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Comment by m_walden | Hacker News Reader

If it is that easy, why is it that this information did not exist on the net until now? I am someone who had the interest and took time to put this together in a nice presentation.

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You did an impressive job. Thank you. The reason this information did not exist in written form is that it was fairly obvious to those who knew Creative Computing and could readily identify the magazine, to the point of nobody thinking about writing it down. I knew Creative Computing (it was one of my favorite computer magazines, along with BYTE and Nibble) and if someone asked me, I would readily identify it.

Now, I believe there is a lesson here. Those who were into computing at that time know a lot of stuff that never got written down. Maybe we should talk more with younger computer geeks who never heard a teletype (I love the sound they make) or have no idea we elders like to stay within 80 columns because of IBM punchcards.

You may have questions we can answer. Let's get them asked.

If you're ever in Seattle, stop by the Living Computer Museum sometime. You can interact with mainframes, Teletypes, punch cards, etc. Lots of fun.

Here are some photos I took last time we went:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mratzloff/sets/7215763439619459...

I included descriptions on most of these, if you're curious about anything in particular.

It's on my list.

About your photo set, it's a great collection. I'm enjoying them a lot. Thanks for pointing us to it.

It's also fun to stop by the Museum of Communications [0], about 3 miles down the road, to see old working telephone exchanges and such. There's a lot of commonality between the two. (They are only open on Tuesdays, first Sundays of the month, or by appointment.)

The MoC runs its own BBS off of an AT&T 3B2 model 500 [1], which can be accessed via telnet.

[0] http://museumofcommunications.org/ or http://www.scn.org/telmuseum/

[1] http://museumofcommunications.org/?page_id=164

[2] full disclosure: my dad was involved in forming the Telecommunications History Group, which is the parent organization for the MoC.

It was "that easy" for one person with screwed up priorities who happened to have a fairly visually-oriented memory at the time, i.e., me.

It's not like I recognized the date from the cover or anything. I didn't track anything down; you did all the work.

I hope I haven't hurt your feelings.

No, not at all. I hope I did not sound like I was upset. I was just trying to convey that it may seem easy when you see the answer, but it was a bit tricky to find the answer.

I for one really appreciate your effort and dedication. I know it's a trivial or even frivolous pursuit but having wondered the same thing, I'm glad to have the "issue" resolved. Now time for a Real Genius / Wargames double feature.

Thanks for the effort! I was a regular reader of BYTE magazine (and Nibble!) but never knew Creative Computing.

There was also a TV series with a similar theme (war dialling) at that time. I can't recall its name...

I was a regular reader of BYTE magazine and Creative Computing. Nibble, not so much since I did not have Apple II class PCs. I believe that the TV series you refer to was Whiz_Kids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_%28TV_series%29

Whiz Kids it was indeed. Too bad it's not available for watching online. Thanks for taking the time to answer!

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