What did math nerds do before computers?

January 3, 2018

Question from E-mail

Dear Mr. Wozniak, My father bought an Apple ][ with an AppleSoft card when I was 15 or so. It had 48k and a floppy drive. It was just amazing what you could do with 48k in those days – we had a word processor (AppleWrite, I think), VisiCalc, and plenty of games. I started programming shortly thereafter, using Apple BASIC. I later moved to Pascal on the Apple. I’m 31 now and making a good living as a Java programmer. I don’t know what I’d be doing if it wasn’t for the Apple. What did math nerds do before computers?

Woz

Believe it or not, such stories of people getting interested in computers at an early age and making a life out of it bring tears to my eyes. I don’t need any credit, you all merely need symbols like myself. Yes, what would we math nerds have done? (except for those of us who knew electronics and lived in Santa Clara, I mean ‘Silicon’, Valley)