On 22 Apr 99 at 20:02, Richard Erlacher wrote:
> I suspect that few of the readers of this list remember the early '50's as I
> do. I wasn't trying to compare or contrast the prices of the antique
> computers which were under discussion, but rather point out that few people
> would put out a month's pay (gross) for a personal computer, even today. In
> the early '50's there were more people, including some professionals, with
> less than $300 after taxes (and they were MUCH lower then) than there were
> people earning more. There wasn't yet a minimum wage of $1.00 per hour,
> and, in fact, when I had a minimum wage job in '60, I earned <$5.00 per
> 8-hour day. Naturally a $300 computer wasn't on my list of things to buy.
>
> Dick
>
I think you're understating wages a bit in the early 50s . I remember getting
$125 for a 55 hr week working as a construction laborer on a summer job in
52, and getting $1.75 an hour as a derrickman in the admittedly highpaying
oil-patch in 53. On the other hand I worked as a jr. IBM operator in 55
starting at $35 a week. Office jobs unless you were in management were
notoriously underpaid. I was paying $18 a week for rent. At this time the
Can $ was equivalent or more than the US$ . I took out a loan from the credit
union in order to buy a $125 trumpet. So otherwise your reference to the
high price of "hobby " computers is valid. Of course the larger computers (data
processors) could only be leased, not bought from companies like IBM and
Univac, so even the concept of "owning" a computer would be somewhat ludicrous
unless you were an academic with a liberal budget.
ciao larry
lwalker_at_interlog.com
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Received on Fri Apr 23 1999 - 17:37:15 BST