In the middle of the twentieth century, when I was but a wee lad, somebody gave me this odd contraption. It came as some oddly-shaped flat pieces of red or white plastic in a flat box, and it snapped together along with some rubber bands, springs, and wire rods. It was actually a finite state machine with three flip-flops and it could be programmed to count (in binary) and play some simple games (Nim) by placing platic tubes (like pieces of drinking straws) over tabs on the plastic pieces.
It was honestly way over my head at first, but I played with it for a while, following the instructions but not really understanding what it was doing. A year or more later, I had an aha! moment and it suddenly came clear. I don’t remember how old I was; single digits at best. But I would go on to build a number of computers, large and small, program many more, and build and run a data center in the back room of my house and eventually stretching around the globe.
I’ve thought of that little hunk of plastic often, but could never remember what it was called. I was reading Cory Doctorow’s column today and followed the link labeled “Digi-Comp I.” I’m not sure why I followed the link; there must have been a stray brain cell that recognized the name. There it was!
Glad to know I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing.
—2p