Just Say No!

In the early 80’s, I was sitting and minding my own business, when I received a phone call from Texas Instruments. I was surprised, as I had never had any dealings with them before, but we were very hot on computers, and they were a great source for technology. They were offering me a bunch of computers, using raster technology. I had no idea what that was, but would never admit it and besides, they were giving us a lot of them and we could get our technician to make them work anyway. Plus, they were free!

"YES!" I said.

Than I forgot about it.

Several months later I received a phone call telling me they were on their way, and did I have enough room for them? What, enough room? How big were they?

It seemed there were several tractor trailers coming from Texas to Detroit, with my name on them!

I scrambled around to find a warehouse to store them. I needed a place with electricity and lights so our tech guy could get them to work!

Once I secured a warehouse, as a gift, I had the computers moved there.

The only computers I had really used at that point were Apples. I purchased the first Apple in December, 1979, the first year after their introduction. The next one was sometime after that, with an emphasis on Industrial Design. Most of us thought they were great toys, and were still looking forward to new IBM Selectrics for the offices.

Our new tech guy went down to the warehouse and began to work on these and finally, a month later, got one or two working.

They had the look of a 50’s space movie set. Giant things set in big desks, maybe five feet by three feet with giant round screens with graphs and lots of bright colors. I have no idea what they did. I believe we had 30 or 40 of them.

I have no idea if they are still in that warehouse in Detroit.

I did learn one thing,

Just Say No to everything!