Believe it or not, one of these was what started me out programming. One of the boys at school had one and showed it to me, I saw the potential of the home computer immediately!
I am soo glad I was there at the beginning of the home computer revolution, it is amazing to see where it all went, I am especially glad for experiencing it all first hand.
The Pandora will be yet another amazing contribution to my technology experience
Addition:
The ZX80 and 81 was an amazing milestone in computing history, but here is something for you to consider:
When I started my job as technician in our University, we had boxes and boxes of cards with holes punched in them, these are called punch cards, and was how they used to store data for various things. It was the legacy of what I had just missed, and talking to some of the old techs there one told me how an old computer science student would test a program they had written, the procedure was as follows:
1. Student would submit program to Punch Room
2. Program is transferred to Punch card.
3. Punch Card is sent to a University where they actually had a computer to run the program.
4. Uni would run the program and output the result (Including syntax errors).
5. Results are sent back.
6. Student picks up results and if there are syntax errors, cries as they have to do it all again .
To send a punch card and receive results, could take up to a week.
My my haven't we progressed!
