I started writing this article as the last column of 2012, and you will be reading it as one of the first articles of 2013, but in reality, I started writing this story in 1969. As Rob Hunter of the Grateful Dead once wrote in the song "Truckin": "Lately it occurs to me, What a long, strange trip it's been."

I am a person who has a hard time throwing things out that should have been thrown out long ago. On the other hand, as I face the fact that I am 62 years old and, sooner or later, these things will be of absolutely no use to me, I look at these objects and see an opportunity to remember the days when they were new, as well as remember the people who created them and what their contributions meant to "computing." The memories are sometimes bittersweet.

The first thing I found was a slide rule. Although I am sure many people reading this column know what slide rules are, few actually had to use them. Engineers used slide rules and books of tables to perform calculations, just like accountants used mechanical adding machines to do accurate business additions and subtractions. Enter the age of electronic calculators, which once were extremely expensive. Later, they became so inexpensive that they were given away at trade shows and, finally, just built into phones and other devices.

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