7 Jun
2024
7 Jun
'24
3:19 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 6, 2024 at 1:38 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
If you buy a bus and start driving it yourself
everywhere, for your
own exclusive use, it doesn't somehow magically stop being a bus. It's
still a bus, just a bus being used for personal transport.
I am not so sure...
After all 'bus' is a contraction of 'omnibus' which, according to
Flanders and Swann means 'To or for, by with or from everybody'. More
seriosly, a bus is a vehicle that anyone may travel on.
I know a couple of people who own old London buses. They tell me that
you need a different driving licence (and probably insurance) if you
carry fare-paying passengers. They can drive their vehcles to classic
car shows etc. They can carry people for free (at said person's own
risk). But they can't charge fares. Said vehicles remain Routemasters,
Regents,etc but may well legally not be buses.
Incidentally, a neighbour asked me for comments on a question which
had appeared on the 'Reader's Questions' page of a UK national
newspaper :
'Which was the first handheld computer?'
My thoughts are :
Balancing a PDP11/05 on one hand and operating the front panel with
the other doesn't count :-)
It has to be able to run a user program. So non-programmable
calculators, Curtas, slide rules, etc don't count.
If it has to run what is normally accepted as a computer programming
language and handle text then something like the Sharp PC1210 or
PC1211 would seem t be a reasonable answer.
If machines that only handle numbers count, then a reasonable answer
is the Sumlock 324, which pre-dates the HP65 by a couple of weeks.
-tony