What did computer geeks do before computers?

[Beamin]

I was watching "explaining computers" on youtube and I thought what would this guy do before computers? Seriously I could not see him doing any other job. Not to make fun of him, but I am, I guess... I couldn't imagine him doing any physical labor or really anything else. What did explaining computers do in cave man times? Explaining what rocks were good for? Or was this personality type hopelessly unemployable until the advent of electricity? Play with gears? Or pipes and valves?

[blackfin76]

I think radio was literally a hot thing back in the days. If you go back even further you may end up with steam engines and siege weapons.

[shteii01]

Mechanical clocks.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

Telegraphy, physics, electrostatics, chemistry, sailing, fishing, eating, hunting, cooking, sports, horses, anatomy...

You can safely assume that people a few hundred years ago had the same general mix of types of personalities as people you see today. Anything that triggers a strong interest and can be studied in depth.

[EEVblog]

Before the personal computer revolution in the late 70's and 80's, most curious people were electronics hobbyists.
In facts it's electronics hobbyists who started the personal computer revolution.

[rstofer]

Amateur Radio was a big deal and that goes back a long way - like around 1900.  The ARRL Handbook is where you learned electronics.  I built my first scope back in the late '50s from plans in that book.

Most of the math we used was discovered centuries ago by very bright people.  Trigonometry dates back to around 150 BC.  During the Great Plague of 1665-6, Newton developed Calculus.

I can imagine all these great minds sitting around and inventing all the things we take for granted.

Eniac, the first computer, was completed in 1946 so a large segment of the living population postdates the computer.  For me, computers became available in 1970 so I've been banging on them for 48 years.

Electronic analog computers predate the digital computer and mechanical analog computers go way back BC.  I'm sure there were in-house courses presented by experienced users.

The brains behind the modern analog computer is Lord Kelvin 1824-1907.  His rewriting of differential equations to isolate the highest derivative on the left and all the other stuff on the right leads immediately to programming electronic analog computers.

Lots of smart people and I suspect most of them presented material in one way or another.

[NivagSwerdna]

Cars and Motorbikes and if you could afford it Aeroplanes, Boats, ...

[GreyWoolfe]

Eniac, the first computer, was completed in 1946 so a large segment of the living population postdates the computer.

Back in the early 2000's I did a Dell warranty repair for a quite old gentleman who actually was involved with building/maintaining Eniac.  His stories about it were absolutely fascinating!!!!!   A bit OT I know, but had to share.

[BillB]

The Sears catalog, women's undergarments section.  It was rough I tell ya!

Seriously, Amateur radio was a probably the major (electronics) geek hobby.

[JacobPilsen]

Blacksmithing, locksmithery...

[bsfeechannel]

John Lennon famously said "Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis." and "Before Elvis, there was nothing".

The "Elvis" of personal computing is the IBM PC released in 1981. It boosted an unprecedented interest in personal computing because of IBM's prestige. The young enthusiasts of that emerging technology were tagged as geeks--a word that existed before 1983, when it was first recorded with that new meaning.

So what did geeks do before computers? Many did nothing. Many perhaps were not even born. Some, like Woz, were hams, others, like Jobs, were hippies.

[james_s]

The PC revolution was well under way by the time IBM came out with theirs. The famous Apple II had already been around for 5 years or so, an eternity in computer terms.

[bd139]

Pissing off truckers with CB radios, pissing off neighbours with FM transmitters, pissing off British Telecom as a phone phreaker, pissing off everyone by picking locks and making explosives and smoke bombs (not small ones!)

Computers kept me out of jail

Edit: some more passtimes of the early 1980s for me I forgot, which usually devolved into something being blown up: radio control models, rockets, bowling, fishing, camping, baiting store detectives.

[Rick Law]

I was watching "explaining computers" on youtube and I thought what would this guy do before computers? Seriously I could not see him doing any other job. Not to make fun of him, but I am, I guess... I couldn't imagine him doing any physical labor or really anything else. What did explaining computers do in cave man times? Explaining what rocks were good for? Or was this personality type hopelessly unemployable until the advent of electricity? Play with gears? Or pipes and valves?

+ Photography (still and movie),
+ Astronomy,
+ Rockets,
+ Electronics,
+ Track (football, soccer, lacross...)
+ Swim (regularly or joining club)
+ Fishing / hunting/ recreational Skiing
+ Chess club,
+ Chasing girls (or boys for some),
+ Pinball (owning a machine and play at home or playing at arcades),
+ Hang out in billiard-hall (pool-hall)
+ Martial art clubs
+ Join the Boy/Girl Scout, Junior Red Cross, Junior ROTC, Young Archaeologists' Club...
+ Reading (fantasies, scientific, romantic, action...)
or
+ just hang out in the library reading/socializing.
and I am sure for some, it would just be staying at home watching TV while snacking - gaining 50 lb every month...

[joeqsmith]

There is a pretty good book I read many years ago by Steven Levy about the beginnings of the computer revolution.  At MIT they had a model railroad club.  Kids were playing with the old telephone switch gear to automate the layout.   

Quick search, looks like the PDF is on-line if anyone still reads:
http://www.temarium.com/wordpress/wp-content/documentos/Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution.pdf

[james_s]

I wasn't born far enough back to not have had computers around at all, but most people didn't have them at home when I was growing up in the 80s. Before I got interested in computers I was heavily into electrical and electronics stuff. These days computers have become a mature commodity and I'm not really "into" them so much anymore, they are just a tool that I make (heavy) use of in my other interests.

[bsfeechannel]

The PC revolution was well under way by the time IBM came out with theirs. The famous Apple II had already been around for 5 years or so, an eternity in computer terms.

Didn't say otherwise. But we should notice that the PC became a standard and is everywhere, while the Apple II is history.

The term geek to denote the cultural phenomenon of popular enthusiasm with information technologies appeared only after the introduction of the IBM PC. The previous success of the Apple II (or should I say Apple ][, Apple //?) was not enough to prompt that perception.

But that's not my point. My point is that there were no geeks before computers. So the question "What did geeks do before computers?" has no answer.

Of course we can interpret the OP's question as "What did people do before they came in contact with computers and became geeks?" Or "what did people interested in technology do before the advent of computers?" Things like that.

[james_s]

I think IBM's greatest success here was selling corporations on the value of a PC, and at the time that was a HUGE market compared to the home users. Prior to IBM getting involved, personal computers had a reputation more as toys for geeky hobbyists than as serious tools. The Apple II series was very successful, in the home market it was much more popular than the PC initially and the popularity continued in schools. Unfortunately Apple started to move away from the open, well documented, hacker friendly philosophy with the development of the IIgs and to an even greater extend with the Macintosh. Even with the Apple II, there were only a small number of clone makers and the biggest one, Franklin got into some kind of legal trouble with them and stopped.

IBM's PC on the other hand became popular in businesses and they did not aggressively fight the clone manufactures. Between people wanting to have a home computer that was compatible with the one they had at work, and the growing ubiquity of inexpensive clones, "IBM" quickly became the defacto standard. While not lasting as long as the PC clones, the Apple IIe was made right up into 1993 which is a pretty good run and the mostly backward compatible IIgs was popular in schools up into the mid to late 90s.

[rdl]

"Cars, Bars, and Mars" was what our girlfriends claimed was all my friends and I were interested in after high school. Later, I did lose interest in cars, well at least in hot rods, and got into photography and astronomy. I developed a fascination with electronics sometime in the 1980s, but got sidetracked by a career in a different field and never had a lot of time for it.

[AlfBaz]

He may well have been an electrician in the original meaning of the word

[Richard Crowley]

As we appear to be entering the POST-computer era, gaming appears to be the next obsession.

[james_s]

I don't think it's a post-computer era, it's a mature commodity computer era. A lot of people who never really needed computers other than for email and browsing the web can now get by with mobile devices, but there are still far more PC's in use today than there were during the PC boom in the 80s and 90s.

[bitseeker]

Perhaps more generally, what did geeks do before computers?

They invented things, explored the world around them, and passed their knowledge on to others. A look at what the most famous geeks were up to all the way back to antiquity will give you a good idea.
https://www.famousscientists.org/
https://www.famousscientists.org/top-scientists-in-antiquity/

For example:

Thales of Miletus c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC
The first scientist in history, Thales looked for patterns in nature to explain the way the world works. He replaced superstitions with science. He was the first person to use deductive logic to find new results in geometry.

No PC necessary.

[gnif]

Pondered the idea of inventing a wonderful machine that could be used to create a currency based on encryption...
I am sure that was the original motivation for making a computer

[Beamin]

Amateur Radio was a big deal and that goes back a long way - like around 1900.  The ARRL Handbook is where you learned electronics.  I built my first scope back in the late '50s from plans in that book.

Most of the math we used was discovered centuries ago by very bright people.  Trigonometry dates back to around 150 BC.  During the Great Plague of 1665-6, Newton developed Calculus.

I can imagine all these great minds sitting around and inventing all the things we take for granted.

Eniac, the first computer, was completed in 1946 so a large segment of the living population postdates the computer.  For me, computers became available in 1970 so I've been banging on them for 48 years.

Electronic analog computers predate the digital computer and mechanical analog computers go way back BC.  I'm sure there were in-house courses presented by experienced users.

The brains behind the modern analog computer is Lord Kelvin 1824-1907.  His rewriting of differential equations to isolate the highest derivative on the left and all the other stuff on the right leads immediately to programming electronic analog computers.

Lots of smart people and I suspect most of them presented material in one way or another.