1960's...remember your first image search— on a "laptop"?

(original artwork-all rights reserved)

....It's the spring of 1964 and my dad (Mr.Sawdust) decides it's time we looked for another dog. We hadn't had a dog in the family since the tragic loss of our German Shepherd, Flash. Our family had a set of Comptons encyclopedias and that is where our search began.

Webster's dictionary, 2001 defines the word laptop as follows:

lap-top (lap'top'), n. a portable,usu. battery powered microcomputer, small enough to rest on the lap.

In 1964 we defined it this way...

Laptop-encyclopedia opened on lap

Of course we had never heard of a Google search and the only image from that time that comes to mind when I hear the term Yahoo search is Roy Rogers letting out a hearty "yahoo" after successfully roping a wandering steer—but we were not strangers to the idea of an image search...that was something we did on a regular basis.

Image search —search encyclopedia— "D"-dog

There were several glossy pages filled with photos of every breed of dog you could imagine.

How we settled on a Basset Hound...well that's still a mystery.

The thought of a computer that could sit on your lap was...science fiction. Even the computers in Sci-fi movies were as big as elephants and filled entire rooms! Just so you don't think I'm exaggerating, take a look at this hard drive produced in 1956.

World's first hard drive-1956

Another interesting picture —"Visions of a home computer in the 50's"


The caption reads:

Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a home computer could look like in the year 2000. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use and only...

So the encyclopedia was where we gravitated after school for homework and school projects. With six brothers in the house I could only hope we weren't researching the same subject!

I remember another image search that year— not long after the arrival of the Beatles in America. Enough time has passed that I will not be too embarrassed to write about it.

...but that's another story!