Way back in 1979, when I was a 14 year old school girl, Miss Jones came into maths class one morning with some exciting news. “Today we are going to program a computer to create a calendar, for 1980, and print it out.” OMG! Could we really do that? Could a computer calculate all the numbers that are needed to get the right dates and days on a calendar, and then print it? This was truly an advance.
The “Computer” that we were to use, was housed in a large room in a special location called “Angle Park”. Apparently in a few weeks time we would be taking a school trip, with permission from our parents of course, to visit it. But before then we had much work to do. There were cards to mark, and many hours of sharpening our lead pencils and brandishing our rubbers (erasers).
Each computer card was about 18cm long and 8cm wide. They where white and the corners were rounded or squared off in different places. The writing on the cards was in a pale blue and, it was BUSY. There were what seemed like thousands of rows of open rectangles and maybe numbers and lines and heaven knows what else. And we had to fill these little buggers in.
In order to get my calendar I had to fill in a pattern of rectangles on each card with lead pencil. And I had to fill in probably 20 or 30 cards. I wrote my name on each one so my program could be identified then judiciously, at first, picked out the right rectangle to fill in each row and did my scribbling. Some cards only needed one scribble for the entire card. I had absolutely no idea how these pencil marks were supposed to direct the computer to create my calendar, but I carried on. My pile of cards complete, I put a rubber band around them, and handed them in to Miss Jones. We had to wait a week, or was it four? I can’t remember, but it was a very long time.
Calendar Day? Not yet. Even more exciting, Miss Jones came into class with the piles of cards we had given her last week. She handed them all back to us, still with their red rubber bands on them. But, “No! What is this?”, where my careful scribbles once stood were now neat little rectangular holes! Every single card had been “punched” and then swiped through the computer, and now they were back in our hands, for us to keep. I don’t think we were actually told how it all worked. I’m guessing there might have been a light that shone on the cards to pick up the graphite marks, and then a cutting blade dropped down and punched a hole in the card, at just the right spot. But I don’t know for sure.
Now it’s Calendar Day. Smiling and cheery in her little red t-shirt and A-line floral skirt, Miss Jones enters the room with a great big box. In that box were our calendars. They were as beautiful as a very large strip of recycled toilet paper. My Calendar, like the others, was printed in black dots. Apparently I had instructed the computer to do this. Every single line of the calendar paper had a pattern of black dots along it that when all added up created dates, words, and the piece de resistance, a PICTURE!
Amazingly my picture was of Don Dunstan, the Premier of our State of South Australia, and my grandmother’s arch enemy. What Luck. Not only did I have something to laugh about and create a stir in class, but, I also had an awesome Christmas present to give my Nan. Which I did.
That Christmas I carefully rolled the 2ft long piece of dirty, dotty paper, called a calendar, into a cylinder and presented it with a great big smile to my grandmother. She excitedly unrolled the casing and pulled out the roll of paper inside. Her eyes were big and she looked very confused. She looked at me. “What’s this?” I smiled again. “Open it up, Nan.” She unfurled the paper and burst out laughing. “It’s Don Dunstan! – on a calendar! – you know how much I hate him.” Everyone cracked up as she passed the present around. We all talked about how it was made, and about the latest political saga. And then Nan, pleased as punch that her granddaughter could be so cheeky and so clever at the same time, hung the calendar, for all to see, right up on her kitchen wall. She left it there all year.
Nan spent an entire year telling all her friends what a clever person I was to have played such a naughty joke on her …. and to have used a computer. She was very sad in 1981, when she had to take it down.
Big Blue Chips 
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Angle Park, IBM 360 if I recall. White cards, blue content and they made a whir when the card reader did its thing. Angle Park in the summer: only the computer got a/c
Those cards did more than whir, they flew thru that machine!
And Summer in Adelaide in Angle Park especially AND 30 yrs ago before aircon was any good means HOT!! Like 40deg Celsius for days on end. Sweaty.
Ha! I remember sending off those cards to the angle park computer Center.
My calendar was of Albert Einstein ! Thank god computing isn’t like that now – imagine the time it would take and the trees we’d have to cut down to do even the most basic of things .
I remember your Einstein calendar Ellie, I thought it was very cool. You were so lucky.
Yes, I remember this excursion well. I printed out a dot matrix calendar for 1989 and was amazed at how quickly the computer did this back in 1979. I also remember the computers being massive – bigger than a family sized fridge!! We have come a very long way!!!
Oh wow, you were a very patient person making a calendar for 1989. I would not have been able to wait 10 yrs to use it. Did you still have it then?
There were a lot of those computers lining the walls weren’t there? I think they had tape reels going around. And I remember them putting some cards in a machine where they were sorted. The impressive thing is that our iPhones probably have 100s of times more memory than just one of those big fridges!