I have soft spot for 1980s computer tech. Maybe it’s because I grew up during the start of the personal computer revolution and was heavily invested in it at an early age. Maybe it’s because I’m nostalgic and I feel sad for all those early generation beasties, languishing in land fills today. Maybe it’s because I’ve never gotten past my love of the old keyboard clickety-clack sounds, which were so much better than the mushy keyboards of today. Regardless of the why, I like the aesthetic, so here are some fine examples. Click an image for a larger version.
Since in most cases, I have no idea what these computer models really are, I’ll create my own names for them. The one above is the “Think-O-Lator 2100”.
The lady on the left, wearing the black jacket must have given her company’s tech support desk so much trouble. I’ve done operations tech long enough, I can just tell.
Hey, look to the left of the computer on the desk. A microfiche reader. That’s like the 80s version of Wikipedia.
While there is a computer featured prominently on the desk, the lady above actually appears to be using a Telex. During Summers spent at my dad’s office, I used his Telex machine to create primitive Ascii art of the Starship Enterprise.
The guy above is monitoring power utilities using the Monolithicom 3.0. At Monolithicom, the motto was, “Only a personal computer the size of a mighty oak can give you the computational power to program in Fortran.”
