UNIVAC Chicks t-shirts anyone?
A wandering chronicle by Marie-Lynn Richard
(Feb. 26 2002)
The end of this week will bring more Survivors, a brand new CSI, the first
day of March, and I will be one step closer to the beginning of garage sale
season. I do not hide my love of garage sales, even to my snickering
friends and I talk about this passion endlessly. My favorite hunting ground
is Beaconsfield, an older yet affluent suburb on the southwestern part of
the Island of Montreal. Despite the noise from the Montreal-Dorval Airport
it is a beautiful place filled with fabulous old houses and very friendly
people who have been gathering stuff for half a century. It's a traditional
neighborhood build before the invention of cement curbs where people put
rocks along the side of the street so you wont park on their grass. These
folks are Anglo-Canadians with a big C and display their fondness for the
flag by nailing it to the roof of their homes where it successively bakes
in the sun, swims in the rain and freezes under show until it turns a
pinkish hue?Not something you would see in the window of a Roots Athletics
flagship store. A few summers ago my spouse and I enjoyed a whole Saturday
morning looking at houses, spying on potential neighbors, and shopping
street sales. We came across a sale that was held by an older gentleman who
had the strangest things in his garage. It was as if HE had picked those
things up at garage sales for decades. I found the most adorable pair of
French utility glasses called Verutile. They are the kind of 40s cooking
memorabilia that Martha Stewart would knock-off for her overpriced catalog
if she ever came upon them. They are intricately painted with the
measurements of food by weight rather than liquid ounces. I love to collect
foreign cookbooks so I figured I'd keep one for myself and sell the other.
My spouse came out of the corner with a BIG smile on his face. He who
sometimes waits in the car while I sniff out a bargain had found some kind
of keyboard thingy with the brand name Sperry Rand UNIVAC on it. He bought
it for a loonie and walked away happy.I have grown fond of this ancestor of data entry. It has this charm that
only mid-century electronic equipment possess. Sort of like Web pages from
1994, built by technical guys who had never heard of design or typography.
It reminds me of my first computer, a castoff of my dad's called TRS-80. My
dad had just purchased a state-of-the-art 16-color Zenith and like him I
would spend days on end playing on my new toy writing little BASIC
applications that asked questions and corrected my answers. I already knew
all the answers but I was fascinated with the process nonetheless. Each day
ended with great disappointment because the included cassette recorder only
pretended to work. Eventually I was given a metal box that took big floppy
disks. By that time the G key got stuck and outputted a gazillion letters
every time I would try to write Goto. The TRS-80 lost its charm and was
relegated to the attic where it should still be today with dad's other
charming vintage electronics, and, every single issue of Popular
Electronics ever published. In 2000, my father inherited his father's
almost complete collection of National Geographic magazines. This was
promised to him a long time ago and I have known this since I was a small
child. Only one issue was missing, May 1957 when the family moved. Upon
learning this from my brother, I set out to find it on eBay. Sure enough I
purchased it the next day and later sent it to him by mail. He does own the
whole thing on cd-rom but he seemed amused at my amazing eBay using power
nonetheless. Perhaps I will send him this message to remind him that I too
would like to inherit his collection of mint condition computer magazines.
Then, as my darling and I get old and deaf, we will buy a house in
Beaconsfield and spend our old days reading about the wonderful world of
the adding machine all the while keeping an eye on the Volvo-driving folks
who are looking through our garage.Did I mention my love of eBay? Well I have had an eBay habit for almost 4
years. It was vintage bagatelles that drew me in and I soon started selling
to feed my habit! The vintage Verutile glass I mentioned before sold for
USD 17.00 a nice profit for the 25 cents I happen to have in my pocket. As
for the Univac, we'll see what the near future brings.Tonight, I spent a few amusing hours with my spouse researching the item to
prepare its eBay listing. The research unearthed the fact that it is
probably a Unityper from the mid to late fifties. In any case it is
probably rare, as we have failed to find anything like it on eBay for the
past 65 days and no pictures on the Web either?It's in perfect condition
and I would bet that if one could try it out, it would still work. Closer
inspection revealed something that will make me sad to see it go?Its
number keys are permanently etched with horizontal marks clearly indicating
that this object's constant companion for most of it's useful life was?a
woman!You can see it at the following URL:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1709137822Once available for hundreds of thousands of dollars, this small piece of
computing history can be yours for nano-pennies on the dollar!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marie-Lynn Richard
Montreal
February 26, 2002
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Copyright Poot's Place 2002