It’s not the first time someone comes up with the next great thing that ends up being a user interface disaster. Light pens (w/ link for the younger crowd) come to mind.
Dumb terminals were extremely prevelant throughout the 80s and into the early-mid 90s. Most people just didn’t know that they were “dumb terminals” and either just thought they were early desktop computers or just heard them referred to as a “terminal”. That same library didn’t update their dumb terminals to actual computers until the mid 90s, but they did however remove the light pen in favor of a keyboard at some point well before then.
It’s not the first time someone comes up with the next great thing that ends up being a user interface disaster. Light pens (w/ link for the younger crowd) come to mind.
Ooof. I remeber using light pens in the 80s at a dumb terminal at my local library to find books. It was painful…
Anyone remembers dumb terminals?
Dumb terminals were extremely prevelant throughout the 80s and into the early-mid 90s. Most people just didn’t know that they were “dumb terminals” and either just thought they were early desktop computers or just heard them referred to as a “terminal”. That same library didn’t update their dumb terminals to actual computers until the mid 90s, but they did however remove the light pen in favor of a keyboard at some point well before then.
This is Lenny. Most users probably do. Good percentage still have a few. A few of us make new ones now and then.
(Technically not dumb ones, though. And completely excluding terminal emulators, which are of course ubiquitous.)
Oh boy, forgot about those. Every school library used one to read a barcode.
You’re probably thinking of something else. You can’t read anything with those
They’re thinking of optical pens
https://www.datalogic.com/eng/media-center/news/the-first-optical-pen-nd2-8116.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/ja6mc0/does_anybody_remember_these_barcode_readers_at/