Computing from 1976

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Fred Cisin via cctalk once stated:
> On Sat, 30 Dec 2017, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
> >I was perusing my old computer magazine collection the other day and
> >came across an article entitled: “Fast-Growing new hobby, Real
> >Computers you assemble yourself”, Dec. 1976. It was about MITS,
> >Sphere, IMSAI and SWT. 4K memory was $500. Yikes! Even more here in
> >Canada. Now this is true Classic Computing. Have a Happy New Year
> >everyone. May the computing gods shine down on us all in 2018.
> >Happy computing.  Murray  :)
> 
> OK, a little arithmetic exercise for you.
> (a 16C is nice for this, but hardly necessary)

  Sounds like fun.

> "Moore's Law", which was a prediction, not a "LAW", has often been 
> mis-stated as predicting a doubling of speed/capacity every 18 months.
> 
> 1) Figure out how many 18 month invtervals since then, and what 4k 
> "should' have morphed into by now.

  1) 28 doublings since 1975.  

		(2017-1975) * 12
		----------------
			18

  4K should (had we truly doubed everything every 18 months) now be 1T
  (terrabyte):

		2^12	= 4K
		2^(12+28)
		2^40	~ 1T

> 2) What did Gordon Moore actually say in 1965?

  That the number of transistors in an integrated circuit double every 18
  months.

> 3) How much is $500 of 1976 money worth now?

  It depends upon how you calculate it.  I'm using this page [1] for the
  calculation, and I get:

	Current data is only available till 2016. In 2016, the relative
	price worth of $500.00 from 1976 is:

	$2,110.00 using the Consumer Price Index
	$1,680.00 using the GDP deflator
	$2,400.00 using the value of consumer bundle
	$2,000.00 using the unskilled wage
	$2,450.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
	$3,340.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
	$4,960.00 using the relative share of GDP

> 4) Consider how long it took to use a text editor to make a grocery 
> shopping list in 1976.  How long does it take today?

  I would think the same amount of time.  Typing is typing.

> Does having the grocery list consist of pictures instead of words, with 
> audio commentary, and maybe Smell-O-Vision (coming soon), improve the 
> quality of life?   

  For me, not really.

> How much does it help to be able to contact your 
> refrigeratior and query its knowledge of its contents?

  It could be helpful, but with the current state of IoT, I would not want
  to have that ability.

> (Keep in mind, that although hardware expanded exponentially, according to 
> Moore's Law, Software follows a corollary of Boyle's Law, and expands to 
> fill the available space and use all of the available resources - how much 
> can "modern" software do in 4K?, and how much is needed to boot the 
> computer and run a "modern" text editor?)

  EMACS is lean and mean compared to some of the "text editors" coming out
  today, based upon Javascript frameworks.  It's scary.

> 5) What percentage of computer users still build from kits, or from 
> scratch?

  I would say significantly less than 1%.  Say, 5% of 1%?  That's probably
  in the right ballpark.

> 6) What has replaced magazines for keeping in touch with the current 
> state of computers?

  The world wide web, although I do miss the Byte magazine of the 70s and
  80s.  Not so much the 90s.

  -spc (Yeah, I realize these were probably rhetorical in nature ... )

[1]	http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/