Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

The picture was ancient. Two nice-looking girls were sitting at manual typewriters in a school room. You knew it was old because it was black & white, and their clothes were vintage. My comment to the question on Facebook “Do you remember this?” was “Yes, I am the guy behind the two girls.” Slightly out of focus and in the background was a young man with horn rim glasses and a white shirt. He was your typical nerd from the fifties and sixties. You couldn’t see his pocket protector, but I’m sure it was there.

My keyboarding career started that way. Typing class in high school. A few guys. Mostly girls getting a head start on their stimulating careers in the secretarial field. Today, I am using a laptop to write. That class at Hillcrest is not typing now but keyboarding and it will soon die because no one gets to high school without being able to use a keyboard. Most get that education in kindergarten.

Computers first came to my attention in grade school. It was the Univac that I saw in magazines and books. Then there was the IBM monstrosity that NASA used to compute trajectories for the Mercury missions. I never knew what a computer really was until I saw Secret Treasures. Who knew that people used to be called computers? We just called them smart kids.

Our first computer keyboard was on a Texas Instrument device smaller than my first AM radio. Then came the Commodore, the Atari, and the 86-format machine. That was the first with minor connectivity and its own monitor. The rest is plugged into the TV like your first video game. My first video game was brother Bud’s Pong.

I’ve run DOS and Windows 3 and up.  I have not upgraded to eleven yet, but I am sure it will happen. I have wanted to be computer literate since I was in the third grade. I used my daughters as an excuse to get our first desktop machine. I still have floppy disks with my writing files on them. I should go back and look at some of those columns and stories.

Before COVID-19 shut down I took a class at OTC to learn about Windows Office. I learned about Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and other programs that I have used for years. The difference now is I know how to use many functions that I had not mastered before.

Between video, audio, and word processing software, I feel I currently have mastery of the computer I need. What will come is a mystery to me. This is as true as it was in 1960.

©Copyright 2023 by Charles Kensinger