Story of the Day

I found this Random House Dictionary on a bookshelf in my place today. This is a small format book with about 1070 pages. I have had it since it was printed around 1980. I guess what I think is interesting is why I got it and how it has stayed with me even though nearly everything else involved in its initial purchase and use is gone.

This dictionary was originally sold as part of a package with a spell check program I can't remember now what the program was called. There were not that many spell checkers out then, but this was one of the best. It was on a 5 1/4 inch floppy for the Apple ][ and ][+ computers. I remember that I used the spell checker a lot. As long as I used my Apple ][, I used the spell checker. Hard drives were few and far between then for Apples especially so everything had to fit on a 143Kbyte single-sided floppy. This meant that the size of the dictionary provided with the software was limited. Of course you could have a user dictionary on a seperate floppy but instead of putting all of those words on floppies the publisher put the basic dictionary on the disk and gave the user a dictionary to augment the list.

What ever word processor I used to use is long gone. My Apple ][ (vintage 1978) has long since vanished but for a few odd parts (an 80 column card and part of a Hayes 300 baud Micromodem). All of the reasons the dictionary came into my posession have disappeared but the book is still with me. I have since owned an Amiga 500, and Amiga 2000, A PowerMac 6100/60 and a Powerbook 520. But I still have and still use the Random House Dictionary I got to use with my first computer. Not only that, it is still in the right format to use with any computer I have had and am likely to have.

Tuesday evening,
March 5, 1996