Pre-Computer

When I was a kid, there were no computers to teach me how to solve problems. I did have toys, however, that gave me experience trying things just to see if they would work. If nothing else, it helped me to innovate whenever the answer wasn’t obvious.

Spirograph consisted of plastic rings, with gear teeth on both the inside and outside of their edges. The rings were pinned to a cardboard backing and had holes for a ballpoint pin to extend through them to an underlying piece of paper. The gear edge’s teeth engaged other pieces. For instance, smaller gears fit inside the larger rings and rotated around the inside or along the outside edge of the rings. I learned lessons in geometry as I created intricate designs.

Lite Brite allowed me to create glowing designs by placing multi-colored translucent plastic pegs through opaque black paper. The illuminated light bulb on the inside was blocked by the black paper except where the pegs were pushed through the paper. Example patterns were included, but I usually made my own creations. It was important to plan the design before pushing the pegs through the paper because once the holes were punched in the paper, the light showed through. These toys, and others, helped me learn to solve problems through trial and error.

The man sitting beside me on the airplane seemed to be having a problem watching a movie on his computer. He would put the earphones in the correct hole on the side of the computer, wiggle the cord around, pull it and out and put it back in again. After watching several iterations of this out of the corner of my eye, I looked up from my book and asked if he needed help.

Today’s gift was to show him where to find the computer’s control panel and how to test the earphones so that he could watch his movie. I imagine it was the ingenuity from my pre-computer childhood toys that I used to help him solve his problem.

In Giving,

Robin