Younger people than I often view all this much differently than I do of course because I started studying and using and programming computers around 1966 in College. At that time the college had a 1620 IBM mainframe computer which is one step down from the old 360 IBM workhorse computer that most people had at that time. So, I got a part time job operating the 1620 computer, and Tab wiring IBM accounting machines and learning to run keypunch machines because everything was done in batch with punched cards in college and business mostly then. The only people who had any computer chips mostly then was NASA for space travel and research. They were just too expensive and top secret at that time for businesses to own them pretty much. I started working then for the Glendale Unified School District in southern California while I was attending college. They paid pretty well because there were so few people that understood computers and computer languages then. I had always had a very logical and methodical mind so computers and computer programming was always fun for me then. However, the batch formula without RAM (Random Access Memory) often made things incredibly tedious and then batch which meant everything had to be done at once made it even more tedious to accomplish anything back then too.
So, millions of dollars of computer equipment might not even equal what you can do with your laptop now. And on top of that you had to work often where there were no windows because they didn't want anyone to actually see the computers that might get the bright idea of stealing them because after all they were worth millions then too.
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