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Hilarious Antique IT Advertisements
PetManimal writes "Computerworld has gone back through forty years worth of magazines, and came up with some entertaining IT-related advertising gems from decades past. Highlights include The Personal Mainframe, an image of the earliest screenless briefcase portables, and Elvira hawking engineering software. From the article: 'Remember Elvira, Mistress of the Dark? Besides appearing on TV in features like Elvira's Movie Macabre Halloween Special, Elvira also invited Computerworld readers to "cut through paper-based CASE [computer-aided software engineering] methods with LBMS" software. "The scariest thing about CASE is the several hundred pounds of books that land on your desk and for which you've paid fifteen gazillion dollars, when you buy off on a CASE development methodology," she writes. Can you guess what year Elvira appeared in this Computerworld ad? Headline hint: "IBM delays notebook arrival in U.S."'"
man and woman on the couch, soft music playing she look into his eyes and says...
"Can I see your Wang?"
Damned best computer Ad ever... and it was pulled because it was too sexual.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
is here
That was when magazines were cool, you could learn Pascal, BASIC, and Assembly in one magazine because they had tons of listings. Hell, I remember using several articles to wire wrap my own S100 serial card.
Ah, the good ol' days. When hackers were hackers.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Um...1991? (Check the "copyright" at the bottom of the image.) Jeez.
620K RAM + a 20Gig hard drive, there's an odd system.
Was there any non-mainframe computer that could use that little memory with that large of a disk?
Or did you me 20Meg?
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
"Worried about software costs? People who use it say The Personal Mainframe is the easiest system they have ever worked with. The DBMS complies with COASYL specifications. All the languages, from COBOL to FORTRAN are highly interactive".
I should lay that one on my fiancee next time she complains about something being wrong with the PC.
I remember when blazing fast 1200 baud modems came out, and I replaced my 300 baud modem. The text (there were no graphics to be concerned about) would scroll by so fast that I couldnt read it. I figured there was really no need for faster modems than 300 baud, because I couldnt read faster than 300 baud anyway. Guess thats my version of the "No one needs more than 640K Memory" quote.
Marketing dept guy #1 : How the hell are we going to sell this LBMS?
: Hmm.. Our customers are all sexually frustrated geeks. Let's put Elvira(R) on there. She's sexy and the kids seem to like her.
: That's a great idea.
: "The most overwhelming aspect of CASE is the several hundred...LBMS will address these issues. Their Project Engineer(TM) and On-line Method(TM) toolsets will reduce development backlog."
: Wow, that sounds boring as hell. It'd sound way cooler if we made Elvira(R) say it. Try this :
... heh heh ...Texas. Let them show you how their totally automated Project Engineer(TM) and On-Line Method(TM) toolsets can cut through development backlog." signed, Elvira(R)
: You're a genius. That sounds way more interesting. I've got wood.
Marketing dept guy #2
Marketing dept guy #1
(Marketing dept prepares a mock-up. Marketing dept guy #1 reads off the text)
Marketing dept guy #1
Marketing dept guy #2
"The scariest thing about CASE is the several hundred...So how's about calling LBMS in
Marketing dept guy #1
Never underestimate the persistence of the pre-pubescent teen that has the ability to amuse themselves. Think 'fart sniffing' of the digital age.
;)
Yes, it's sad really. And nothing can be done to make them stop or go away. Respond, and you reinforce their immaturity. Don't respond and you reinforce their immaturity. Ignore and they'll try harder. Confront and they'll try harder still.
They're really just cries for 'mommy' after all. Poor lost souls
No Comment.
I may not have the wording exactly right (I think it was >25 years ago), but
PRIME computers happily talk to other computer systems. However, they sometimes have to talk slowly and use very short words.
Riker selling some software...
I remember seeing an ad for the IBM PS/1 when it came out as a successor to the PCjr marketed as a consumer-grade PS/1. The computer was sitting on a desk in the background wasting electricity and there was a family enjoying each others company in front of it, paying no attention to it at all. The ad had a tag line that I vaguely recall as "the first computer that knows you have a life" or something like that. I almost ran out and bought one but then I controlled myself and decided that if I could wait just a few more months I could buy a computer even worse.
Wow ... this was such a trip down memory lane!
... when I was a kid." Now I look at these ads and see the advances in 'technology' in my WORKING lifetime.
... like a DOS prompt or X screen.
My kids think I'm a dinosaur when I say things like "we didn't have: cell phones | vcrs | ipods | personal computers | digital cameras
In my 1st job at a VERY LARGE computer company we had "terminal rooms". For the youngsters that's a room with 10 typewriter like things that you could use to submit your code. (No screen, just test on PAPER.) Then wait the rest of the day to get a printout from another room. This was an improvement over the punch cards of the year before.
We eventual got tubes (terminals w/screen) in our offices, but usally 2 programmers per. And those had that lovely green on black text
Maybe they're right.
An acoustic coupler was a (probably 300 baud) modem. Rather than plugging it into a jack, you would dial-up the other modem with your phone, then place the handset into the coupler and turn on your carrier.
You kids.
Do a Google search for "acoustic coupler" and educate yourself. That ad isn't bamboozling anybody.
Actually, the acoustic coupler is the cradle that the handset is inserted in. The microphone and speaker of the handset is then isolated from outside noise with rubber seals and have a corresponding speaker respectivly microphone. So the computer become acoustically coupled to the telephone net and not electrically. Now get off my lawn. Mumble mumble muble.
>Apparently, by "acoustic coupler" they mean "telephone".
>Goes to show that bamboozling unsuspecting consumers with
>high-tech talk has been around as long as the technologies
>themselves!
Snot-nosed punk.
The acoustic coupler was the cradle into which you inserted the telephone handset so the modem could use the speaker and microphone to acoustically transmit the data. We still have some around my place of business and they still work and are in occasional use. See how your high-falutin' iPhone works 40 years from now.
One thing you also might not be aware of is that at the time, you couldn't OWN a telephone - they all belonged to ATT/Ma Bell. In fact that was more-or-less true into the late 70's/early 80s. And they were all identical designs (actually there were two different designs but completely standardized) so your coupler would work with any of them.
Brett
Damn kid. You made me break my self-imposed rule of not clicking through to computerworld's ad-impression inflation articles, and I come back to find that my fellow old fogies have given you a good schoolin' on what an acoustic coupler is anyway. Remember, all phones (in the US at least) back in the day were made by the Western Electric division of AT&T (the real AT&T, not the rebranded SBC), and so it was easy to know just what size and shape to make those rubber cups.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Thats still true today.
Provably = adverb, and correct English.
Prove - Provable - Provably.
Technology tips and tricks.
http://opticaldynamics.com/~gbk/2c-a-byte.jpg
Up to 32k for the low low price of $649!
...was a two-page advert from Sun, featuring Sally Struthers.
:D
The gist was something like, "Thinking of switching to NT? Isn't there enough suffering in the world?"
I'd LOVE to find out where that can be found online...
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
One word: Shitcock.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You both missed the real last line, and it's a beaut - on the ad, the _second_ tick box on the response form:
"[ ] I'd just like a glossy reprint of this ad."
Now _that_ is knowing you target audience...
Beautiful marketing - probably not even allowed these days.
My favorite ad was one I received in the mail from Genicom back in 1992 or 1993. It consisted of a medium-size green box with the following text on the front: "I dunno what happened. The printer was working just fine a minute ago". Open the box, and there was a real Stanley ball-peen hammer fastened inside, and "Deny everything" on the inside of the box lid. I still have the hammer, BTW. :-)
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I am comforted to see someone else remembers WordStar. Saddened, though, that it is now one of the ten funniest IT adverts of all time. In its day, it was a wonder. Fully justified text and would run in 64K of memory. Many a BBS operator depended on WS for 'publishing' electronic articles back in the day. I know I did. With a product like Multilink you could cram two instances of RBBS-PC into 640K of RAM with enough RAM left over to run a WS instance at the same time. It was a godsend.
What was great back then is that the magazines would expose you to things you never would have looked at on your own. I first learned about Object Oriented Programing by reading the SmallTalk issue of Byte. I got interested in this really cool OS called Unix by reading about it in Byte. Yes Blogs can do the same thing now but let's face it 99.999% of all blogs are worth exactly what you pay for them.
Slashdot is the closest thing to Byte I have found in a while but it lacks the editorial control that Byte had. Just look at how many misleading head lines you get. That and Byte was just about computers and didn't have any political content.
I love the Internet for looking things up but yes I miss Byte.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yes we know technology progresses. But it is not funny because of the age/under power of the tecnology but the advertising used to describe it. These system were advertised like they can do anything. Todays modern computers are advertised of just doing things better then their old version. As well the prices, Today say they have a 20 Terra byte storage solution that costs 10k-12k they will not be advertising it in PC World, or in those type of adds and they definatly wont be giving the cost. The level of optimism for these things at the time is halarious. The old thinking machiene for the UniVax, The talking Prime Computer.... The way they were advertised is more funny then the fact that the equiptment was underpowered.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
...where a Prime computer told him to marry Lala Ward. I'm not sure which happened first - they split up or Prime went belly up, but I can't help but think that codependence on a buggy mainframe explains a lot.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The days of $12,000 80 MB hard drives and portable accoustic-coupler terminals are before my time - but not so far that the concepts seem completely alien. Accoustic couplers don't surprise me - I wanted one as a kid, but wound up getting a regular wired modem. I remember the time before internet e-mail was something I regularly used - when e-mail was something I could get only on BBSes, and therefore rather limited - so the idea of a time completely before e-mail doesn't surprise me either. And I remember when a 200 MB hard drive was a major investment - for me anyway - and before that when smaller hard drives than that were a big deal on a home computer.
Likewise the notion of a laptop computer with the power of a PC XT, or any kind of big, heavy "portable" computer - my dad had a Commodore SX 64 when I was a kid, and I used to dream of having a real C-64 laptop.
So probably this article has a much more potent effect on the kids who had internet e-mail when they were ten years old or younger, don't remember operating systems prior to Windows 95, never saw an Apple IIe or IIc... It's interesting stuff but it's not "hilarious"...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
They say the mind is the first thing to
So basically, we need to hunt them down, break their fingers, shoot them in the knees and then gut them and leave them to dry in the sun. I'm in.... :)
(Voices in unison): Hi Anonymous Coward!
... and then they built the supercollider.