I was born in Philadelphia in 1934, grew up on part of what was my grandfather's farm about two miles west of Valley Forge Park, and have never lived more than 20 miles away from there. (Is that provincial?)

I attended Paoli Elementary School and The Episcopal Academy and went on to Cornell University's School of Electrical Engineering. I still remember the day when a fantastic new electronic device was announced - the transistor!

I was fortunate enough to be selected for the Cooperative Engineering Program where we alternated terms of study with real-world work experience. I spent four terms with the Philco Corporation (remember them?). Three were in TV tube and transistor manufacturing. This was a great program not only because you got practical experience but it also paid well which helped to pay my college expenses. When I graduated in 1958 there were two computer courses - the analog which was a prerequisite to the digital one.

THE MIDDLE YEARS

My first job was with Minneapolis-Honeywell in Pottstown where I did environmental testing on the ground support equipment we were building for the Atlas and Bomarc missile systems. After about 3-1/2 years I left to try my skills as a sales engineer. After nine months I found out that I had none, so I moved to Burroughs in Paoli and Radnor where I was responsible for scheduling equipment installation in the NORAD Combat Operations Center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado which I actually got to visit. My next employment was with GE in Valley Forge. I was essentially a migrant worker in the military/government industry following the contracts. Whenever I took a new job I usually found there many of my acquaintances from my previous jobs.

During my years at GE a friend of mine convinced me to go into partnership with him in a copy shop franchise. He would run it and I would provide the wherewithal. In 1969 GE lost a large contract for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory and 1400 people were laid off on one Black Friday. Fortunately, I was not one of them. Unfortunately, three weeks later I was! As there weren't many jobs available (thanks to the 1400 who got laid off before me), I decided to go into the printing business myself. My partner no longer wanted to run it so we switched places and a year or so later I bought him out.

About this time I started to get interested in computers. My first was a TRS-80 Model I later supplanted by a Model III. One day I heard about this new computer called LISA made by Apple. I went to a demonstration and decided that this was just what I needed for typesetting. The typesetting equipment in our original franchise was an IBM Selectric with nine type balls! I couldn't afford a LISA but I did get an Apple 128K and a LaserWriter. After that I owned a 512K, a 512K Expanded, an SE, an LC III, a 7200 and finally a G4. For my personal use, I have a UMAX clone and a G3 iMac and iBook, all of which I still use.

I think, sometime around 1989, I realized that I didn't know much about Macs. I saw an ad in the Wayne Suburban asking if anyone would be interested in starting a Mac Users Group. I called the number and introduced myself to Don Houghton. I don't remember if I attended the first meeting at Don's house, but I do remember the next one at the Tredyffrin Library. We had about seven people at that meeting! Don was elected President and I as Vice President. We quickly outgrew Tredyffrin and moved to the Easttown Library. Somewhere in this timeframe, Don succumbed to cancer and I took over as President with Moe as VP. We didn't have projection equipment (I guess because it hadn't been invented yet) which made a presentation to the group very difficult. What we did was to set up a video camera in front of the computer and show its screen on a large TV. We've come a long way, baby! After Easttown we moved to the Radnor Library in Wayne and then to Paoli Hospital.

THE LATER YEARS

In 1992 my wife died very suddenly and my life changed dramatically. My two oldest children were out of school but my youngest was a high school junior and I had to arrange for his college education. I also had my life to rearrange. Fortunately I met a lady in my church and we started "keeping company." At my 60^th birthday party I asked her to marry me and I started a new phase in my life. I also realized, as President of MLMUG, that just about all the members knew a lot more about computers than I did. So using the excuse that I was starting a new marriage I resigned the Presidency, handed the reins of government to John Linton and took a seat in the back row.

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© 2002 by Maria O. Arguello, Craig TenBroeck & MLMUG
Posted 11/2/03