In light of molgrips’ thread, I got thinking about my dad’s work.

I grew up in very comfortable circumstances because he got involved in the computer industry at exactly the right time.

As he worked for a company called Mohawk Data Sciences (MDS) through the 70s and 80s, I was consequently exposed to all the optimism and blindingly-fast developments as they applied to operating systems and hardware alike.

I well remember the backrooms of one of his first offices looking exactly like this:

(actual MDS office in the 1970s)

and office computing looking like this:

leading, eventually, to the ubiquitous PC.

C-TOS anyone?

This is why I stand by the humble pen drive as my nomination for the greatest innovation.

Well if you are talking hardware.

I can (just) remember my dad building/fixing computer type things with individual transistors, and a soldering iron.

So the greatest innovation has to be the Integrated Circuit.

Well, my dad worked on the Atlas at Manchester Uni – I’ve still got some punched cards in the attic.

Is he phoning her for how to work the microwave? If its the 70’s why is HE even near it?

Yeah, my Dad was early in computers. We had a teleprinter with an acoustic coupler to connect to a variety of mainframes.

Plug an old dog and bone into rubber cups, enjoy 2400 bits per second delivered to a golf ball printed sheet. Kids these days don’t know jack!

2400bps? I’d have dreamed for 2400bps with my old modem! 300/300 was the standard, I also had one designed for high speed downloading, it could download at a staggering 1200bps, though the upload speed was only 75bps.