Just to think.....

[MHD]

It was not that long ago that you couldnt burn your own CD.... now it is commonplace and almost outdated

[Nnnnsic]

Almost?!?!?!

But seriously... this is the way technology goes.

Hell, it wasn't that long ago that people flew in small amounts... in fact, we still do... but today, Airbus is launching their A380... which can take over 500 people on two decks... it's a Super Jumbo Jet!

[Mj]

Yep... won't be long before we're talking terabytes rather than gigabytes... by then cd capacity will be laughable.

Remember the days of the 5" 1/4 floppy holding 360K? Or even 8" floppies???

Michael.

[MHD]

Double sided? Double Density?

Remember that holepuncher thingy you used to make a 5 1/2 disk double sided?

[JordanP]

Yep... won't be long before we're talking terabytes rather than gigabytes... by then cd capacity will be laughable.

Remember the days of the 5" 1/4 floppy holding 360K? Or even 8" floppies???

Michael.

I remember audio cassetts and Microbee's

[MHD]

I remember Microbees too... Frogger and Pirates...

I had a TRS-80 at one stage...

Start loading a program and go make a cuppa...

[robw25]

i remember when i used to wear a bright yellow shirt with purple embroided flairs with yellow ribbon down the sides and a huge belt buckle,,,,, what was that all about !! if i wore that now i would be told to get back in the closet !!!!!!!!!!!!

lets not try to remember eh !

cheers rob

[gstark]

lets not try to remember eh !

That's too easy for me to do.

Without trying, even.

[the foto fanatic]

My first job, in an insurance company office, was calculating premiums for all the new applications. Back in 19xx.
No pocket or even electronic calculators in those days - we had a manually operated mechanical calculator - no electric power, you moved a cylinder using a hand crank for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. It was a Swedish machine called a Facit.
It was absolute luxury when they finally became electrically powered!

[ajo43]

In a previous life I worked at Qantas and worked on the purchase of these babies.

A friend sent me these pics of the A380s first outing.

700 people on a double decker plane - that's progress.

[Killakoala]

WARNING::: Standby for an understatement.....

Wow, that's big....

[Greg B]

Wow Jonesy, sensational. Thanks for the shots. Interesting that they have gone with two engines.

Imagine the queue coming through customs!

[Greg B]

My first job, in an insurance company office, was calculating premiums for all the new applications. Back in 19xx.
No pocket or even electronic calculators in those days - we had a manually operated mechanical calculator - no electric power, you moved a cylinder using a hand crank for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. It was a Swedish machine called a Facit.
It was absolute luxury when they finally became electrically powered!

Hey cricket, we had one of those at the bank branch I worked at in 1972 - we did a lot of currency conversions.

I think it was 73 or 74 when an electronic calculator arrived, it was magic. The manager at the time made an observation that was interesting - how do you know it is correct!

[Matt. K]

Only 2 engines???? Must be Volvo engines.

[Greg B]

Only 2 engines???? Must be Volvo engines.

So presumably the pilot will be wearing a hat.

[Matt. K]

On a more serious note...if the plane loses 1 engine the pilot is going to do a "go around" with 700 passengers aboard, on 1 engine???? I don't think so. Only Birddog could do that.

[birddog114]

Thanks Matt!

[owen]

Only 2 engines???? Must be Volvo engines.

So presumably the pilot will be wearing a hat.

... and it will be a very slow trip.

[Greg B]

That's what I was thinking Matt, at least a 747 can lose one and still have 75% power, with some on each side. That is one big bird to fly on one donk. Especially up hill.

[digitor]

Wow Jonesy, sensational. Thanks for the shots. Interesting that they have gone with two engines.

Imagine the queue coming through customs!

Looks like it will get four, but this aircraft has only the inboard one fitted on the port side and the outboard one fitted on the starboard side.

Cheers

[ajo43]

Don't worry these beasts have 4 engines! They only have 2 fitted to this one at the moment.

The engines are absolutely massive. The same circumfrence as a 737 body. If you are a seagull and you are hanging out anywhere near the runway then you better make a run for it.

[Matt. K]

Greg
No pilots...no hats. The cockpit crew are all crash test dummies!

[birddog114]

Greg
No pilots...no hats. The cockpit crew are all crash test dummies!

and they use the remote control to fly the beast, ask BBJ, he got the remote to fly this ones

[BBJ]

HAHAHA I dont think my big Jumbo servo's are big enough to fly that beauty, nice lady pitty about her colour though. relying on 2 engines well, lets say if 1 goes offline i dont think i would like to be sitting in it and i might need more controls on my 6 channel JR computer radio's. I dont think i would want to try a deadstick landing with it.LOL

[atencati]

It was not that long ago that you couldnt burn your own CD.... now it is commonplace and almost outdated

Wow, I remember way back in the dark ages when peple actually used a cellulose called "film?" to take pictures...how archaic is that!!!!!

A

[the foto fanatic]

I think it was 73 or 74 when an electronic calculator arrived, it was magic. The manager at the time made an observation that was interesting - how do you know it is correct!

Yup, that was about the time frame.

Did you ever get the Facit to divide 1 by 0? We had one nutter who used to do that before he went home every evening - the poor calculator (I use that word loosely!) would chug away all night trying to reach an answer.

For the calculations I used to do, we had another person independently doing the same calculations, and still a third person whose job it was to match the two independent calcs and decide they were right. Only then would we let the customer know. Talk about redundant systems.
Insurance offices are much smaller now.

[Greg B]

Wow Jonesy, sensational. Thanks for the shots. Interesting that they have gone with two engines.

Imagine the queue coming through customs!

Looks like it will get four, but this aircraft has only the inboard one fitted on the port side and the outboard one fitted on the starboard side.

Cheers

Yes digitor and Jonesy, on further examination of picture #2, I see it all. I'm happy about that, four is better with 700+ people on board.

Interesting fact about the circumferance of the engines Jonesy. Everything is so goddam BIG. Although I dare say things will still be "cosy" in cattle class where I travel.

[Greg B]

I think it was 73 or 74 when an electronic calculator arrived, it was magic. The manager at the time made an observation that was interesting - how do you know it is correct!

Yup, that was about the time frame.

Did you ever get the Facit to divide 1 by 0? We had one nutter who used to do that before he went home every evening - the poor calculator (I use that word loosely!) would chug away all night trying to reach an answer.

For the calculations I used to do, we had another person independently doing the same calculations, and still a third person whose job it was to match the two independent calcs and decide they were right. Only then would we let the customer know. Talk about redundant systems.
Insurance offices are much smaller now.

Yeah, I hear all of that cricket, I think we would do a division on the machine, then someone would do the long multiplication to check it.

The other thing is that we used to manually calculate the interest (in the Bank). Once a year on the savings accounts, working through the interest products (based on the minimum balance each month) and monthly on current accounts (based on the daily debit balance). Much overtime with drinking and eating of dim sims was involved. And a bit of hanky panky as I recall.

And all the tellers had their own pistol in those days too. It is a miracle how few incidents there were looking back on it.

[gstark]

Fully fly-by-wire.

And it runs Windows as the OS!

[leek]

back to the original subject... (sort of)

I completed my computing degree before PCs were invented... used punched cards & paper tape when programming, my first modem was an acoustic coupler, my first IBM PC had a 10Mb hard disk (which we struggled to fill), I owned one of the world's first pocket calculators (the Sinclair Cambridge), played Chuckie Egg on a Sinclair Spectrum with a microdrive (which was actually a tape)... supported an entire (book) library system that ran in 256kb of memory on a minicomputer and have worked with computers that filled rooms the size of tennis courts...

I'm sure that I'll think of more... but all of the above is pretty amazing when I have 1Gb of memory in my D70 [/list]

[Onyx]

Fully fly-by-wire.

And it runs Windows as the OS!

Step aside Y2K, we got bigger problems...

[digitor]

Fully fly-by-wire.

And it runs Windows as the OS!

Step aside Y2K, we got bigger problems...

Ha, you're not wrong there! One of the measures of success for a recent fighter development project which shall remain nameless (mostly because I can't remember it) was the number of in-flight reboots, and great success was hailed when the number dropped from an average of 15 to 4. The scary thing is, I'm not joking.

Cheers

[gstark]

Fully fly-by-wire.

And it runs Windows as the OS!

Step aside Y2K, we got bigger problems...

Ha, you're not wrong there! One of the measures of success for a recent fighter development project which shall remain nameless (mostly because I can't remember it) was the number of in-flight reboots, and great success was hailed when the number dropped from an average of 15 to 4. The scary thing is, I'm not joking.

I've been offloaded from Airbuses - twice - when they were unable to reboot the systems on the plane. Fortunately, we were still on the ground.

[MattC]

Fully fly-by-wire.

And it runs Windows as the OS!

God I hope not! It would give new meaning to Blue Screen Of Death!!!!

Cheers

Matt

[gstark]

The sky-blue screen of death.

Still, it's nothing like the red screen of death.