “There was a time when $18,000 wouldn’t even cover the monthly cost of a computer.”

In the middle column, it goes on to say, “The 5110 can also be tailored to fit your particular needs.  For instance, if you need quick access to data in an area like inventory, we’d recommend a diskette-based system.  If the information you work with is more sequential, like payroll, a lower priced tape-based system might be best.  Or perhaps, a combination of both.” Please note, those are 8″ floppy diskette drives.

And that dot matrix pin-fed printer?  It comes in two speeds.  Depending upon your particular operation, you could choose BASIC or APL programming language.  This seems as if I’m mocking now, but this was from the days when IBM was cutting edge.  This was an incredibly configurable system at an incredible price.  Note the display to the upper left of the keyboard?  Yes, this was all about number-crunching.  At least it had a 10-key numeric keypad to make that easier.

Since it is Newsweek, what was being discussed in the third week of February in 1978? (I was a senior in high school preparing to graduate in a few months, so I was pretty stressed out — not about what was going on, but what might happen in the future.) A look at the Table of Contents reveals Denton, TX, experienced four inches of snowfall while Boston experienced two feet.  Everywhere in between also had a lot of snow snarling things up (this was the days when an  Ice Age was looming, so you may be able to see why my skepticism about Global Warming is strong).  Don’t think it was just the East Coast and the Midwest.  Southern California was sliding into the ocean due to heavy rains (some things never change), and Maine was experiencing gale force winds and rampaging seas.  Six Eastern Seaboard states sought Federal aid.

There was the Sex and the TV cover article.  Ho hum.  Somalia and Ethiopia were in the news — they were warring.  Ingemar Stenmark’s skiing prowess was described as “dancing on skis.” Those are from the “Top of the Week.”  What are some of the rest of the headlines?

The Panama Canal debate was in full swing. Rep. Jack Kemp was the GOP’s rising star. Akron was proposing something tough for abortion.  Texas was fighting over educating illegal aliens (just to remind you this is not a new problem).  Canada breaks a Soviet spy ring. Carter had a plan to ease high college costs.  There was an impasse on the coal crisis (I remember studying in classrooms that turned out the lights to conserve electricity — you don’t see anyone doing that these days).  They were talking about harnessing wind power (again, this is not new, people).

As you can tell, I’m frequently fascinated when I come across an old magazine — especially a news magazine.  It always reminds me how things have changed — and how they remain the same.  One thing is definitely different.  Cover price?  $1.00.

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