Personal Computers


I always enjoyed writing but was a poor speller—and still am—so didn’t share my compositions with many people. In 1980 I became aware of machines called word processors that corrected spelling. Actually, they had been around for about 10-years but in much simpler form.

IBM had a Selectric typewriter they introduced in 1969 that was quite revolutionary. In addition to its type-ball striking head and non-moving carriage, it also had memory storage. In 1980 small desktop personal computers with names like Epson, Commodore, Sinclair, Apple II and Atari were finding their way into offices and homes.

Although our company had been using a large main-frame computer for a number of years, in 1985 I decided it was time I get with the program and look into this personal computer business. The neighboring university town had a large computer store, so I drove over to check things out.

The clerk was very helpful and asked a lot of good questions about my purpose for wanting a computer. I told him although I didn’t know how to type and was turned off by the thought of having to learn a bunch of key stroke commands to indent paragraphs, underline words, format and so on, I wanted a computer to simply compose communications.

He said, “You know Apple just introduced a machine called MacIntosh that might be just what you’re looking for. We should be getting a demo model any day now.”

Just then, one of the employees from the back room entered saying, “Hey, that new Apple computer was just delivered.” Together, the clerk and I pulled it out of its box, powered it up, plugged in its keyboard and mouse, and slipped in a small disk called Word. And just by pulling down some simple menus on the monitor’s screen, I composed a message. Egads! Yes, this is what I wanted!

Since the store did not have any MacIntosh inventory as yet, I returned to my hometown and placed an order with an Apple store there. Arvin Industries purchased the first MacIntosh in Columbus, IN, I took possession of the second one. My other purchase was to buy 100 shares of Apple stock at $2.00 a share. More about that investment in a minute.

How I loved my Mac. Soon my company was flooded with my clever memos using eye catching fonts and graphics. At the time, I was overseeing the management of several of our branch offices and conducted weekly meetings with the salesmen and local managers at each branch. I started publishing a weekly newsletter called the “Weekly Brief” reporting the discussions taking place in those meetings. The several-page newsletters covered New Product Information, Customer Info, Atta Boy Awards, and Sales achievements and were distributed company-wide.

Writing the Weekly Brief became my management system: What issues were the branches having? What were new sales opportunities? Who is doing a good job and ought to be recognized? During the week I used my airplane to fly to the various branch locations to conduct the meetings. On the weekend I would finish editing the Brief for distribution on Monday. So, was I working seven days a week? Yeah, sometimes, but I was loving it. My favorite thing was to haul my pop-up camper to one of the nearby state parks and bring my MacIntosh to finish editing the week’s newsletter at the campground.

Personal computers were still in their infancy at the time, and the curios looks I would get from other campers as I worked at my keyboard on a picnic table were humorous.

I published those newsletters for years, updating my MacIntosh computer to newer models at least twice. After all, that first Mac only had 128K of memory. Alas, as IBM compatibles started taking over the PC market, I found my beloved Mac had difficulty communicating with other PCs and I had to give up the MacIntosh and start using a PC.

Oh … about those 100 shares of Apple I bought? I kept them for a couple years. However, after Steve Jobs left Apple and started his own company, Apple shares slumped. I finally sold my $200 investment for a loss. Had I kept those 100 shares, after all the splits they would now have grown to 800 shares and would now be worth $99,424. Boo hoo.

One thought on “Personal Computers

  1. I started learning how to program on a Radio Shack something 80. What I learned was that programing was not for me and that I would hire a guy if I needed a program.

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