{"id":5592,"date":"2012-08-23T08:11:06","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T13:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polarbear60.org\/randr\/?p=5592"},"modified":"2023-03-28T09:24:02","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T14:24:02","slug":"technology-newsweek-february-20-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/technology-newsweek-february-20-1978\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Newsweek, February 20, 1978"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hubby brought me a present last week.\u00a0 He found it when he was cleaning out the shop.\u00a0 Here’s the cover shot:\"Newsweek<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Those of you of a certain age will recall how controversial the TV show featured on the cover of this issue of Newsweek was.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But the cover article is not what caught my eye.\u00a0 It was, of all things, an advertisement.<\/p>\n

Immediately before Page 83, this advertisement appears:\"Adverstisement\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was a remarkable product in its time, and yes, $18,000 was an extraordinary price.\u00a0 Note the advertisement begins, “There was a time when $18,000 wouldn’t even cover the monthly<\/em> cost of a computer.”<\/p>\n

In the middle column, it goes on to say, “The 5110 can also be tailored to fit your particular needs.\u00a0 For instance, if you need quick access to data in an area like inventory, we’d recommend a diskette-based system.\u00a0 If the information you work with is more sequential, like payroll, a lower priced tape-based system might be best.\u00a0 Or perhaps, a combination of both.” Please note, those are 8″ floppy diskette drives.<\/p>\n

And that dot matrix pin-fed printer?\u00a0 It comes in two speeds.\u00a0 Depending upon your particular operation, you could choose BASIC or APL programming language.\u00a0 This seems as if I’m mocking now, but this was from the days when IBM was cutting edge.\u00a0 This was an incredibly configurable system at an incredible price.\u00a0 Note the display to the upper left of the keyboard?\u00a0 Yes, this was all about number-crunching.\u00a0 At least it had a 10-key numeric keypad to make that easier.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Everywhere in between also had a lot of snow snarling things up (this was the days when an\u00a0 Ice Age was looming, so you may be able to see why my skepticism about Global Warming is strong).\u00a0 Don’t think it was just the East Coast and the Midwest.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Six Eastern Seaboard states sought Federal aid.<\/p>\n

There was the Sex and the TV cover article.\u00a0 Ho hum.\u00a0 Somalia and Ethiopia were in the news — they were warring.\u00a0 Ingemar Stenmark’s skiing prowess was described as “dancing on skis.” Those are from the “Top of the Week.”\u00a0 What are some of the rest of the headlines?<\/p>\n

The Panama Canal debate was in full swing. Rep. Jack Kemp was the GOP’s rising star. Akron was proposing something tough for abortion.\u00a0 Texas was fighting over educating illegal aliens (just to remind you this is not a new problem).\u00a0 Canada breaks a Soviet spy ring. Carter had a plan to ease high college costs.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 They were talking about harnessing wind power (again, this is not new, people).<\/p>\n

As you can tell, I’m frequently fascinated when I come across an old magazine — especially a news magazine.\u00a0 It always reminds me how things have changed — and how they remain the same.\u00a0 One thing is definitely different.\u00a0 Cover price?\u00a0 $1.00.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hubby brought me a present last week.\u00a0 He found it when he was cleaning out the shop.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Today, of course, it …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-stuff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15605,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5592\/revisions\/15605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}