Digi-Comp 1963
My parents always fed my science nerd hunger, often without my even knowing what I wanted. When I was 9-10 (1963 or 64), I remember getting my first “computer” for my birthday. It was so awesome! The Digi-Comp! More at Wikipedia. It was a mechanical digital computer. All it was was three logical AND gates controlled by plastic pins flipping against spring-loaded bars. The “computer” was clocked by cycling a plastic lever back and forth. There were only a few problems/projects provided in the manual, but they were enough.
This wasn’t something I asked for. And, I don’t know if this choice was driven by my mother (likely), my father (less so), or both. But it was an terrific choice for me.
Billed as the “First real operating digital computer in plastic” it was a brilliant little piece of engineering, measuring about 12” long and 4” high and cost a whopping $4.95. It came with coding sheets, a manual explaining binary arithmetic and a dozen or so experiments doing everything from up and down counters to adders and multipliers. No floating point, graphics GPU and the UI was a small window showing nothing but the binary output. But, I learned boolean logic from the Digi-Comp.
I don’t know what ever happened to it. I don’t recall passing it it down to a sibling, or breaking it, or throwing it away. With ten kids in the house, some things simply disappeared.
This did not knowingly put me on a path of eventually entering computer science. In fact, I started college with the intent of Electrical Engineering. It was simply another in a long string of science enrichment that my folks fed.
Thanks, Mom and Dad!
See: http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/small-systems-at-ricm/digi-comp1