Interest in computers was cultivated in middle school
中学时候就对计算机兴趣浓厚
Were other of your contemporaries equally interested in the business,
你周围的同龄人也同样对商业感兴趣吗?
or did you find yourself unusual among the groups?
还是你与众不同?
Well,when I went to Lakeside School, I was about 12 years old.
嗯,我12岁的时候进入湖滨中学学习。
I started there in seventh grade.
我从七年级开始读。
That was kind of a change for me.
那对我来说是一个新的环境。
It is a private boys’ school. Very strict.
湖滨中学是一所私立男校,管理非常严格。
At first I really didn’t like the environment.
开始的时候,我真的不喜欢那种环境。
I did eventually find some friends there,
后来,我交到了一群好朋友,
some of who had the same sort of interest, like reading business magazines and Fortune.
其中的一些跟我有同样的爱好,比如阅读商业杂志或者《财富》。
We were always creating funny company names and having people send us their product literature.
我们经常起一些有趣的公司名字,让别人给我们发他们的产品资料。
Trying to think about how business worked.
我们总是思考商业是如何运行的。
And in particular, looking at computer companies and what was going on with them.
而且特别关注一些电脑公司的发展经营状况。
What companies, in particular, did you like to follow?
你们会特别关注哪些公司?
The first computer we used was a GE time-sharing system.
我们用的第一台电脑采用的是GE分时系统。
It was connected over a phone line.
它通过一条电话线连接。
Actually, the school couldn’t afford a full phone line,
事实上,学校并不能给我们提供一根独立的电话线,
so someone in the offices had a switch where you could take over the phone line.
因此,需要在办公室里通过终端机转换。
It was an ASR-33 Teletype with paper tape connected up to a GE computer.
那是一台ASR-33型号的终端机,通过纸带接到一台GE电脑上。
But, very quickly,we found out about PDP-8s, and eventually got one loaned to us.
但是,很快我们发现了PDP-8S,并最终租到了一台。
And then eventually, Data General Nova got loaned to us.
最终我们租用了通用数据公司的新星开发操作系统。
So, it these companies making smaller computers that were very fascinating to us.
所以,主要是这些制造小型计算机的公司吸引我们。
Joining all the user groups.
我们加入到使用者的行列中。
DEC had one called the DECUS User Group.
DEC有一个叫DECUS的用户群。
Getting on every mailing list.
把自己的电子邮件地址加入到他们的电邮数据库中,
In Datamation they had these bingo cards where you could check everything you were interested in.
他们会通过数据库自动发送各种宾戈卡片,你可以由此找到自己感兴趣的东西。
So, we just put our name down and checked everything in there,
因此,我们填上姓名,选择全部选项,
and tried to learn about the world of computing.
我们想了解整个计算机世界。
How did the faculty respond to your interest outside of your curriculum compared to your interest in your own studies?
相比你的学习生活而言,老师们对你的课余爱好怎么看?
Well, I was relieved from some classes,
嗯,有一些课我可以不去上,
Math in particular, because I’d read ahead.
尤其是数学,因为我之前已经会了。
So, I had quite a bit of free time.
所以我有很多时间可以自己支配。
When the Mother’s Club which did this rummage sale,
当母亲倶乐部通过义卖筹集到钱,
got the money for this Teletype and a certain amount of time to buy computer time,
来支付终端机和电脑使用时间的费用时,
it was a question of who was going to figure this thing out?
这时出现问题该由谁来解决呢?