It was a warm summer day. The sun was high in the sky. I was hot inside (no air conditioning), and the outside deck was so inviting. So rather than say in the dimly-lit apartment, I prepared for my first computer adventure outside. Ho-boy! It was going to be fun.
The year was probably 1984, way back when I owned a TRS-80 Model III. A “laptop” computer hadn’t yet been invented. Portables were available, like the clunky Osborne and Compaq. Even those machines sat on a desk, inside, anchored to a power supply.
The place I lived was an illegal dwelling unit. It was an apartment constructed above a long commercial building located in an industrial complex. The place still exists; Figure 1 shows the Google street view of the location.
Figure 1. Google street view of where I lived back in 1984.
My father rented the illegal dwelling unit as temporary lodging while his home was being constructed elsewhere. Anyway, it’s where I lived. I had set up my TRS-80 in my room, but I wanted the freedom to compute outside.
The illegal dwelling unit had a deck out on the roof of the commercial building (see Figure 1). That’s where I experienced my first time using a computer outside.
I dragged an electrical cord outside to ensure that I’d have power. Then I set up a table and chair. O, I was so brilliant! I even wired up the modem so that I could boast to my online buddies that I was typing outside on a sunny day. What a silly, idiosyncratic thing for a nerd to do!
Everything was perfect. I might have even set out a diet Coke. Then, I turned on my TRS-80 Model III.
One thing you have to know about the TRS-80 computer is that they didn’t really have monitors. No, that CRT came from a Radio Shack Black-and-White TV that never sold. It was designed for watching insipid television, not for reading text, coding, or whatever else I did on my TRS-80.
Eventually, I did replace my TRS-80’s wretched monitor with a nice amber monitor. It was very nice, but either way the end effect would have been the same on that day: The screen was impossible to see.
Outside it was just too damn bright. I turned up the monitor’s brightness all the way. Nothing. I even tore up a cardboard box and framed the front of the TRS-80 so that the box worked like a hood. Nope. Nothing worked. Unable to see the monitor, I gave up on my first attempt to compute outside.
Even though I failed, the lesson stuck with me: If you want to compute in sunlight, you need a specific type of display. You see the same effect today when you try to use a phone, tablet, or laptop outside; the screen is difficult to see. And back in 1984, with that garish black-and-white TV set monitor on the TRS-80 Model III, it was near impossible.
