[GNC] Ancient History

[Stephen M. Butler]

On 8/5/24 23:31, Michael Hendry wrote:
> On 6 Aug 2024, at 05:06, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
>> Michael,
>>
>> I am, though not as long as you or your dad. I didn’t get serious about it until the late 90s. Neither of my children are interested either. On the rare occasions I find time I’m also working on getting my family history work written up on WikiTree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ralls-240
> Well hello, 23rd cousin twice removed!
>
>> I’m impressed with your father’s diligence. He’s the first I’ve heard of who tried to use punch cards to keep track of genealogy research.
> Perhaps we should take this conversation off the GnuCash List?
>

Here I am lapping this up with tongue hanging out.  And your going 
off-list!!!

Now, I did change the subject line even though it is a reply all.

My tree up at Ancestory is over 3500 people strong.  I'm using Family 
Tree Maker at home (wish it would run on Linux).  One maternal line runs 
back to the Mayflower.  Although it doesn't sound like I'm as dedicated 
as the two of you.

As for punched cards, my introduction to them was in the early 1970's.  
Used a 96 column punch card to organize and print the college pictorial 
in alphabetical order.  My one and only use of RPG on a System/3.
Then used an 80 column card to load up all the alumni from the School of 
Engineering.  Yup, broke their card reader on a PDP 11/20 that summer.

Graduated to work at a hospital with a Honeywell 115 mod 2 machine with 
32K of solid core (which took up 4' of cabinet space.

In the early 80's ran a BBS using the IBM PC with DoubleDOS.  I was the 
FidoNet Region 17 coordinator for several years.  Then came the Internet.