A Technology Retrospective - A Lifetime of Progress?

THE ANCIENT, STONE AGE, GOOGLE WAYBACK MACHINE AND CELL PHONES

by Andrew J. Di Liddo, Jr.

November 15, 2013 

 
This morning, my alarm clock went off. It's not exactly an alarm clock.  It's a smart phone set up to behave like an alarm clock.  I hit the snooze button on the screen, and groggily did my first Google search of the day.

Taking this smart phone totally for granted, I realize how just a few years ago (actually, a life time ago) I wondered what the heck a cell phone was as I used the “STONE AGE GOOGLE” Wayback Machine - way back in 1975. 

What, pray tell, is the STONE AGE GOOGLE Wayback Machine, you ask?

The old cartoon show Rocky and Bullwinkle had a Wayback machine that the character Peabody used to solve problems, make inquiries and time travel.

Way back, I was in graduate school at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio studying cell biology. 

Back then, we had a precursor to Google at Ohio State in our library there.

Below, Peabody, a cartoon character from "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and his Wayback Machine.

 

 



You see, as a graduate student doing research for my thesis, I was expected to be aware of, keep up on, and read all published worldwide research in the narrow area of cell biology I was studying. 

In order to do this, I went to the reference department at the Ohio State Library as so many grad students did and made arrangements to use their STONE AGE GOOGLE machine.

I provided the reference librarian several keywords in my research realm like “cell”, “mitosis”, “meiosis” and “microscopic ultra-structure”. 


Below a diagrammatic drawing of how cells look through a microscope, some in various stages of mitosis.

A couple of weeks later, (WEEKS, NOT SECONDS!)  a postcard would arrive in the biology department office in my snail mail mailbox notifying me that my search was ready to pick up at the library. Each research paper that hit on one of my key words would generate a hit in the wayback google machine, which would generate a computer card with the reference information to that citation of published journal research.

The computer cards were about 3 inches by seven inches, slightly larger or longer than a 3 by 5 index card.

The first time I picked up the RESULTS of my STONE AGE GOOGLE SEARCH, the results were delivered to me in a cardboard box tray about 3 feet long and 7 inches wide stuffed with hundreds of printout card references and weighing several pounds!

We all have some idea of what a FORTRAN INPUT punch card looks like for computing in that era: 

OUT PUT cards, or RESULTS of a search, came out in similar format but with text instead of numbers.

I had to carry my Stone Age Google search results back to my laboratory and sort through these cards that were supposedly relevant to my area of research.  (think about this the next time you do a Google search and are not satisfied with your results).

Once I identified the most relevant articles, the next step would be to write to the authors of these journal articles in snail mail and request a reprint of their article which would also arrive by snail

mail. Many of the articles I needed were published by scientist biologists in the Netherlands
and this took a while!

What my fellow grad students and I soon discovered was that because we used the word “cell” in our Stone Age Google search Wayback machine, about 90% of the hits our printout cards we received back were related to Cell phones.  In 1975 we had no idea what a cell phone WAS and we were in a state of disbelief that we would ever see one and we had no idea what it would be like.

I guess we were not too imaginative?  After all, we were merely trying to extract DNA from fossilized dinosaur bones and clone a living dinosaur in our laboratory during the middle of the night while the faculty were sleeping!

We knew a cell phone might be sort of like a Dick Tracy wrist watch walkie talkie thingy.  

Cell phones and the computer cards related to cell phone technology were a nuisance to us and quickly converted into scratch pads for taking phone messages with a pencil from land line phones with no voice-mail. 

Like I said, that was a life time ago. 

from Alliance, Ohio.................AJDiLiddoJr