Disable laptop touchpad

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 02 February 2010, Neil Winchurst wrote:
>Bruce Marshall wrote:
>> On Tuesday 02 February 2010, Neil Winchurst wrote:
>>> And, referring to comments on this thread about having used computers
>>> for a long time, I first got involved with computers in 1962 (not a
>>> typo, yes 1962) so I guess I beat most of you.
>>
>> Sorry, I started in 1960
>
>I did say "most of you" not all of you. still, wow
>
>Neil

Does it count that I saw one of the first several thousand 12AU7 vacuum tube 
& relay output models (the name escapes me after all these years) at SUI in 
Iowa City in about 1956 or 57?  They had it hooked to the mechanism of a 
Harris Stream fed printing press modified to scan the 'fill in the box' test 
papers that came back from administering the "Iowa Test" in all the primary 
schools, with photocell tubes and it graded papers at several a second.  I 
didn't say touch it since I wasn't on the approved list.  I was equally 
impressed with the amount of air conditioning condensers in the yard, that 
thing used a lot of power back in the cent/kwh days.

That test was supposed to be equ to the S/B IQ test, but S/B wanted too much 
money per child, so they (Iowa) wrote their own.  I had scored a 147 on it 
several years prior to that, having taken it in the 7tn grade IIRC.  Probably 
hand graded back then so this was quite labor saver for the state even if its 
run time till an error stop was only a few tens of seconds at a time.

I was interested yes, but I had never actually heard of programming such a 
building filling beast to do a different job by moving jumper wires on a 
patch panel in just a few minutes.  It took us 20 years to get from that, to 
something like the RCA 1802, or the TI-9900.  Now look what we can do!
This list just touches the surface of a supernova explosion in our collective 
knowledge. 
-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

"Another world, another day, another dawn. "