Look How Far We’ve Come
[My Grandfather + an IBM computer]
Passover; Brooklyn. 1947.
He raises a glass to the table, and over the napkin rustling and knuckle cracking and chair rocking, he begins to say the kiddish over the wine.
This is my family. From left to right: Eric and Rhoda, the middle kids, twins. Sabrina, my mother. Ira, a flaming red head surprise.
In 1967, around the same time that the photo above was taken, my grandfather, Jordan Polly, would land his first job as a computer programmer.
Macy’s Charge Account processing consisted of five sub-systems and he was assigned to re-write the one called “Regiment.” Its function was to ensure the validity of the data in all financial transactions so that redundant verification was not needed by other programs. He read and re-read the COBOL manual, pouring over the foreign language. By 1968 he was fluent — then, he began to code.
Though the world was on the brink of revolutionizing how we communicate with each other and the world around us, the energy and excitement was completely contained — bursting only from those who understood the technology, were building the language, were proving it could work so that the rest of the world could eventually take it, and run.
My mom likes the tell the story of when she went to the World Fair in 1964 and saw the prototype of a “videophone” — an invention that seemed like it belonged in the Jetsons. My grandfather remembers a similar feeling in relation to the media that we have today:
When I followed up with him later, I asked him if he could’ve ever imagined that we would come this technologically far, so incredibly fast. Immediately, he replied “No, never.”
In the 80's, a fellow programmer heard that Intel was planning to put the entire mainframe operating system onto one single chip — the chip that’s now located in almost every electronic device today. The size of the mainframe that my Uncle Eric is using in the photo below makes this idea seem unfathomable. How could Intel squeeze this monstrous piece of machinery, overflowing with information, onto one single chip?
Grandpa Jordan often hosts our Hannukah family gathering — we all squeeze into the two bedroom apartment that my mom grew up in and in which my grandpa still lives. At some point in the evening, when the smell of latkes begins to lull the crew to a calm, everyone plops themselves down in one spot, sinking into the couch in a post food stupor.
When this time comes, I sneak away to my grandpa’s office, to this day, one of my favorite rooms in the world. It’s brimming with stuff — but it’s not cluttered. It’s a mix of old and new, a desktop computer sitting next to his Rolleiflex camera from the 50's. I run my fingers over his records and typewriter and photo albums and phonograph and ham radio, connecting to a more tangible past, a world that my 90's born brain can barely recall.
