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    Great Moments in Computing
    Great Moments in Computing
    Great Moments in Computing
    Ebook378 pages1 hour

    Great Moments in Computing

    By Mel Croucher and Robin Evans

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    About this ebook

    The unexpurgated, hilarious and unflinching history of computers, of the lunatics who create them, and of the idiots who use them, retold in cartoon strips by Mel Croucher and Robin Evans. Great Moments In Computing is the longest-running, most widely read and best loved computer cartoon strip in the world, and this unique collection contains every single episode ... along with unpublished and previously censored versions, and the behind-the-scenes secrets of how it all really happened.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAcorn Books
    Release dateMar 16, 2018
    ISBN9781785387555
    Great Moments in Computing

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      Book preview

      Great Moments in Computing - Mel Croucher

      Insπred

      the collected artwork of

      Mel Croucher

      and

      Robin Evans

      Volume 3

      Great Moments in Computing

      Published in 2017 by

      Acorn Books

      www.acornbooks.co.uk

      an imprint of

      Andrews UK Limited

      www.andrewsuk.com

      Copyright © 1988–2017 Mel Croucher & Robin Evans

      The right of Mel Croucher & Robin Evans to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      Any views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Acorn Books or Andrews UK Limited.

      Introduction

      This is Volume Three of a three volume special edition. It contains the unexpurgated history of computing, retold in thirty year’s of cartoon strips by Mel Croucher and Robin Evans.

      Many years ago, a man with a beard invited Mel Croucher to come up with some stuff for the back page of a new monthly magazine to be called Computer Shopper. Mel managed about 900 words then ran out of steam. He filled the gap with a cartoon strip. It wasn’t very good, so he asked his chum Robin Evans to make it very good. They called their strip Great Moments In Computing. The man with a beard then buggered off without telling anyone this was only a temporary arrangement with no contract. Mel Croucher and Robin Evans have been waiting to get found out ever since.

      Computer Shopper became the biggest circulation geek magazine in the land, and Great Moments In Computing is now the longest running, most widely read and best loved computing cartoon strip in the world. Here’s the story from Mel and Robin in their own words, byting the hand that feeds them.

      Foreword by Mel Croucher

      "Computers are really dumb. Computer users are really dumb too. When I started out in the computer business there were only a few hundred of us. Now, thanks to scientific progress, hackers can abuse billions of us all at once.

      For the first few years of the Great Moments In Computing comic strip I would scribble down the words and scrawl some roughs. I’d then hand them to Robin so he could ignore them. Once a month I’d pay him too much of what I charged the publisher, and Robin would call me Boss in exchange. It was a pretty good deal. When he didn’t like my jokes, he’d just scrap them and come up with his own. After a while I knew resistance was futile, so I just let him get on with changing my scripts to whatever he reckoned was funnier. Turns out that of the two of us he was the funny one all along. I can’t help bunging in my own opinions. He just wants to make people laugh.

      The idea has always been to contrast an actual great moment in computing with the idiocies of humanity. Every strip has the same triptych format: exposition, development, punch line. The text boxes below each panel are always serious, sometimes educational. Every one hundred months we repeat exactly the same cartoon we started off with, to see if anybody notices. No schmuck ever notices.

      Back in the 1980s, I would send Robin’s finished artwork off as high-quality pen and ink originals, for shit reproduction in newsprint. I’d roll it all up in a slim cardboard tube, violate a post box with it, then just walk away. Somehow our work would appear on the back page about seven weeks later. It’s always been the final item in the magazine, the last word on the computer industry, which I find most satisfying. Sometimes the artwork went missing in the post, and Robin would have to recreate the whole thing again, but we’ve never missed a deadline yet.

      A few times, when our copy got lost or we ran out of stamps, we used a new-fangled invention called a fax machine to transmit our cartoons down the wire, then in the 1990s we worked out how to copy an image with a scanner and save it onto a magnetic device called a floppy disk, which was rigid and square, hence the name. This meant we could send an electronic copy of Great Moments In Computing to the editor in

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