Reminiscing the origins of Tac2 at the tac2blog …

I recently reconnected with some long, but not forgotten, Tac2 colleagues. The Transvaal Amateur Computer Club (tac2) was a hombrew club at the infancy of microcomputing in South Africa. To facilitate a virtual reunion of the club I’m proposing and helping the club draw in members past and present to a new tac2blog where we can reminisce and reconnect by sharing club facts, anecdotes and fond memories of the origins of an industry.

Caption: Out of the original Apple User Group grew the Desktop Publishing User Group (DTP/UG).

Good night Smithie!

This month an icon of African journalism that I once briefly worked with, died. Hannes Smith born March 17, 1933, died August 5th, 2008 at age 75. He was affectionately called Smithie, an English nickname I think he would have preferred over the Afrikaans version of Smittie which many people used.

I knew him as the founding editor of the Windhoek Observer but he always thought of himself as its chief reporter — and indeed he was. My consultancy, Intelligent Ideas, converted his paper to desktop publishing in the late 80’s (early in 1989 as best I can recall).

He was a bright articulate man who didn’t mince his words. Working only from his notes and memory, he dictated stories to his Compugraphic operator to the precise column length required to fill a news hole. Something only he was sure of. We had to wait for the galleys to be played out on bromide, cut into columns and stripped up on the tables to witness the magic of his mental casting. He did this for years before we had write-to-fit text editors.

On being employed by a computing pioneer: Leo Fantl …

The recent passing of computing pioneer David Caminer reminds me of Leo Fantl, one of Caminer’s original team of programmers, also deceased.

Leo Fantl, b. August 8, 1924, Teptliz Schoenau, Czechoslovakia – November 11, 2000, Johannesburg, Africa.

Leo hired me to be a salesman at LEO Computer Bureau in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the late seventies. I wanted to be a trainee computer operator/programmer but they thought I was presentable enough and insightful about solving business problems on hired computer time (few could afford a mainframe back then): They put my enthusiasm to work in sales. I did surprisingly well, making salesman of the month several times over in my novice year, but I had no passion for selling. I wanted to control the machine.

A skydiving accident about to happen …

I recently rediscovered an old photograph taken by Michael Kuhn, friend of my brother-in-law, Alan Field. Alan was a keen skydiver, his enthusiasm for diving was infectious and together with the misguided notion that skydiving might help ease my fear of heights, I took a lesson and jumped. Just once.

Take note of the parachute on the ground in the far right of frame. That was the target landing spot on which the instructor was standing, guiding me in with a pair of paddles. Also note two things about the guy with the paddles: First is that the position of his paddles are reflected in the degree to which I’m flaring the chute and second is that he’s running away.

I’ll let you in on something: This is the first time for both of us. Me in the air, him with the paddles. Never again!

The Transvaal Amateur Computer Club …

Tac2 (the Traansvaal Amateur Computer Club) was a group of nerds and geeks that met in the basement of Senate House at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. I served as Editor of their newsletter for several years and also as Chairman for a good many more.

The club, as I recall, started out with folk who built their own Motorola 6800 computers from kits put out by Southwest Technical Products Corporation. Many of us also soldered together Sinclair ZX80’s. Then the tide turned against hardware and our soldering irons towards software and keyboards: We started buying ready built machines like the Sinclair ZX81, Commodore PET, Radio Shack’s TRS80 and the Apple II. The software revolution had begun and the Apple took a big lead eventually to be overtaken, not by the latecomer IBM PC itself, but by the generic PC.