"Des Higgins" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 8, 6:28 pm, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
In article ,
David in Normandy writes:
| In article .com,
Des
| Higgins says...
| ahhhhhhhhh when computers were easy to use and were proper big
things
| and made noises and had flashing lights.
|
| And carrying a backup disk to the fire safe made your arms ache!

Ah, you youngsters! Mountable disks are a recent development, and
traditional backups were on tape.

Tape?? Tape?? Luxury; in my day we had to take the hot valves from
the glass blowing department and design our own circuits and invent
computers and keep the operating system in our heads (backwards
because that was how you loaded it). We had to wait 40 years before
tape was invented. We had wax tablets and small boys as back up.

I MAKE wax tablets - and the styli.

A couple of years ago we made some for a top computer 'expert' who later
attended a US computer convention and caused astonishment and more interest
than the speaker when everyone else in the audience opened their lap tops
and he pulled out his codex of tabulae :-)

Mary