**** Reading a fantastic book: FamilyTrees: A History of Genealogy in America, by Francois Weil, 2013. Weil starts at the very beginning of America and explains why folks were interested in knowing their backgrounds and family history. (I’ll give more bits from this book in the future.) Page 204: “Market growth (of the genealogy industry) since the 1970s has taken place in two phases. Before the growth of the Internet came the commercial effects of the new interest in genealogy, symbolized by the success of Roots, and of technological change in the preservation, reproductions and transfer of information.” At a conference in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1982, a session on using computers in genealogy was included. “Computers are becoming quite common in genealogical research,” it was declared. Did you realize that Ancestry.com (1983) predates FamilySearch.org (1999)??? When did you begin using a computer for your genealogy??? My first computer, in about 1991, was a Kaypro 10 and I was so excited to have it! With it’s green letters on a black screen!
I loved my Kaypro! Not sure what year and believe it was before the 10. Remember the floppy discs?
My first personal computer was an Apple clone in 1984 that relied upon 5″ floppy disks – some of which I probably still have! Prior to that computers at work relied on 10″, then 7″ floppy disks.